[HN Gopher] IPv6 Watch
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       IPv6 Watch
        
       Author : DanAtC
       Score  : 115 points
       Date   : 2021-07-28 16:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ipv6.watch)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ipv6.watch)
        
       | bsdubernerd wrote:
       | I've supported v6 on a few small sites hosting OSS projects for
       | almost a decade now, and I kept statistics over the years. The
       | increase in v6 adoption has been glacial. Less than 1% increase
       | per year.
       | 
       | My own connectivity at home doesn't support v6 due to my ISP. At
       | work, v6 is so badly managed it's the first thing we rule out
       | when diagnosing connectivity issues.
       | 
       | Kind of a sad state really. I wish v4 prices increased tenfold,
       | not barely double.
        
       | jtchang wrote:
       | IPv6 has barely a carrot and no stick.
       | 
       | Does anyone give me more money for using IPv6? Sure I might be
       | able to save some money by not using IPv4 but that is rare.
       | 
       | Government doesn't incentivize it. Ad networks don't either.
       | There is very little penalty (financial or otherwise) for not
       | going to IPv6.
       | 
       | IPv6 will not happen until those sticks and carrots get bigger.
        
         | floatboth wrote:
         | Just now on the frontpage also: a link to Hetzner's
         | announcement of v4 address prices. Stick is coming on the
         | hosting side.
        
           | tialaramex wrote:
           | It's actually crazy how late this was. Because customers
           | don't like to see forty surcharges, you have an incentive to
           | bundle relatively cheap things most or all customers want.
           | 
           | What gets bundled and what doesn't is somewhat+ a matter of
           | company preference. And once IPv4 exhaustion was on the
           | horizon, charging IPv4 separately made a _lot_ of sense yet
           | very few providers did it.
           | 
           | + The EU hates "hidden fees". If your product claims to cost
           | EUR100 but actually there's no way to only buy the EUR100
           | product, you need "delivery" for EUR25 more because there's
           | no practical way to avoid getting it delivered - that's not
           | legal. Likewise if you claim it costs EUR100 but there's no
           | way to pay cash, and all card payments have a 5% surcharge,
           | you're going to either have to eat that surcharge, or
           | advertise the price including the card surcharge.
        
         | oofabz wrote:
         | IPv6 is faster and more reliable because the user can connect
         | to your site natively instead of going through NAT and CGNAT.
        
           | post-it wrote:
           | The only NAT between most users and most sites are the users'
           | modem/router combos, and those are pretty fast and reliable.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | tend to agree, but can't help questioning how prevalent
             | CGNAT really is?
        
         | admax88q wrote:
         | Saving money vs someone giving you money is the same result for
         | you.
         | 
         | The stick will grow as IPv4 addresses get more and more
         | expensive.
        
       | fintler wrote:
       | A basic understanding of what an IPv6 world will look like really
       | didn't click for me until I read the IPv6 Address Planning book
       | by Tom Coffeen. Before that, I really just saw it as IPv4 with
       | longer addresses.
       | 
       | Once you dig into the details, you come to the realization that
       | it's a nearly complete reinvention of IPv4. Network planning
       | looks quite different (especially when it comes to subnets) when
       | you plan them with only IPv6 in mind.
       | 
       | Earlier this year, I was like:
       | 
       | "Wow, Comcast gives me a /60! That should be more address space
       | than I could ever want or use."
       | 
       | Now, I'm thinking:
       | 
       | "A /60 is way too limited, I wish I had a /52 or a /56 instead --
       | why is Comcast so restrictive with giving out address space?"
       | 
       | I'm currently reading the IPv6 for IPv4 Experts book to try to
       | fill in more details:
       | 
       | https://sites.google.com/site/yartikhiy/home/ipv6book
       | 
       | The more I read about it, the more I feel like I have a long way
       | to go before I really get an intuitive understanding.
        
