[HN Gopher] India is leading IPv6 migration with 61.67% adoption
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       India is leading IPv6 migration with 61.67% adoption
        
       Author : quaintdev
       Score  : 253 points
       Date   : 2021-08-15 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.aelius.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.aelius.com)
        
       | blueblisters wrote:
       | OT: does IPv6 make it easier/harder for websites to track you?
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | NAT is no longer a thing, all devices just have a globally
         | unique IP. So your IP allow is a pretty strong indicator, it
         | seems like that alone would make tracking easier.
         | 
         | There's nothing in IPv6 to prevent tracking or offer more
         | anonymity.
        
           | rk06 wrote:
           | NAT can be used in conjunction with IPv6 for security
           | purposes. It is still a thing
        
             | Dagger2 wrote:
             | It was never a thing. NAT isn't security.
        
             | tsimionescu wrote:
             | How do you think NAT gives you security?
        
           | techsupporter wrote:
           | As I recall, this was seen as a concern in the early days so
           | "privacy extensions" were added to the implementation
           | standard for IPv6. Macintosh, Windows, iOS, and Android all
           | rotate their auto-configured IPv6 addresses at a regular
           | interval. It used to be a day but I think I've seen it as
           | short as an hour:
           | https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2014/12/ipv6-privacy-
           | ad...
        
           | mistaken wrote:
           | That's not quite true. IPv6 has privacy extensions which
           | generate randomized suffixes. A website would still be able
           | to track you with the common prefix. Tracking the prefix is
           | more or less the same as tracking an IPv4 address. If you're
           | worried about tracking than you're better off using a VPN
           | than a NAT gateway (both of which is also possible with
           | IPv6).
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | Assuming your ISP gives you a /64 (and not /128), easier. With
         | ipv4, all the traffic coming out of your house is from one ip,
         | so the ip provides household level granularity. With ipv6 each
         | device has a distinct address, which means the ip provides
         | device-level granularity.
        
           | stephen_g wrote:
           | That's not true, all serious devices (except maybe IoT
           | crapware) implement privacy extensions, so your computers and
           | devices make requests from different, randomised address
           | (within your allocated subnet obviously).
        
             | saurik wrote:
             | They don't make literally every single request from a
             | different address off a fully shared prefix (as if you just
             | randomize the final bits but also maintain some unique
             | prefix bits, you still lost), so it is still worse than
             | IPv4 with NAT, _much worse_ than CGNAT, and AFAIK in most
             | cases isn 't much (if at all) better than assigning
             | everyone a unique sticky address.
        
         | shakna wrote:
         | IPv6 has a few extensions, that have been implemented in just
         | about every OS, to make things more private. [0][1][2]
         | 
         | To put it simply, badly implemented IPv6 makes it easier, but
         | all the ways to make it on-par with IPv4 have been widely
         | deployed since 2016.
         | 
         | [0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4941
         | 
         | [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7217
         | 
         | [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7721
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >To put it simply, badly implemented IPv6 makes it easier,
           | but all the ways to make it on-par with IPv4 have been widely
           | deployed since 2016.
           | 
           | Not really. According to the wikipedia article[1], you still
           | have an unique address per device. It rotates daily, but you
           | still can uniquely identify a device on a daily basis. This
           | wouldn't be possible with ivp4 with NAT.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Stateless_address_auto
           | con...
        
             | shakna wrote:
             | If you read RFC7721 which I linked above, you'll find that
             | "SLAAC temporary addresses" is the bare minimum (from
             | 2012), but not the recommended process (over a decade
             | later). And is therefore not what most platforms use today.
             | 
             | > DHCPv6 temporary addresses have the same properties as
             | SLAAC temporary addresses (see Section 4.6). On the other
             | hand, the properties of DHCPv6 non-temporary addresses
             | typically depend on the specific DHCPv6 server software
             | being employed. Recent releases of most popular DHCPv6
             | server software typically lease random addresses with a
             | similar lease time as that of IPv4. Thus, these addresses
             | can be considered to be "stable, semantically opaque".
             | [DHCPv6-IID] specifies an algorithm that can be employed by
             | DHCPv6 servers to generate "stable, semantically opaque"
             | addresses. [0]
             | 
             | The very last line of that Wikipedia paragraph points you
             | to RFC8064 [1], which is a standard, and completely
             | obsoletes the early "SLAAC temporary addresses", and makes
             | the rest of the paragraph nothing but historical
             | information. (The mention of Windows XP should stand out as
             | a red flag, there.)
             | 
             | > By default, nodes SHOULD NOT employ IPv6 address
             | generation schemes that embed a stable link-layer address
             | in the IID.
             | 
             | [0]
             | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7721#section-4.7
             | 
             | [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8064
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | Is there a tl;dr description as to how the current
               | address generation/randomization process works?
        
       | IgorPartola wrote:
       | And here I am with a brand new Frontier fiber install and not
       | only do they not offer IPv6, not only do they not allow me access
       | to their 6rd relays because those are "legacy" from AT&T, but
       | they also fucking block protocol 41 so I can't even use a tunnel
       | broker.
        
       | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
       | The interesting question is, does India have enough critical mass
       | to actually launch local IPv6-only services?
       | 
       | A large carrier could even use IPv6 as a competitive moat by
       | offering/sponsoring/investing in popular local IPv6-only
       | services.
       | 
       | Competitor's customers would be locked out because they don't
       | have IPv6, not because they were blocked. Kinda hard for
       | competitors to cry foul to the regulator, since the only reason
       | their customers can't reach the service is that they themselves
       | haven't been keeping up with the times.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | mritzmann wrote:
       | Imagine if Google penalised websites that did not have IPV6. Then
       | it would suddenly happen very quickly.
        
         | 2fastpost wrote:
         | As stated in the other thread suggesting the same, what's in it
         | for Google?
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | Not a half bad idea. Helped with ssl
        
       | noasaservice wrote:
       | The whole issue surrounding IPv4 and 6 is a racism issue.
       | 
       | Why does India and China both have high implementations of IPv6?
       | Because most of Europe and the US have all the big blocks, and
       | either refuse to sell them or are actively hoarding them (like
       | the real estate crisis right now).
       | 
       | Except... Racism?
       | 
       | Countries that US, UK, etc have invaded and camped on for decades
       | or centuries are only beginning to recover. So, those countries
       | got on the internet much later. And because of orgs grabbing
       | every block they can, it leaves little to none for the countries
       | who were late to the internet game.
       | 
       | Is there a good reason why the DOD is hoarding 5% of ALL IP4's?
       | Or had Ford (vehicle company) pivoted to tech for their 16
       | million IP's? Why does Apple hold on to theirs - what are they
       | doing with it?
       | 
       | The "first world" owns the primary means of the internet, which
       | leaves the "third world" with scraps. And in this case, scraps
       | are the few IP4's they can get, and have to make do with IP6,
       | with its 2^128 IP space.
       | 
       | But, I think the worst insult, is all the 'first world' services
       | as posted by quaintdev (google.co.in amazon.in paytm.com
       | twitter.com flipkart.com hotstar.com primevideo.com) that plainly
       | aren't accessable without using the 'first world internet' aka
       | IPv4.
       | 
       | Theres only enough of these coincidences that line up, before I
       | believe that there's something more sinister going on. And
       | keeping 'those people' away from the IPv4 euro-centric network is
       | I believe the primary intent... AWS/GCE/Azure here in the States
       | has never had an IPv4 allocation problem with machines I build.
       | Hmm.
        
