Comment by ChrisMarshallNY
4 days ago
I'm pretty underwhelmed by IPv6. It looks like the typical "horse designed by committee."
I suspect that what will actually end up being implemented, will be a core subset of the spec.
We'll have to see what's still standing, when the dust settles.
The IPv6 spec looks long because it also includes protocols that are separate on IPv4 (DHCP/SLAAC, NDP, depending on the document ICMPv6, mirroring DHCP, ARP, ICMP, NetBIOS, etc.), as well as the addressing schemes that were different RFCs in IPv4 such as multicast/unicast/network classes/subnets.
As for the implementation: just about anything more powerful than an ESP32 has the entire protocol implemented and running already.
As long as the SDKs to apps make it simple, we'll be good. I haven't seen much, so far.
What do you mean? Apps for iOS and macOS have had perfect v6 support for a long time because of this. Linux has unified address families for netfilter and internet sockets that abstract the details. Various programming languages have perfectly fleshed out standard library data structures and functions, etc etc.
Your computer, and every other computer on the planet, already supports the entire IPv6 spec. There is no subset.
I'm typing this on a computer running Android, which means it doesn't support DHCPv6. I would describe it as supporting a subset of IPv6 functionality.
I suppose that could be annoying, but technically DHCPv6 is not part of the IPv6 specification just as the original DHCP was not part of the original TCP/IP specification.
Well, we'll have to see what all the "in-between" bits do. There's a lot in it, that will require implementation by countless layers of routers, switches, caches, firewalls, etc.
Look at Bluetooth, for an example, or TIFF.
I printed out the Bluetooth spec once, just for Ss and Gs. It was over 2,000 pages (double-sided).
I once tried writing a fully-compliant TIFF reader. Didn't go so well.
Those all support IPv6 too. They’re the same computers, and they’ve all supported IPv6 for decades now. The IPv6 spec is a lot shorter than the spec for Bluetooth or TIFF.
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