         | Scene_Cast2 wrote:
         | Could you give a brief overview of your current understanding?
         | I'm curious as to why /60 would be too limited, and how it's
         | different from IPv4.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | amarshall wrote:
           | Probably because /64 is the smallest recommended subnet size,
           | and a /60 has "only" 16 /64 subnets within it.
        
           | ATsch wrote:
           | IPv6 has Stateless Address Auto-Configuration (SLAAC) as
           | preferred method for address assignment. This allows clients
           | to generate addresses for themselves as needed. For that to
           | work efficiently, the address space needs to be sufficiently
           | large that collisions are unlikely even in larger networks.
           | Because of that, it mandates a subnet size of /64.
           | 
           | More generally, a big difference in v6 is that you no longer
           | have to plan subnet sizes at all. Whereas previously you'd
           | carefully choose the next available address to minimize
           | address waste, with v6 you can just assign the addresses in
           | whatever way makes sense to you.
        
           | gorgoiler wrote:
           | [not OP, but hey...] There's no need for DHCP with IPv6.
           | Clients choose the last 64 bits of an address randomly. The
           | address space is huge -- zero probability of a _duplicate
           | address_.
           | 
           | The first 64 bits therefore identify the network. If your ISP
           | routes a /60 to you then you get to split that into 16x /64s.
           | 
           | That's probably fine, but the IETF recommendation is to dish
           | out a /56 to small sites and give them a /48 if they ask for
           | it. ISPs usually have multiple /32s at their disposal.
           | 
           | It's not about number of available addresses or networks. The
           | joy of IPv6 is the addresses are so wide you can bring back
           | hierarchical addressing. No internal routing chicanery is
           | needed.
           | 
           | If your site has 64 buildings then a /56 lets you assign a
           | /62 to each, with 4x VLANs in each building eg for printers,
           | guest net, phones, lighting, admin, with even a subnet for
           | each business function in the building.
        
             | selfhoster11 wrote:
             | Some way of automatically propagating that network prefix
             | to anything connected to the network would be nice.
             | Otherwise we're just stuck punching in IP addresses like
             | barbarians.
        
               | ATsch wrote:
               | Not sure what you mean, but there's definitely no need to
               | type addresses anywhere.
               | 
               | Router Advertisements propagate the subnet information
               | (prefix, dns server, etc.) to clients in the network.
               | Prefix delegation allows downstream routers to request
               | subnets from upstream routers. MDNS lets network devices
               | announce their services to the subnet.
        
           | fintler wrote:
           | The idea is that there's SO much address space -- you should
           | never need to consider a question like: "is /60 to /64 enough
           | for all of my subnets?" when planning your network. Subnets
           | should be created because they make sense from an
           | organizational point of view. The amount of available bits
           | shouldn't be a practical consideration.
           | 
           | Also, remember, NAT is highly discouraged, so you'll (maybe)
           | eat up another subnet if you run something like Minikube on a
           | laptop.
        
         | adkadskhj wrote:
         | How useful would that book (IPv6 Address Planning) be to
         | someone not working specifically in networking/ops? I like
         | developing applications and i manage, of course, my home
         | network.
         | 
         | I'd love a book that gives me everything i need to know about
         | IPv6. From justifications, to things to know when working with
         | it, implementing it, using it in my local network, etc.
         | 
         | I don't perhaps need or care to learn it at a super low level,
         | but i do want a complete understanding of it for my specific
         | use cases. Applications and home networks, i imagine. For a
         | novice in networks, to be clear.
         | 
         | Thoughts?
        