       | ajaimk wrote:
       | The main reason for this is Jio, a new mobile phone network that
       | began in 2010s. They built a 4G only network (not 5G) and used
       | IPv6 from day 1 for their phones. Reference:
       | https://conference.apnic.net/50/assets/files/APCS790/Harness...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | john_moscow wrote:
       | The problem with IPv6 is the yield curve. Adopting IPv6 currently
       | yields you some good PR, extra maintenance costs from
       | troubleshooting minor compatibility problems right now, and a
       | great advantage of not losing IPv6-only customers at some distant
       | time in the future, when IPv6-only hosts become a thing.
       | 
       | So, from a business perspective, the optimal strategy is to delay
       | the transition (and the ongoing maintenance costs) until
       | IPv6-only customers become a quantifiable number (e.g. you could
       | say that in 5 years about 5-10% of your target audience would not
       | have IPv4, so switching to IPv6 would increase your sales by X%).
       | You can't blame businesses for doing that. You don't play by
       | these rules, you end up one of those companies blogging how they
       | are forced to shut down despite having a marvelous and very
       | sophisticated product.
       | 
       | That said, you can change it very easily. Just offer IPv6 traffic
       | at a slightly lower rate than IPv4. So every IPv6 packet costs
       | you less than the IPv4 one. For unlimited connections, offer some
       | rebate based on the fraction of IPv6 packets, or something. This
       | will immediately put the incentives in the right places and the
       | switch will happen at exponential rate.
        
         | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
         | >That said, you can change it very easily. Just offer IPv6
         | traffic at a slightly lower rate than IPv4.
         | 
         | How many cents per month will make you or anybody care?
         | 
         | ISPs don't even pay for the majority of their bandwidth, they
         | get it for free via settlement free peering. Where's the rebate
         | going to come from that?
         | 
         | On the fraction of bandwidth ISPs pay for, the wholesale rates
         | are less than 5 cents per Mbps. On average a subscriber uses a
         | few Mbps on average.
         | 
         | Would 15 cents per month really motivate you to go all in on
         | IPv6?
         | 
         | On average bandwidth costs for an ISP are single digit
         | percentages or less of all costs. Even if their wholesalers
         | would fully discount _all_ their IPv6 traffic (why would they
         | do that?!) there's only so much there to work with.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | faraaz98 wrote:
       | With the amount of people coming online, India also probably
       | needs it the most
        
         | thrower123 wrote:
         | They don't have giant DARPA allocated IP4 blocks handed out for
         | free to companies and universities in the early days of the
         | internet either.
        
         | newsclues wrote:
         | How does China manage?
        
           | patchtopic wrote:
           | they are trying to catch up:
           | 
           | https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3143180/china-
           | hatch...
        
           | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
           | Layers upon layers of NAT from what I hear.
        
         | zahrc wrote:
         | Exactly. And as a developing country, they (hard guess) do not
         | have the widespread pre-existing infrastructure like developed
         | countries; and therefore can easier to adopt to it.
         | 
         | Another factor - mobile has a way greater market share in
         | India, than mobile has in Europe. It's easier to enforce IPv6
         | as a mobile carrier
         | 
         | (https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-
         | mob...)
        
       | KoftaBob wrote:
       | Any particular reason China's adoption rate is so low?
        
         | Sayrus wrote:
         | A few years ago, IPv6 in China was reserved to universities and
         | it bypassed the golden shield (at least censorship, added
         | packet loss on long-running connections, added latency, ...).
         | 
         | 2.28% is already impressive if the situation is still the same
         | nowadays.
        
         | khuey wrote:
         | They use massive amounts of NAT instead AIUI.
        
       | thaumasiotes wrote:
       | > India is leading IPv6 migration with 61.67% adoption
       | 
       | This data doesn't show that at all. It's based on traffic to
       | Google. According to this, IPv6 adoption in China is just over
       | 2%.
       | 
       | Which of course has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
        
         | riobard wrote:
         | True. All three major mobile carriers in mainland China have
         | deployed Dual Stack. And the government is pushing for
         | IPv6-only stack by 2030, with pilot starting as early as 2025.
        
       | tumblewit wrote:
       | I think the most obvious factor here is the mobile networks. I
       | have two fiber ISPs and neither have IPv6 support for consumers.
        
         | tsjq wrote:
         | mainly Jio :)
        
       | pragnesh wrote:
       | jio effect
        
       | hannob wrote:
       | If anything this message says something about the abysmal state
       | of IPv6.
       | 
       | Ultimately the goal of IPv6 is to end IP scarcity. But it can
       | only do this if close to 100% of users and services use IPv6.
       | Seeing it like that it doesn't really matter much if IPv6
       | adoption is 30% or 60% or 90%. In none of these situations would
       | an ISP connect its customers via IPv6 only or would anyone
       | provide any service that requires IPv6.
       | 
       | I really wonder how IPv6 should ever become mainstream without
       | any deployment strategy. "Let's tell everyone that IPv6 is nice
       | and we need it due to lack of v4 addresses" obviously hasn't
       | worked for more than 20 years.
        
         | betterunix2 wrote:
         | "Ultimately the goal of IPv6 is to end IP scarcity"
         | 
         | That is _a_ goal, and perhaps the primary goal, but there are
         | other goals as well. IPv6 makes the Internet itself more
         | efficient by reducing routing overhead and it simplifies
         | network management.
         | 
         | Of course, what will ultimately force ISPs and services to
         | switch to IPv6 is IPv4 address space exhaustion. As the price
         | of a public IPv4 address rises people will begin to more
         | seriously consider an IPv6-only approach, even if it means
         | losing a few users (especially since ISPs will have to make
         | IPv6 available once such services become popular). It has taken
         | longer than expected as various approaches have squeezed the
         | last bits of utility out of IPv4, but it will eventually happen
         | as several billion more people are connected to the Internet.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tialaramex wrote:
         | > In none of these situations would an ISP connect its
         | customers via IPv6 only or would anyone provide any service
         | that requires IPv6.
         | 
         | It's _so much cheaper and faster_ already today that it makes
         | sense to do v6-only internally and deliver IPv6 to the large
         | fraction of customers who can have IPv6 and deploy a transform
         | layer for the (gradually shrinking) class of have-nots.
         | 
         | Your IPv4-only competitors are spending more money to deliver a
         | worse service. Maybe they'll wake up and realise, but the story
         | of the past couple of decades suggests most such outfits are
         | not too bright and when offered IPv6 on new links they'll
         | smugly decline. Meanwhile you get to keep the difference. Your
         | competitor thinks this service costs 86C/ per dollar revenue
         | and you're only spending 84C/ per dollar revenue that's a _lot_
         | of extra profitability.
         | 
         | Fighting this is a losing battle, and I imagine that decades
         | from now somebody is going to write a book about how it was
         | cognitively possible for "leaders" to champion an idea that
         | couldn't possibly work, that they intellectually _knew_ couldn
         | 't work, and all the actual evidence said wasn't working, and
         | yet they believed in it anyway. Or that book might be about
         | climate change denial, either way.
         | 
         | Eventually by the way - and 90% global is close to and even
         | perhaps at the threshold where that's plausible for some of
         | them - many general ISPs won't bother providing actual IPv4
         | networking. If you want IPv4 you're a niche customer, go find a
         | bespoke IPv4 Internet Service Provider. If you're IPv6 capable
         | but you want to reach an IPv4 host you'll go via a translation
         | box automatically. As the interest in global IPv4 shrinks, the
         | transit companies will lose interest in that service too, and
         | eventually - decades from now - the IPv4 Internet literally
         | goes away, the RIRs stop "managing" the now largely unused
         | space and the residual pockets of IPv4 cease to interoperate.
        
