Comment by inigyou
4 days ago
Yet another thing ipv6 solves. Yeah you can do the officially supported fdXX:XXXX:XXXX:... but you can also just pick something like 1::1 and it's unlikely to conflict with the current global range.
If you're gonna do that, though, it's better if you use fd00:... or one of the other assigned ranges so it's still in the standard range. OSes use this as a heuristic for source address selection.
> Yet another thing ipv6 solves. ... it's unlikely to conflict with the current global range
I'm not familiar with IPv6's details, could you elaborate on this? To me, this reads like you're saying that IPv6 solves the problem by having low adoption rates rather than an actual function of the protocol.
All global IPv6 addresses start with 2. This is by design. Pedantically, 3 is also reserved for global. Some other prefixes are also reserved, like fd for the ULA (local) range.
The point of IPv6 was to make the addresses so long they are easy to manage.
>The point of IPv6 was to make the addresses so long they are easy to manage.
lol, there is no doubt that had a massive opposite effect. To the point of nearly killing it in terms of willingness to adopt.
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The point of IPv6 was to make the addresses so long that we don't run out of them in 20 years or so.
There fixed that for you.
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The argument is that IPv6 addresses are UUIDs and any random block is unlikely to collide with any other random address.
It's not about low adoption, it's that there are unimaginably many IPv6 addresses.
...which is a major reason for why it has low adoption
Thanks for the reply. I'm reminded every now and then of the magnitude of the address space in v6. Then I do nothing with that information and slowly lose appreciation for the size again :)
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Respectfully I don't think they explained it well.
fc00::/7 is for "Unique Local Addresses". Basically, private, non-globally-routable addresses from which you can freely pick space. Kind of like RFC1918. It's deliberately huge and you should only use as much from it as you need. The idea being that if you merge with another organization or connect to them via VPN, it's unlikely your addresses will collide like with RFC 1918.
There's even a website (sites?) to register your ULA space on a volunteer basis to reduce collision chances.
If you can't remember 192.168 you definitely can't remember a randomly picked ULA. So just use fd00. It's not any worse than 192.168.
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"all that 192 stuff was silly and too complicated... but this fd00: stuff is easy peasy!"
192.168.0.0/24 -> fd00:0::/64
192.168.1.0/24 -> fd00:1::/64
192.168.2.0/24 -> fd00:2::/64
192.168.240.0/24 -> fd00:240::/64
It's not a great idea, but its no harder.
No need to mess around with setting up DHCP, remembering if your router is top or bottom of the subnet, and if you want 500 devices on a single subnet that's no problem.
Now if you still need ipv4 then yes, ipv6 is stupid as you have double the pain for none of the gain, but if you are ip6 only then its far easier.
I doubt any endpoints are entirely ipv6.
So it seems like it helps ISPs and large networks router… but they never had problems with address space running out at the high levels and almost all likely need to support v4 anyhow.
I think it’s been long enough to be honest that ipv6 was a spectacular failure by complicating an already complicated system into something no one actually asked for.
No human said “hey, networking sucks. Please make it much harder at my level!!”.
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The proper way to do ULA is to generate random 40-bit ID. Then your ULA are likely unique. Which means that if you want to connect or merge with another company, the networks are distinct.
IPv4 has a lot of trouble since everyone is using 10/8 space for corporate networks.
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One thing I don't appreciate... Is the nature of NAT protected my internal/home network before... now, I have to actually configure firewall settings etc. to protect IPv6 issued addresses internally.
I know you can just block inbound non-established connections, but it feels like an extra step and complexity. Not to mention, that I really don't understand how IPs are supposed to be provisioned to devices on IPv6. Is there like a 50-100 page book you can recommend "for dummies" on IPv6, that hopefully contains at least a tiny amount of how to configure a common router and/or linux host.
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you can use 1234 if you want, that's also unused space
Agreed 100%! I know there's tough challenges to making this reality, but if https://serverspace.io/about/blog/ipv8-explained-what-we-kno... could be an IRL thing, I would buy company network equipment and use computer OSes that supported this draft standard.
It's a much better compromise and ergonomics to migrate from IPv4 to an IPv4 respecting successor, where IPv6 is just the academic snobbery and utterly alien mental model for not-enough benefits.
For the same reason Unix stuck around and beat up its own successor Plan 9/inferno. That inertia even decades later is the same reason IPv4 still beats IPv6.
IPv8 is more of a linux to unix than a plan 9.
ipv8 is a "vibe coded" specification from someone who doesn't understand the problem at all. Just like ipv6, you can't use ipv8 without upgrading the whole internet. The internet is mostly ipv6 capable and not at all ipv8 capable so why do you want to throw away that progress and reset the clock?
It's also just a worse design, centralising a bunch of things and trying to authoritatively define what counts as "a network" on both sides of the communication, unlike v4 and v6 where you just have raw bits and can interpret them how you want. I mean ipv8 defines the internet as a bunch of networks and a network as a bunch of computers. And a network is something that has an ASN. Your computers would be on your ISP's big network, not your small home network because you can't have a network inside a network. It also decreases the number of bits than we already have (in ipv6), limiting futureproofing. It also says every network device will log in with OAuth. Yes, really.