           | fintler wrote:
           | I would guess that the first two chapters would be useful.
           | 
           | Honestly, if your first thought isn't "oh wow, I would love
           | to learn how to plan out IPv6 networks", it might not be
           | worthwhile.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | For home you probably care about SLAAC, PD, the standard
           | subnet size of /64, and possibly the Link Local differences
           | (more out of curiosity of what those addresses show up on
           | your machines for than needing to know to do anything with
           | it). Also DNS is going to have AAAA records instead of A
           | records and reverse lookups use a different zone, the changes
           | in DNS are pretty 1:1 translational for admins though. If you
           | want to go full on v6 you'll want to read about NAT64 so you
           | can still reach the v4 internet from your v6 only home
           | network. Also take a look at http://shouldiblockicmp.com/
           | even if you don't go down the path of v6.
           | 
           | For applications programming you'll want to have a feel for
           | the above, IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, and review link local
           | again to in particular note how to encode the interface in a
           | socket call (useful for configurationless cluster
           | communication).
           | 
           | Most every other detail of IPv6 changes should only matter to
           | that that write networking stacks or make routers.
           | 
           | For all of the above info I'd recommend just reading the
           | Wikipedia article on IPv6. Most of these are straightforward
           | wrote memorization of best practices or background reasoning
           | things so it's not "read a book" worthy if you're not trying
           | to do this for a living IMO (coming from someone who does
           | networking for a living).
        
         | whoknowswhat11 wrote:
         | They should have had either a smaller scope / simpler extension
         | to IPv4 with a better backwards compat story for IPv6 only
         | clients (some have since shown up a bit).
         | 
         | Or really done the reinvent - there were some interesting ideas
         | especially for folks with lots of link handoffs (ie cell phones
         | driving down a road etc) - can't find the write-up quickly.
        
           | mgbmtl wrote:
           | Do you mean Mobile IP?
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_IP (part of IPv6)
        
       | divros wrote:
       | The low Ipv6 domain adoption is due (in my opinion)
       | 
       | To not every one have Ipv6 so in your dns you need to have
       | ipv4,to not lost this audience.
       | 
       | After it can be related to protection system like waf. The
       | majority of isp give a /60 cidr to every one so it's easy to have
       | a lot of ip. Some company like cloudflare have a mapping system
       | from Ipv6 to ipv4 (of course with a lot of collision) and low
       | number of procetion service provide a good detection system for
       | Ipv6 one So majority of system in customer stack is not ready for
       | Ipv6
       | 
       | I can understand you will not consume some time for low number of
       | benefits.
       | 
       | (Ipv6 it help a bit all tracking system )
        
       | Fidelix wrote:
       | The lack of IPv6 support this site shows is mainly due to lack of
       | support from CDNs.
       | 
       | They won't run out of IPv4s anytime soon, so don't expect this
       | list to change drastically in less than 10 years.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | What CDNs don't support IPv6?
        
           | ATsch wrote:
           | At this point most of them do, but also require customers to
           | explicitly opt-in. I think cloudflare is the only exception
           | there, it won't even let you opt out unless you're on a paid
           | plan.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | > it won't even let you opt out unless you're on a paid
             | plan
             | 
             | kinda ironic how this paints ipv4-only with a premium flair
        
       | berniemadoff69 wrote:
       | the 'funny' factor is totally unnecessary.. "yes" "no" or
       | "somewhat" would have been much better and straightforward if you
       | wanted to convey some information about the ipv6 status of these
       | sites.
        
       | Naac wrote:
       | That table isn't very helpful. What does it mean for Arch Linux
       | to have IPv6 support? When you say "Amazon" doesn't have IPv6
       | support, do you mean AWS, the retail store?
       | 
       | It would be better if instead of linking to say, archlinux.org,
       | you link to the actual page describing what specifically about
       | Arch is IPv6, same for all the other endpoints. I would also
       | replace the support sentence with a green/yellow/red color
       | checkbox, and get rid of the twitter link.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | Link to the source is in the bottom of the page.
         | hosts:           - www.archlinux.org           -
         | aur.archlinux.org
         | 
         | https://github.com/andir/ipv6.watch/blob/bd581ac70b900ba0c1c...
         | hosts:           - amazon.com           - www.amazon.com
         | 
         | https://github.com/andir/ipv6.watch/blob/bd581ac70b900ba0c1c...
         | 
         | Generally, when people write "Amazon" they mean the store
         | (amazon.com) and when people write "AWS" they are referring to
         | the infrastructure provider.
         | 
         | I agree that the URLs being tested should be visible on the
         | page, so you don't have to lookup the source.
         | 
         | With that said, not sure how useful it is to say that
         | (aur.)archlinux.org has IPv6 enabled, what you really care
         | about is the repositories and so on, but those are all spread
         | out so it'll be hard to test all of them. At least could test
         | the official mirrors.
        