           | goodpoint wrote:
           | > It's so much cheaper and faster already today that it makes
           | sense to do v6-only internally
           | 
           | Absolutely not. Routers, OSes and applications still have
           | much better support for IPv4 than IPv6.
           | 
           | Replacing large routers, fighting bugs and running pure IPv6
           | on internal networks is very expensive.
        
             | fulafel wrote:
             | There haven't been ipv4-only routers sold in such a long
             | time that they've been retired from service by now. v6 was
             | a new router feature something like 15 or 20 years ago (and
             | same for operating systems).
        
               | goodpoint wrote:
               | As 2fastpost wrote, basic IPv6 support is far from
               | enough.
               | 
               | Also I'm not talking about routers worth 50 euro/$, but
               | DC and carrier grade, worth 500K euro/$
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | IPv6 support is such a low bar. Now try IPv6 support
               | _and_ feature complete without bugs and get back to me.
               | I'll wait.
        
           | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
           | Can we have source to go with the IPv6 is "cheaper and
           | faster" claim? Like actual facts stated in dollars and
           | milliseconds.
           | 
           | I'm also going to humor you on the IPv6-only thing. Can you
           | actually point to a _single_ ISP that is even _considering_
           | IPv6-only?
        
             | tialaramex wrote:
             | What did we read right here on HN recently about IP blocks
             | changing hands for about $40 per address? IPv6 addresses
             | are approximately 100% cheaper than that.
             | 
             | But it doesn't stop there, you also no longer need subnet
             | planning -- where under IPv4 it's very important whether
             | this new subnet is 60 machines or 64 machines, in IPv6 you
             | don't care and so nobody needs to manage that. Which
             | translates to lower costs in your network team. Negligible
             | when your "network team" is just the CTO doing a Google
             | search, but significant at scale.
             | 
             | Your route costs fall too. Because of exhaustion (and
             | because years ago nobody had any idea what they were doing,
             | not having had an Internet before) IPv4 is now badly
             | fragmented, which means a trivial route ("All the East
             | Coast stuff") may become six or sixteen or sixty separate
             | address blocks, but IPv6 blocks were deliberately assigned
             | so as to reduce fragmentation, chances are "All the East
             | Coast stuff" is one or two blocks.
             | 
             | As to speed, Facebook reports IPv6 is about 10% faster for
             | them.
             | 
             | They did exactly what I described, they're v6-only
             | internally and have translation at the edge for "legacy"
             | IPv4 clients.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | > What did we read right here on HN recently about IP
               | blocks changing hands for about $40 per address? IPv6
               | addresses are approximately 100% cheaper than that.
               | 
               | This is just silly. If you are an ISP then you already
               | have an IPv4 allocation.
               | 
               | If you don't then you join the waiting list and/or apply
               | for a /24.
               | 
               | Once you have your allocation, RIR fees are the same
               | regardless of IPv4 or IPv6 allocations.
               | 
               | > But it doesn't stop there, you also no longer need
               | subnet planning -- where under IPv4 it's very important
               | whether this new subnet is 60 machines or 64 machines, in
               | IPv6 you don't care and so nobody needs to manage that.
               | Which translates to lower costs in your network team.
               | Negligible when your "network team" is just the CTO doing
               | a Google search, but significant at scale.
               | 
               | If you believe this is in any way meaningful then I have
               | a bridge to sell you.
               | 
               | > Your route costs fall too. Because of exhaustion (and
               | because years ago nobody had any idea what they were
               | doing, not having had an Internet before) IPv4 is now
               | badly fragmented, which means a trivial route ("All the
               | East Coast stuff") may become six or sixteen or sixty
               | separate address blocks, but IPv6 blocks were
               | deliberately assigned so as to reduce fragmentation,
               | chances are "All the East Coast stuff" is one or two
               | blocks.
               | 
               | You can't buy smaller routers just because you deploy
               | IPv6, so I have no idea what cost saving there are to be
               | had here.
               | 
               | > As to speed, Facebook reports IPv6 is about 10% faster
               | for them.
               | 
               | I fail to see how this is universally applicable to all
               | ISPs.
               | 
               | > They did exactly what I described, they're v6-only
               | internally and have translation at the edge for "legacy"
               | IPv4 clients.
               | 
               | Having an IPv6 core is not the same thing as being
               | IPv6-only.
               | 
               | Speaking of IPv6-only, you have yet to name even a
               | _single_ ISP that is even _considering_ going IPv6-only.
               | Cat got your tongue?
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | I think the main thrust of your objection is that you
               | believe I was claiming this makes sense for _any ISP_
               | when I was instead saying it makes sense for _lots of
               | companies providing services on the Internet_
               | 
               | Still, while we're here:
               | 
               | > This is just silly. If you are an ISP then you already
               | have an IPv4 allocation.
               | 
               | Due to exhaustion in fact you can't get new allocations
               | _in IPv4_ in most of the developed world. If you want to
               | expand, you 're going to need to buy addresses on the
               | open market for that sort of $40 price we talked about.
               | 
               | > ... Once you have your allocation, RIR fees are the
               | same regardless of IPv4 or IPv6 allocations.
               | 
               | Nope. Let's take ARIN, suppose you're a large
               | international company, hundreds of local corporate
               | networks. With IPv4 this is quite a struggle, _maybe_ you
               | can get away with a  /17 for which ARIN will charge you
               | $4000 per year.
               | 
               | But with IPv6 this is easy, you'll qualify for their
               | "3X-small" category with a /40 at only $250 per year,
               | even if you choose a relatively wasteful address layout.
               | 
               | It gets worse! Unless you already had that /17 from years
               | ago, chances are you had to cobble the addresses together
               | from several distinct allocations. ARIN charges $150 per
               | block aggregated in this way, if you need a dozen blocks
               | that's $1800 extra because of the fragmentation. In
               | contrast IPv6 isn't fragmented, it was deliberately
               | allocated sparsely so it's easy to give you adjacent
               | blocks to grow. Not that they'll need to when you're just
               | an international company with a few hundred sub-networks,
               | IPv6 is so wide.
        
             | DanAtC wrote:
             | RE: v6-only ISP, there's this crazy story that came up last
             | IPv6 article: https://old.reddit.com/r/ipv6/comments/n5y5oo
             | /update_on_not_...
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | Most likely fake. Posted from a throwaway account with no
               | posting history before or since. ISP not named, no
               | details given, no proof.
        
