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.
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!!”.
Lte and 5G can be v6 only, usually they also have NAT64 and DNS64 so you can get everywhere, but the less stuff that needs v4, the smaller their nat boxes are.
I'm largely with you... I would think they'd take the IPv4 block and have a direct/virtual block that just extends it to more addresses... so it could be an IPv4 NAT or IPv6 direct.
like 1.1.1.1/192.168.45.4 ... for a router that understands IPv6, that's the direct route to the sub-network, otherwise it will have to use IPv4, and the subnet route is treated as NAT and otherwise isolated.
To me, that would make more sense... then internal IPv6 might be practically limited to 10. and 102.168. in the nearer term, but adoption would be MUCH simpler in practice, and distribution would mostly already be established, however unfairly, but can then be broken into single addresses and vNext adoption could be that much quicker as a result of piggybacking.
Public websites almost always still have ipv4 to serve ipv4-only users who make up half of the American business internet. But note that v6 connectivity is better than v4 in basically every other country and basically every mobile network (which is where most of the users are).
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.
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.
> Not to mention, that I really don't understand how IPs are supposed to be provisioned to devices on IPv6.
SLAAC is the only way that works across all IPV6 devices. In that mode, the router advertises the prefix and the device assigns its own address (prefix + its mac address).
DHCPv6 exists but is poorly supported. It sucks for people who like assigning IPs individually from an authoritative place (through static dhcp entries on the router). But people like us are "doing it wrong", you see? We must accept that in this brave new worlds an IP means nothing.
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 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.
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!!”.
> I doubt any endpoints are entirely ipv6.
Lte and 5G can be v6 only, usually they also have NAT64 and DNS64 so you can get everywhere, but the less stuff that needs v4, the smaller their nat boxes are.
I'm largely with you... I would think they'd take the IPv4 block and have a direct/virtual block that just extends it to more addresses... so it could be an IPv4 NAT or IPv6 direct.
like 1.1.1.1/192.168.45.4 ... for a router that understands IPv6, that's the direct route to the sub-network, otherwise it will have to use IPv4, and the subnet route is treated as NAT and otherwise isolated.
To me, that would make more sense... then internal IPv6 might be practically limited to 10. and 102.168. in the nearer term, but adoption would be MUCH simpler in practice, and distribution would mostly already be established, however unfairly, but can then be broken into single addresses and vNext adoption could be that much quicker as a result of piggybacking.
3 replies →
Public websites almost always still have ipv4 to serve ipv4-only users who make up half of the American business internet. But note that v6 connectivity is better than v4 in basically every other country and basically every mobile network (which is where most of the users are).
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.
If someone can't remember 192.168 they definitely can't remember their own chosen random 40 bits.
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.
> Not to mention, that I really don't understand how IPs are supposed to be provisioned to devices on IPv6.
SLAAC is the only way that works across all IPV6 devices. In that mode, the router advertises the prefix and the device assigns its own address (prefix + its mac address).
DHCPv6 exists but is poorly supported. It sucks for people who like assigning IPs individually from an authoritative place (through static dhcp entries on the router). But people like us are "doing it wrong", you see? We must accept that in this brave new worlds an IP means nothing.
3 replies →
Home routers with IPv6 should have this enabled by default, at least by law in Europe, and you can turn it off or add exceptions.
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.