       | kd913 wrote:
       | How accurate is this? Steam I know has some ipv6 support for
       | downloads whilst here it says it has no support at all.
        
         | ntrz wrote:
         | Seems like it tests a limited list[0] of domains associated
         | with the site or service, with the final result based on a
         | check of their DNS records. For Steam, looks like it only
         | checks <store.steampowered.com>, <steamcommunity.com>, and
         | <help.steampowered.com>.
         | 
         | It'd be nice if the site provided an explanation of the
         | process, maybe with some way to expand a particular entry and
         | see which associated domains were tested and which
         | succeeded/failed.
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/andir/ipv6.watch/blob/master/conf.yaml
        
         | pfranz wrote:
         | Like another commenter mentioned, it would be nice if there was
         | a detail page showing what no, partial, or full support means.
         | I plugged a few of these into
         | https://ipv6-test.com/validate.php (a random site I found) and
         | store.steampowered.com has no AAAA record, twitter.com has no
         | AAAA record (this site says it has partial support),
         | www.ubuntu.com has an AAAA DNS record, an IPv6 webserver, but
         | not an IPv6 DNS server (this site says its supported).
        
       | lovecg wrote:
       | There's probably a good reason for it, but I've never understood
       | why IPv6 couldn't be fully backwards compatible. Then there would
       | be no need to migrate - everyone would be already on IPv6 by
       | definition.
        
         | bejelentkezni wrote:
         | If I recall correctly, ipv6 addresses beginning with 0::0:ffff
         | are mapped 1-to-1 with ipv4 addresses.
        
           | lovecg wrote:
           | I'm mostly still annoyed about the colon. Come on, ip:port is
           | a pretty widely used convention people! The number of parsing
           | bugs I had to fix with the migration...
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | How does an IPv4-only host send a packet to an IPv6-only host?
        
           | whoknowswhat11 wrote:
           | They could have at least let ipv6 only folks talk to ipv4
           | more easily. Something like 464XLAT maybe built in out the
           | gate more? You go ipv6 until next hop is IPv4. If you are in
           | IPv4 mapped address space translate to IPv4 there and
           | continue.
        
             | p1mrx wrote:
             | NAT64/464XLAT exists and it works. It can't really be "part
             | of the protocol" because it depends on stateful IPv4
             | devices in the middle of the network. Ultimately it's up to
             | the ISPs which IPv4-as-a-service mechanism they want to
             | deploy.
        
             | duskwuff wrote:
             | > They could have at least let ipv6 only folks talk to ipv4
             | more easily.
             | 
             | And how do the IPv4 hosts talk back?
             | 
             | 464XLAT is one solution, but it requires infrastructure to
             | be in place to perform the protocol translation. The
             | protocol alone isn't enough to allow interoperation.
        
           | hansel_der wrote:
           | it doesn't
        
         | fulafel wrote:
         | You can't fit the bigger address into the v4 address field, on
         | the wire or in API/ABI. Also, conflating them would bring
         | massive confusiin when v6 and v4 hosts can't reach the same
         | addresses.
        
       | jaredandrews wrote:
       | > Nope. Ever thought about gardening instead?
       | 
       | I'm not really a backend/server person... Is this an inside joke
       | that I just don't understand?
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Nope. Ever thought about gardening instead? ;-)
        
       | obedm wrote:
       | Can someone explain to me what does IPv6 offer that's IPv4
       | doesn't? Apart from way more addresses. A good article would
       | suffice.
        