         | throw0101a wrote:
         | AFAICT, IPv4 addresses are currently going for about US$ 40/IP.
         | At some point if ISPs run out of addresses and need more, it
         | may be cheaper to simply implement IPv6 with a one-time, up-
         | front project than having to go back to the well/market for
         | more IPv4 blocks.
         | 
         | Similarly for hosting providers: as IPv4 addresses get more
         | expensive, they may have to start charging their customers more
         | and more for each one, at which point the customers may simply
         | go only-/mostly-IPv6.
        
           | hannob wrote:
           | That's not how it works.
           | 
           | A single ISP can't do anything about the situation. They can
           | provide IPv6 to their customers, but they still need IPv4 so
           | their customers so they have a usable internet connection. It
           | doesn't help them at all.
           | 
           | Which is part of the problem here: As long as IPv6 is not
           | implemented by everybody the people who do implement it have
           | no advantage.
        
             | throw0101a wrote:
             | An ISP probably already has IPv4 addresses, but needs more
             | addresses for basic connectivity. They can become IPv6-only
             | and then use their IPv4 block/s for CGNAT. The money would
             | go to either buying more addresses or more CGNAT.
             | 
             | This is how a lot of mobile/cell telcos already work. A
             | T-Mobile presentation from 2018 (PDF):
             | 
             | * https://pc.nanog.org/static/published/meetings/NANOG73/16
             | 45/...
        
               | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
               | Running an IPv6 core and offering IPv4-as-a-service
               | doesn't really make you IPv6-only.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | I'm not sure what you're referring to.
               | 
               | Here's a dude from T-Mobile explaining how they have (in
               | 2017) over ten million end-customer devices without any
               | IPv4 addresses assigned:
               | 
               | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNMNglk_CvE
               | 
               | For reaching services that are IPv6 only they use(d)
               | DNS64 (with and without 464XLAT).
        
           | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
           | The problem with the above is that it isn't a viable
           | solution.
           | 
           | You cannot just deploy IPv6, take your IPv4 ball and go home.
           | 
           | ISPs will still need those IPv4 addresses, no matter how much
           | they cost. ISPs may delay by deploying CGNAT, but once those
           | IPv4 addresses run out there is no other option than to get
           | out your checkbook or scale back your business.
           | 
           | Likewise with hosters. There is no choice but to use IPv4,
           | damn the cost. It simply isn't viable to go IPv6-only, as
           | IPv4 is where the money/customers are.
           | 
           | This will not change until IPV6 somehow reaches critical
           | mass.
        
             | throw0101a wrote:
             | > _ISPs will still need those IPv4 addresses, no matter how
             | much they cost. ISPs may delay by deploying CGNAT, but once
             | those IPv4 addresses run out there is no other option than
             | to get out your checkbook or scale back your business._
             | 
             | Yes, that's what I'm saying. At some point going IPv6-only
             | and paying for (CG)NAT64 may be cheaper than trying to buy
             | more and more IPv4 addresses. ISPs would already have IPv4
             | addresses, but they'd simply use them for reaching the
             | 'legacy' Internet, and they wouldn't be assigned to
             | people's routers WAN interface.
             | 
             | > _Likewise with hosters. There is no choice but to use
             | IPv4, damn the cost._
             | 
             | It will probably not be the hosting company paying for the
             | IPv4, but rather it will be the end customer, and they may
             | not want to pay.
             | 
             | The first address _may_ be free, but if you want multiple,
             | then you could be charged for the  'extra' ones. Depending
             | on the number of public services needed, some people may
             | find it cheaper to use the IPv4 address(es) on the front-
             | end of a load balancer and have their actual system be
             | IPv6.
        
               | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
               | You are confusing IPv6-only and running an IPv6 core.
               | Those are not equivalent.
               | 
               | >It will probably not be the hosting company paying for
               | the IPv4, but rather it will be the end customer, and
               | they may not want to pay.
               | 
               | Of coarse it will be the hosting company paying for the
               | IPv4 addresses as they will be the ones owning them.
               | 
               | Of coarse the end customers will complain and not want to
               | pay, but pay they will as they have no other choice.
               | 
               | It's neither here nor there whether the end customers run
               | IPv4 or IPv6 internally, it's the public IPv4 addresses
               | that matter.
        
       | xony wrote:
       | fake news
        
       | quaintdev wrote:
       | It's crazy that major web sites still do not support IPv6.
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.in
       | 
       | https://www.paytm.com
       | 
       | https://twitter.com
       | 
       | https://www.flipkart.com
       | 
       | https://www.hotstar.com
       | 
       | https://www.primevideo.com
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com
       | 
       | Edit: Removed google.co.in, the website[1] reported it that it
       | does not support ipv6, Now I tried again and google is in green.
       | 
       | [1] https://ipv6-test.com/validate.php
        
         | distalx wrote:
         | ELI5: Why does IPv6 adoption matter? What would happen if these
         | sites don't migrate to IPv6?
        
           | darzu wrote:
           | From a game developer/player perspective: there's a crazy
           | amount of complexity in connecting between two computers that
           | wouldn't need to be there in an ipv6 world. See all the NAT,
           | TURN, STUN nonsense that webrtc has to deal with:
           | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
           | US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/... Today to use webrtc, u need a
           | neutral server to help establish the connection like PeerJS
           | does. This wouldn't be needed in an ipv6 world. It's nearly
           | impossible to do pure peer to peer connections today.
        
             | nsizx wrote:
             | Letting machines connect directly to each other in any
             | context, and especially in the context of an online game,
             | is a massive security and privacy risk.
        
               | rjsw wrote:
               | You can (and should) still have a firewall that only
               | allows connections to specific ports when using IPv6.
        
               | nsizx wrote:
               | Still you are revealing your IP address to the other
               | parties, which will be more than happy to DoS you to
               | force you to disconnect, exploit 0-days in the game
               | networking code to crash your game or get your private
               | info, know where you are located by IP geolocation...
               | 
               | The idea of P2P in competitive videogames strikes me as
               | absolutely insane
        
               | ClumsyPilot wrote:
               | "The idea of P2P in competitive videogames strikes me as
               | absolutely insane"
               | 
               | What's insane, is the idea that you want me to use and
               | pay for some crappy AWS server that spies on my data
               | instead of directly connecting to my friend using my own
               | equipment
        
               | onei wrote:
               | When using NAT, you're revealing the IP address of your
               | router. I don't know about you, but I don't have so many
               | devices running on my home network that would drown out
               | what I'm doing.
               | 
               | With NAT, you can still receive DoS attacks, still have
               | your game networking exploited, and still be geolocated.
               | The only remotely security-related benefit is that
               | instead of your ports being exposed to the wild internet,
               | they're exposed to your router which is more of a side-
               | effect rather than an actual benefit. Its not a reason to
               | not bother having a firewall.
        
               | nsizx wrote:
               | I didn't mention NAT at all. Practically all multiplayer
               | games use a central server. It's impossible to know the
               | IP addresses of your peers.
        
               | billytetrud wrote:
               | Nothing about IPv6 prevents continuing to do that when it
               | makes sense (eg to prevent cheaters from dosing their
               | opponents).
        
               | kibwen wrote:
               | When it comes to DoS or geolocation, attackers can just
               | as easily work with your router's address.
        
               | kaliszad wrote:
               | Well, have fun guessing 2^64 possibilities. YouTube lists
               | even private videos "secured" using 11 BASE64 characters
               | (66 bits in theory, but they seem to use just 64 bits).
               | You can watch Tom Scott explain it:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8
               | 
               | CG-NAT doesn't really prevent geolocation. Better
               | services will still pin-point you to the nearest city.
               | There are perhaps easier ways to get your private info or
               | your money - phishing and ransomware seem to be still
               | very popular. Don't have to hack games that only
               | relatively few people have. It is more profitable to
               | attack a bigger market or more wealthy institutions or
               | companies in foreign countries. Also, if you hack the
               | central game server, you will have a lot more victims...
               | Choose your poison.
               | 
               | I guess, there are no games or other software that cannot
               | be audited in high security installations. At home,
               | having a work computer and a game computer (or a VM with
               | GPU pass through or whatever) might be a safer choice in
               | any case independent of IPv4 or IPv6 usage or the quality
               | of your firewall.
        
               | josephcsible wrote:
               | Getting rid of NAT doesn't mean that you have to let
               | every machine connect to every other machine. It just
               | means that if you choose to let machines connect, they
               | can do so without their packets needing to be rewritten.
        
               | anthropodie wrote:
               | No. Please stop spreading this nonsense that NAT is
               | solution for security and privacy. NAT was solution for
               | getting systems online without increasing address space.
               | It served that well. Now it needs to die.
               | 
               | If you have security issues that is because you failed to
               | configure your firewall properly. Besides Internet was
               | always supposed to work the way IPv6 would allow.
        
               | nsizx wrote:
               | I didn't mention NAT. I'm comparing direct connections
               | between peers with using a centralised server.
        
               | ClumsyPilot wrote:
               | Enjoy playing an online shooter with extra 200ms of
               | delay, or crappy calls on Teams where massive delay
               | causes you to interrupt each other
        
               | nsizx wrote:
               | I play counter strike with a delay of around 10 ms with
               | servers that are hosted hundreds of kilometres away.
        
               | billytetrud wrote:
               | You mean without? Well you're wrong. It's not a security
               | concern at all. Allowing anyone from the outside to
               | connect to any port they want is a security concern,
               | simply because there's a lot of insecure software people
               | run that doesn't account for malicious connections.
               | However, allowing a user to intentionally let a piece of
               | software listen for outside connections is in no way
               | insecure.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | > However, allowing a user to intentionally let a piece
               | of software listen for outside connections is in no way
               | insecure.
               | 
               | It is. Considering the kernel access often given to
               | multiplayer games for anti cheat, and the abysmal
               | attention to security and ability to write secure code by
               | the average application developer, letting Internet
               | randos send arbitrary instructions directly to your
               | machine may not be the best idea.
        
               | kortilla wrote:
               | > However, allowing a user to intentionally let a piece
               | of software listen for outside connections is in no way
               | insecure.
               | 
               | Unless you care about security of course. "A user" in
               | your sentence can quite frequently be vulnerable or
               | malicious software.
        
               | kortilla wrote:
               | It's not nonsense though. The implementation of NAT
               | literally implies a stateful firewall.
               | 
               | I want ipv4 dead as well but to bury your head in the
               | sand and pretend NAT doesn't offer the protections it
               | does only hurts your argument.
               | 
               | > Besides Internet was always supposed to work the way
               | IPv6 would allow.
               | 
               | Yep, but the real world - where all of the unpatched IoT
               | devices are running - has NAT at basically every home
               | protecting devices from unsolicited connections.
        
               | linksnapzz wrote:
               | "Beware of appeals to the 'real world'; and to what it
               | supposedly demands. It is always an invitation to leave
               | unchallenged the speaker's tacit assumptions."
        
               | 10000truths wrote:
               | NAT doesn't imply stateful firewall at all. NAT is
               | literally just rewriting IP addresses on
               | incoming/outgoing packets. I could have a single machine
               | behind a middlebox, and the middlebox could just rewrite
               | the IP source/destination of egress/ingress packets, and
               | that would be NAT - and I'd still be able to successfully
               | receive incoming packets from the big bad web. In fact,
               | you can do this without the middlebox using an iptables
               | MASQUERADE rule.
               | 
               | But even then, the added security of a stateful firewall
               | as provided by a router is dubious. You know what else
               | has a "stateful firewall"? Your kernel's TCP/IP stack. It
               | isn't gonna accept random connections from the Internet
               | unless there is an application actively listening to a
               | port and accepting packets. And I trust the Linux/NT/BSD
               | kernel to be more secure with ensuring that than a binary
               | firmware blob from a router manufacturer.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | NAT is not security. If some people need a relay because
               | gamers commit harassment that can used on top of IPv6.
               | Everyone else can connect directly to lower latency.
               | 
               | https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1433-AD20-F11D
               | -B7...
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | NAT and especially CGNAT has a tendancy to cause problems.
           | 
           | I vividly recall an incident where Jio's CGNAT was dropping
           | idle TCP connections after 10 seconds of idle. (They fixed
           | it, but I don't know if they fixed it for all destinations or
           | only special destinations).
           | 
           | And, of course, I say dropping, rather than closing, because
           | NAT usually doesn't send FINs to close sessions when they're
           | dropped. So you only find out when you try to send more data.
           | Some NATs don't even send RST when you send data on a
           | connection it dropped, so you have to wait for a timeout.
           | 
           | There's also a capacity issue. If you're serving your website
           | via a single IP (common with load balancers), you can only
           | have 65535 connections from each client IP (assuming https on
           | port 443 only, using non default ports is often a non-
           | starter); if the user's ISP is sharing a very limited pool of
           | IPs with a large number of users, it's conceivable that all
           | the connections to your site could fill up.
        
             | kortilla wrote:
             | > if the user's ISP is sharing a very limited pool of IPs
             | with a large number of users, it's conceivable that all the
             | connections to your site could fill up.
             | 
             | Unless each of your users is establishing 600 connections
             | to your site, this isn't a realistic issue. I don't know of
             | ISPs that go beyond 1000:1 over-subscription.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | TchoBeer wrote:
           | We eventually run out of IPv4 addresses and have to switch
           | anyway
        
             | zinekeller wrote:
             | That doesn't work as an explanation.
             | 
             | NAT was developed. CGNAT was developed. HTTP Host
             | differentiation was developed. SNI was developed. STUN was
             | developed. TURN was developed.
             | 
             | The main problem with IPv4 to IPv6 migration is the,
             | frankly, overzealous utopia that "they will migrate
             | anyway". Worse, it's very different that doesn't allow for
             | a simple upgrade option of "IPv4, but longer addresses"
             | because IPv6 is designed to be fundamentally different.
             | 
             | Which is more insulting considering that BGP was seamlessly
             | upgraded from 65536 ASes to more than a million because
             | they only changed the bits in an AS and nothing more. As a
             | router developer, you only need to do the relatively minute
             | changes of extended ASes than the (relative) mess that is
             | IPv6.
        
               | wbl wrote:
               | IPv6 implementations are everywhere so the extra changes
               | don't really impact networks.
        