         | hansel_der wrote:
         | ipv6 has most of the smartphone population
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | > A good article would suffice.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Main_features
        
           | peanut-walrus wrote:
           | None of that is actually true though?
           | 
           | > It simplifies aspects of address configuration
           | 
           | I assume this is referring to SLAAC? SLAAC is...fine. Most
           | managed networks will want the extra control offered by DHCP
           | though and DHCPv6 is currently in a much much worse state
           | than DHCPv4. Also a single interface having at least 2,
           | usually 3 or more (link-local, autogenerated, privacy) v6
           | addresses on the network is definitely not simpler in any
           | way. Also clients still have not figured out which
           | configuration methods they should actually support - Linux
           | network managers generally default to SLAAC-only and DHCP
           | needs to be explicitly enabled, for Windows setting managed
           | flag in RA works, I believe. Android does not support DCHPv6
           | at all.
           | 
           | > network renumbering and router announcements when changing
           | network connectivity providers.
           | 
           | Absolutely not. Network renumbering is a breeze when all you
           | need to change is the public address of your gateway and the
           | local network keeps the same local addresses. Prefix
           | translation is awful and no firewalls have good tools to
           | handle changing your v6 prefix.
           | 
           | > It simplifies processing of packets in routers by placing
           | the responsibility for packet fragmentation into the end
           | points.
           | 
           | With respect to fragmentation - yes, but overall this
           | statement is blatantly false. v6 packet processing by routers
           | is much much harder due to the variable length headers.
           | 
           | > The IPv6 subnet size is standardized by fixing the size of
           | the host identifier portion of an address to 64 bits.
           | 
           | Ok, this one is true. Not entirely sure why the author
           | considers this better, but sure, I'll agree.
        
         | cranekam wrote:
         | Not running out of addresses is the primary (and significant)
         | offering.
        
           | MayeulC wrote:
           | This. It's liberating to assign a single IP to every service.
           | You can move the IP around with the service, get rid of extra
           | reverse proxies, SNI, etc.
           | 
           | I'd prefer it if I could _really_ move around while keeping
           | the IP, that 's (among others) what yggdrasil offers.
        
         | teddyh wrote:
         | _The Case for IPv6_ (1999):
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20100805233650/http://go6.net/ip...
        
         | adev_ wrote:
         | Random one :
         | 
         | "When you go SLAAC, you never go back"
         | 
         | (sorry for that ).
         | 
         | IPv6 does not need DHCP on L2.
         | 
         | If you even experienced a DHCP clusterfuck, you do start to
         | appreciate the stateless auto-configuration that IPv6 provides.
        
           | citrin_ru wrote:
           | You still need DHCP for more than one reason: 1. Prefix
           | delegation 2. DDNS (DHCP server can register a client IP in
           | DNS)
           | 
           | I've used SLAAC in my home LAN when used IPv6 ISP. Now I use
           | IPv4-only ISP (in my area no ISP supports IPv6) and don't
           | miss SLAAC at all.
           | 
           | Over the years I've used DHCP in many smallish LANs (<=100
           | hosts) and never had any problems with it.
        
         | t0mbstone wrote:
         | It simplifies aspects of address configuration, network
         | renumbering, and router announcements when changing network
         | connectivity providers.
         | 
         | It simplifies processing of packets in routers by placing the
         | responsibility for packet fragmentation into the end points.
         | 
         | The IPv6 subnet size is standardized by fixing the size of the
         | host identifier portion of an address to 64 bits.
        
       | TekMol wrote:
       | I will start thinking about supporting IPv6 when Docker supports
       | it out of the box.
       | 
       | Hopefully, then I can test an individual application by running
       | it in a container with "docker run -p [::1]:80:80 ...".
       | 
       | I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of fiddling with the
       | docker demon and setting up a custom network.
        
         | nicolaslem wrote:
         | I host Internet facing docker containers that support IPv6 with
         | '--net=host'. For those who don't know, this allows to run a
         | container with exactly the same characteristics as a normal
         | process network wise.
        