               | zinekeller wrote:
               | Regardless of monentary charges (and I'm very aware of
               | them, APNIC is even considering grants to help in IPv6
               | because it's in limbo for so long), even if we activate
               | IPv6 synchronously there's still many, many problems with
               | it, even when you permanently dual-stack it.
               | 
               | One is connectivity. Even theoretically we should have
               | the same network connectivity (so to speak), you can feel
               | the pettiness when Hurricane-Electric and Cogent fought
               | exclusively on IPv6 (https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/
               | 28/ipv6_peering_squabble...) I can't believe I'm saying
               | this, but IPv6 isn't free (or at least costs the same as
               | IPv4).
               | 
               | Second is security. Yes, the world is no longer
               | scannable, but consumer routers are a dud when it comes
               | to IPv6 security. This router
               | (https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2021-01-12-fiberhome-
               | ont-0d...) has _serious_ problems at IPv6 security, and
               | because it 's suffix is always at ::0000:0000:0000:0001
               | and you've eliminate around 18 bits more because of how
               | networks are laid, you've got yourself an IPv6 botnet,
               | which speaking by, how do you block them? A /64 would be
               | a good start, but OVH provides a single address per
               | server (https://www.ovhcloud.com/vps/compare/). That's
               | it. Don't forget that fiasco with MAC addresses
               | (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8981), but at
               | least that's solved.
               | 
               | Third, IPv6 should just work as you said. I wish that's
               | true, but embedded devices will trip you up badly. Some
               | don't fallback to IPv4 and instead try and try again
               | using IPv6. This would be a concern while transitioning,
               | but even after that, some would be still stuck because
               | their servers are only operating on IPv4!
               | 
               | Implementing IPv6 is not free lunch if you know the
               | gritty details.
        
               | ikiris wrote:
               | tell me you're bad at math without telling me you're bad
               | at math.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | >NAT was developed. CGNAT was developed. HTTP Host
               | differentiation was developed. SNI was developed. STUN
               | was developed. TURN was developed
               | 
               | And every one of those has introduced its own security
               | flaws and implementation bugs increasing the complexity
               | of applications.
        
               | zinekeller wrote:
               | I'm advocating and helping networks to migrate to IPv6,
               | but I'll say that IPv6 was rather a rats-nest design that
               | shot itself in the foot. It's elegant sure, but as
               | Torvalds would say to critics about his frequent use of
               | goto, it's theoretically good but not sound engineering
               | practice.
               | 
               | The thing is we would be addressing in 128-bit IP already
               | _if_ it was done the BGP way: just minimising the
               | necessary changes to implement it. Look at the
               | effectiveness of Itanium versus AMD64 at migrating
               | customers: IPv6 feels like Itanium, while extended ASes
               | work more like AMD64. Whoever designed IPv6 was focused
               | too much at the theoreticals, than looking at what the
               | real world is and then designing around it.
        
               | ksec wrote:
               | Do we have anything for IPv4 similar to AMD64?
               | 
               | Or are we forever stuck with either going all in to IPv6
               | or the current hybrid?
        
               | zinekeller wrote:
               | Nope, but we're deep in IPv6 anyways so the best course
               | of action is to finish that, just be careful of the
               | pitfalls and not devolving into silliness like this
               | peering fight: https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/28/ipv
               | 6_peering_squabble...
        
               | neurostimulant wrote:
               | And now the internet got worse because you're no longer
               | have technical freedom due to these NAT popping up
               | everywhere. For example, previously if you want to
               | release a video/voice chat app, you just release it and
               | be done with it. Now it won't work like that due to NAT,
               | so you'll have to maintain some STUN and TURN servers
               | just to make your app usable to general public. Think
               | about how many potential innovation got stifled because
               | of added costs and complexity turned some people away
               | before they even started.
        
               | Sunspark wrote:
               | I agree. It makes things much harder than it should be.
               | 
               | I wanted to try installing the module into my router so
               | it would pass the WebRTC test for STUN/TURN and perhaps
               | make video even more efficient to allow point to point
               | connection instead of having everything be relayed
               | through a tertiary server, but there was no documentation
               | and having never set up a STUN/TURN server before I
               | couldn't get it to work. So I am dependent on what a
               | third party has set up to facilitate connectivity.
               | 
               | In the old days, you'd just connect to an IP address and
               | that was it.
        
           | throw0101a wrote:
           | Because there are 'only' 2^32, roughly four billion, IPv4
           | addresses. There are also over eight billion people on this
           | planet, and many of them have multiple computers
           | (smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc).
           | 
           | As a 'temporary' measure, Network Address Translation (NAT)
           | was introduced so people could get one public IPv4 address
           | and have multiple machines on the Internet behind it.
           | 
           | The trade-off was the machines behind the NAT mechanism
           | couldn't be reached from the Internet. This isn't a big deal
           | for _most_ consumption-based computing (fetching mail,
           | watching videos), but there are use cases where you want to
           | be able to talk to the other system, so yet another set of
           | technologies had to be invented to allow punching holes
           | through NAT (UPnP, NAT-PMP, PCP, STUN).
           | 
           | But we're at the point in some place where there aren't even
           | enough IPv4 addresses to give to ISP customers _even if_ they
           | 're using NAT. So you have a private IP address for your home
           | system, and then your router gets a _private IP_ address on
           | its  "public" WAN connection, and you end up going _two
           | layers_ of NAT. There is an entire segment of IPv4 addresses
           | (100.64.0.0 /10) reserved for telco use and doubel-NATing:
           | 
           | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network#Dedicated_spa
           | c...
           | 
           | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_shared_address_space
           | 
           | We can continue this NAT-upon-NAT(-upon-NAT) silliness, or we
           | can simply make the up-front investment and start pushing out
           | IPv6 in more places. Your router still provides firewall
           | protection, but reachability is a lot more straight-forward
           | because the (potentially double) address translation goes
           | away.
           | 
           | Edit: fix a bunch of typos.
        
             | osrec wrote:
             | In your first line, I guess you mean to say ipv4 not ipv6.
        
             | ugjka wrote:
             | there's also NAT64, 464XLAT that do ipv6 to ipv4 sorcery
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | Beyond an ELI5, but correct.
               | 
               | If you are on an IPv4-only or IPv6-only network, you can
               | reach the other through various mechanisms.
               | 
               | A lot of mobile/cell networks are IPv6-only, and so the
               | telcos need a way to allow clients to reach IPv4-only
               | systems.
        
             | WanderPanda wrote:
             | > NAT-upon-NAT(-upon-NAT)
             | 
             | But there is also a fundamental limit of 2^16 = 65536
             | concurrent connections, right?
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | Yes, from one NAT IP using the same protocol to a single
               | public IP using a particular port. Change any of those
               | and you can do 2^16 concurrent connections more per
               | change.
               | 
               | In other words, NAT works on the five-tuple of: protocol,
               | source IP, source port, destination IP and destination
               | port.
        
             | swsieber wrote:
             | Playing Nintendo Switch online doesn't work if you're
             | double NAT'd unless you go through some router hoops. It
             | seems small, but it's quite aggravating if you're not tech
             | oriented like the majority of the people on this forum.
        