       | laszlokorte wrote:
       | It says the O2 (ISP) has no IPv6 support but as a O2 DSL customer
       | in Germany I have an IPv6 address for at least a few years.
        
         | Aissen wrote:
         | Yet their website is not available over IPv6:
         | https://github.com/andir/ipv6.watch/blob/master/conf.yaml#L3...
        
       | quantico wrote:
       | It feels ironic to post this on a site which itself does not
       | support IPv6.
        
         | amarshall wrote:
         | It does support IPv6, though.                   $ dig +short
         | ipv6.watch aaaa         2a01:4f8:1c1c:4b9f::              $
         | curl -6Is https://ipv6.watch/ | head -1         HTTP/1.1 200 OK
         | 
         | Unless you mean HN? Feels strange to me to make that
         | comparison.
        
           | quantico wrote:
           | I was referring to Hacker News' lack of support for IPv6,
           | however it is nice to see that ipv6.watch does support it.
           | 
           | To elaborate: I feel that the irony comes from an apparent
           | desire by this website's users towards supporting IPv6, as
           | evidenced by a few articles about the topic on the first page
           | today; Raising awareness of IPv6 support on a site that does
           | not.
        
             | laumars wrote:
             | In other news, Google "recommends" Duck Duck Go and Bing...
             | if you happen to type them into the Google search engine as
             | a search term. /s
             | 
             | Point being, the items on HNs front page are user
             | aggregated content and has naff all to do with HN itself.
        
         | woxko wrote:
         | In what way would using ipv6 enhance your experience using this
         | site?
        
           | slater wrote:
           | One less reason to take up gardening? /s
        
           | axiosgunnar wrote:
           | In what way would using ipv6 enhance your experience using
           | the sites listed on the site?
        
             | woxko wrote:
             | None, I also think the site is stupid.
        
           | FranchuFranchu wrote:
           | Obviously, anyone already using this site can already afford
           | IPv4
        
           | MayeulC wrote:
           | The site becomes reachable to IPv6-only hosts.
           | 
           | Some servers can work reliably with only IPv6, for instance,
           | until you need to contact IPv4-only servers.
           | 
           | I would like my mail server to be IPv6-only, but that's not
           | currently possible, for instance.
           | 
           | I wonder how many customers can realistically hide behind a
           | single IPv4 (CGNAT), given that there are 65535 TCP/UDP
           | ports.
        
             | p1mrx wrote:
             | > I wonder how many customers can realistically hide behind
             | a single IPv4 (CGNAT), given that there are 65535 TCP/UDP
             | ports.
             | 
             | In theory, one IPv4 address can maintain 65535 connections
             | with every HTTPS server (TCP port 443) on the Internet
             | simultaneously. The main cause of port depletion would be
             | when lots of users connect to the same server.
             | 
             | A reasonable number is 1000 users with 64 ports each, but
             | you could probably squeeze in another 10X.
        
       | cbg0 wrote:
       | It seems this site relies on a check for the domains' AAAA
       | records to see if they support IPv6. Doesn't have anything to do
       | with IPv6 in the products/apps that those sites offer.
        
         | junon wrote:
         | That's a bit of an unfair argument. The site's intent is to
         | show the general population's ability to organically reach
         | those sites with ipv6.
         | 
         | AAA records are necessary for that to happen.
        
       | joeframbach wrote:
       | You and I have very different opinions about what constitutes a
       | major website. Gentoo isn't exactly on a lot of people's
       | bookmarks bar. Maybe try https://www.alexa.com/topsites instead,
       | and you can give adoption statistics by hits/population rather
       | than number of sites.
        
       | hawkice wrote:
       | Just to check, I can make my website available only through IPv6
       | and this won't cause any issues?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ATsch wrote:
         | That is not advisable right now as you'll cut off a lot of
         | users. Some providers like unglei.ch do offer an IPv4->IPv6
         | proxy if you absolutely don't want to deal with IPv4 though.
        
       | MrksHfmn wrote:
       | I always use: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ipv6/health-check?
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-28 19:01 UTC)