             | TuringNYC wrote:
             | Totally silly question, but isn't the NAT-upon-NAT(-upon-
             | NAT) a bit of protection in the sense of additional
             | privacy, and hence a good thing? Doesn't this mean the
             | website cannot directly tie back an incognito user back to
             | a specific IP but instead to just a pool?
        
               | kortilla wrote:
               | ISPs log all of the translations and can reverse a
               | (public IP, source port, time stamp) tuple to the user.
        
               | wolverine876 wrote:
               | > ISPs log all of the translations
               | 
               | On my personal router?
        
               | vetinari wrote:
               | They don't need that much granularity; it is enough to
               | being able to point fingers at someone responsible.
               | 
               | But otherwise, it is possible to enumerate devices behind
               | NAT (obviously, only those that communicate with the
               | world in front of NAT) and assign traffic to them.
        
               | snovv_crash wrote:
               | For a purely "consumer" internet, yes. But I'd like to
               | think that at some point we move back to a more
               | decentralised model, where addressibility in more
               | contexts than a response to a request become important
               | again. To some degree the NAT issues have even killed a
               | lot of this, making P2P more difficult and unreliable
               | than would be otherwise.
        
               | kaliszad wrote:
               | Depends, but really IPv6 and IPv4 seems to be more or
               | less comparable in practice. If you use an app with a
               | login, you are basically screwed anyway. Even on a random
               | website, you can be reliably fingerprinted:
               | https://amiunique.org/
        
               | Saris wrote:
               | Yes, but you could also randomize your IPv6 address
               | constantly too.
               | 
               | Downside of CGNAT and NAT at home is difficulty of
               | getting some services to work, or hosting a server.
        
               | beerandt wrote:
               | It still boils down to everyone gets an identifying
               | number, whether it's an ipv4 address or an ipv6 block.
               | 
               | Any randomized ipv6 address from that block is still as
               | "unique" an identifier as an ipv4 address.
        
               | rollcat wrote:
               | Also, creating/using P2P applications. I needed to look
               | up UDP hole punching and now I wish I hadn't.
        
               | r3muxd wrote:
               | out of curiosity, what did you end up going with? I had
               | to host a UDP game server recently and couldn't find a
               | good solution. If only ngrok supported UDP...
        
               | ClumsyPilot wrote:
               | "a bit of protection in the sense of additional privacy,
               | and hence a good thing?"
               | 
               | The more dysfunctional is your internet connection, the
               | more prova you youve got
        
             | tsaoutourpants wrote:
             | > But we're at the point in some place where there aren't
             | even enough IPv4 addresses to give to ISP customers even if
             | they're using NAT.
             | 
             | Er, that's a slight exaggeration. It's not uncommon to have
             | 2,000 or more NAT clients behind a single public IP
             | address. 2K * 4B = 8 trillion possible hosts... about 1,000
             | hosts per living person.
        
               | kaliszad wrote:
               | Well, it has limits. You can hide 2000 people behind an
               | address but they might have sporadic connection issues,
               | long held connections such as SSH sessions will be very
               | annoying to support [0] or the users will have to resort
               | to frequent keepalives to make it work regardless, which
               | produces more traffic to destinations you probably don't
               | have in a cache. In some jurisdictions you have to log
               | which customer used what IP (and port) at which point.
               | You can do static assignments but you will have customers
               | (customer homes, e.g. family with perhaps 10 devices or
               | so could be realistic) for which 1000 ports just will not
               | be enough do you will have to dynamically assign spare
               | ports and log those. You might also get more support
               | calls, because the NAT is dropping connections to
               | radically in a peak e.g. a soccer match or whatever. Also
               | the CG-NAT gateway isn't for free and the bigger it needs
               | to be, the pricier it is. Also you might still need to
               | buy some IPv4, perhaps more than you would need to buy if
               | you deployed IPv6 and used it for the connections, where
               | it is possible, taking e.g. almost the full load to
               | Google/ YouTube and Facebook off your gateway.
               | 
               | [0] https://anderstrier.dk/2021/01/11/my-isp-is-killing-
               | my-idle-...
        
           | betterunix2 wrote:
           | IPv4 address space exhaustion. NAT breaks end-to-end
           | connectivity, making entire classes of applications difficult
           | to deploy, and this is made worse when the NAT gateway is not
           | under a user's control. NAT gateway deployed by ISPs
           | represent a violation of the end-to-end principle and have to
           | be even more complex and stateful than the NAT gateways users
           | often deploy. If you are looking for a _specific_ problem NAT
           | introduces, one good one is that NAT forces users and
           | application developers to use protocols that the NAT gateway
           | properly supports (e.g. TCP, UDP) and to only use those
           | protocols in ways that are  "NAT-friendly" (e.g. easy-to-
           | track client-server sessions that are initiated from the
           | private side the gateway) or else to use some NAT-specific
           | protocol as a crutch (UPnP/IGD, STUN, etc.). When both ends
           | of a two-party protocol are behind NAT gateways it can become
           | even more painful and possibly require a third party to be
           | introduced to an application that is otherwise unnecessary
           | for the application.
           | 
           | So at a minimum IPv6 gets us back to the end-to-end principle
           | where Internet peers connect directly to each other without
           | having to negotiate with the network itself. There are a few
           | other advantages, like the fact that users can get large,
           | publicly-routed addresses spaces for their own use (e.g. ISPs
           | giving users a /56 prefix), simplified bridging of private
           | networks (very low probability of collisions in the private
           | IPv6 range), simplified router configuration (link-local
           | addresses are always available so there is no need to assign
           | numbers to every link), and other assorted niche benefits. In
           | theory IPv6 should mean routers become more efficient because
           | it is easier to aggregate prefixes, which should generally
           | benefit Internet users by reducing latency (though at this
           | point there is not much room left for improvement there).
        
           | norenh wrote:
           | I would argue that the main reason is that we are stuck with
           | a centralized Internet with a somewhat large initial step to
           | start a new service. If everyone get IPv6 we are all able to
           | be a first class citizen on the Internet, meaning I can run a
           | webserver or whatever from home. Once I am ready I can move
           | on to a hosting provider with all the extra costs and hassle
           | it comes with. Without IPv6, we are stuck with a two tier
           | system of Internet users. Basically consumers and providers
           | where the step to become a provider is larger than when you
           | can simply start from home with whatever scrap you have in
           | your garage.
           | 
           | IPv6 will also simplify a lot of things (being able to scrap
           | NAT (note, you will still need a firewall) and avoid protocol
           | issues for End-to-End services) but that is just a bonus.
        
         | tambre wrote:
         | Amazon enabled IPv6 for various CDN endpoints serving images
         | and static assets this year. At least they've made progress.
         | 
         | A few years ago when forcing Reddit to IPv6 through /etc/hosts
         | many pages resulted in 500 errors, but they gradually fixed
         | them.
        
         | vbezhenar wrote:
         | Why is it crazy? They don't gain anything by supporting IPv6.
        
           | belorn wrote:
           | I all the studies I have seen, ipv6 enabled networks
           | outperform ipv4 only networks in term of latency.
           | 
           | Improved latency mean improved responsiveness, and that in
           | turn has companies claiming improved user retention and
           | sales.
           | 
           | If you need an argument to support ipv6, those seems like
           | good reasons to support ipv6.
        
             | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
             | I can't see any difference in latency in the services I use
             | between IPv4 and IPv6.
             | 
             | What I want to know is do all these studies take into
             | consideration the "happy eyeballs" algorithm that prefers
             | IPv6 over IPv4 in web browser requests, thus delaying the
             | IPv4 request?
        
               | betterunix2 wrote:
               | The latency in question has to do with routers. IPv6
               | packets have a simpler header that does not force routers
               | to recompute a checksum for each hop, and IPv6 allows
               | better route aggregation which reduces the CPU overhead
               | of route selection in some cases.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | I am unaware of any router forwarding IPv4 packets slower
               | than IPv6 packets. Can you back up this claim with any
               | sources?
               | 
               | Route aggregation or selection does not impact forwarding
               | performance on a router.
        
           | miohtama wrote:
           | If you can do direct consumer mobile phone IPv6 to server
           | IPv6 there are benefits in latency, throughput, congestion
           | control, analytics and so on. A better user experience.
           | Depending on the hosting setup and networks, this may or may
           | not be significant.
        
             | vbezhenar wrote:
             | carrier NAT is unlikely to introduce measurable latency,
             | especially in wireless networks. I agree that IPv6 allows
             | for better user tracking, probably that's one of the
             | reasons to adopt it. For example iPhones are virtually
             | indistinguishable from each other, so the only reliable way
             | to track them is cookie or IP address.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | It costs money to buy and maintain CG NAT infrastructure.
               | Local authorities will demand you log who had what IP
               | address at the time of interest.
        
               | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
               | IPv4 or CGNAT costs are not optional. You will have to
               | pay them regardless of if you deploy IPv6 or not.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | Less racks of CG NAT. Deploying IPv6 gets Netflix,
               | YouTube, Facebook and other popular traffic to connect
               | directly.
        
               | toast0 wrote:
               | IPv4 and CGNAT costs scale with usage. The more traffic
               | you offload to IPv6, the less CGNAT capacity you need and
               | the less IPv4 space you need; you need enough IPv4
               | addresses so you can give out unique IP:Ports for all
               | concurrent connections to popular destination IP:Ports.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | None of those are arguments for why IPv4 or CGNAT costs
               | are optional; you cannot run an ISP without IPv4 or
               | CGNAT, therefore the IPv4 or CGNAT costs are not
               | optional. You will incur them regardless of if you deploy
               | IPv6 or not.
               | 
               | If you deploy IPv6, you might not deploy CGNAT, but
               | unless you are dual stacking, something functionally
               | equivalent is required.
               | 
               | As to scaling costs, IPv6 offload isn't a 1:1 replacement
               | for IPv4 or CGNAT capacity. You need enough capacity to
               | carry the IPv6 traffic over IPv4 in case your IPv6
               | transport, transit or peers fail. Again, not optional.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | Parent commenter wasn't saying that CG NAT costs could be
               | avoided entirely. Deploying IPv6 gets Netflix, YouTube,
               | Facebook and other popular traffic to connect directly.
               | That means less racks of CG NAT.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | Like I said, you can only avoid CGNAT costs if you accept
               | the failure modes inherent if/when your IPv6 fails.
               | 
               | Thus in a properly designed network these are not
               | optional costs.
        
               | toast0 wrote:
               | > You need enough capacity to carry the IPv6 traffic over
               | IPv4 in case your IPv6 transport, transit or peers fail.
               | Again, not optional.
               | 
               | Surely you need enough IPv6 capacity incase your IPv4
               | transit fails as well. If JIO could have built enough
               | IPv4 capacity to run their network over IPv4, they would
               | have, but they can't, so they've been pushing IPv6 hard.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | You are likely to be unable to source the missing IPv4
               | traffic over IPv6.
               | 
               | I'm not familiar with JIO's setup, but that's an
               | interesting question. If their IPv6 was down, would their
               | network still be able to deliver? Would they run out of
               | CGNAT capacity or IPv4 translations?
        
               | toast0 wrote:
               | If their IPv6 failed, they would almost certainly run
               | with significant service disruption.
               | 
               | IPv6 is no longer optional for them. I suspect it's not
               | optional for T-Mobile USA either. Or
               | Facebook/Google/Netflix.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | Don't think IPv4 is optional for any of them either.
        
               | somerandomqaguy wrote:
               | Wouldn't that cost be easy to pass along to the customers
               | though? Assuming the authorities aren't discriminating
               | against a single ISP, then all the ISP's can just raise
               | their price at the same time.
               | 
               | Or have I been living with Canadian ISPs too long and
               | that sort of thing doesn't happen in the rest of the
               | world?
        
               | billytetrud wrote:
               | It's super weird you think passing costs onto consumers
               | makes the problem go away. When a company passes costs to
               | their consumers, consumers buy their product less, so
               | that company loses money anyway.
        
               | ClumsyPilot wrote:
               | Sorry, i am concerned about me, the consumer, loosing
               | money
        
               | tpxl wrote:
               | You do lose money because they raised the prices.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | CGNAT is a consumer nightmare that makes them a second
               | class citizen dependent on large providers to offer
               | services.
        
         | amjd wrote:
         | You're right about other sites, but Hotstar does support IPv6:
         | $ dig +short AAAA www.hotstar.com         www.hotstar.com-
         | sni.edgekey.net.         e35862.dscj.akamaiedge.net.
         | 2600:140f:7800::1730:f420         2600:140f:7800::1730:f421
         | 2600:140f:7800::17d7:d7b9         2600:140f:7800::17d7:d7a9
         | 2600:140f:7800::1730:f449
        
         | praseodym wrote:
         | github.com doesn't support IPv6 either, which is annoying
         | because a lot of software uses GitHub for artifact
         | distribution.
        
           | nsizx wrote:
           | In what way does getting your artefacts through ipv4 annoy
           | you?
        
             | lazide wrote:
             | It means I can't do a fully ipv6 backend, which is a bit
             | irritating.
        
               | ikiris wrote:
               | Why do you need ipv4 on your backend to reach ipv4
               | destinations?
        
               | eqvinox wrote:
               | NAT64 is NAT with all its associated annoyances and bugs,
               | and proxies/caches are just annoying to maintain and a
               | needless added point of failure for small installations.
        
             | Pet_Ant wrote:
             | If you have an bunch of servers using ipv6 to avoid NAT
             | issues.
        
           | paulcarroty wrote:
           | Yeah, and Heroku too. Don't know how they going now, but 5-7
           | years ago were their popularity was crazy.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | https://dns.google/query?name=www.google.co.in&rr_type=AAAA&...
        
         | est31 wrote:
         | The pain is most felt by the ISPs which need to supply lots of
         | ip addresses to their customers, while you need only few ip
         | addresses for running an internet service (compared to the
         | number of users/customers). There is little improvement in user
         | experience and you need to change a lot of infrastructure to
         | also support ipv6 addresses. So websites don't do it, sadly.
        
         | tzs wrote:
         | Some of those sites have mobile apps on the Apple app store.
         | How does not supporting IPv6 on their site reconcile with
         | Apple's requirement that apps that support networking work when
         | on an IPv6-only network?
         | 
         | I would have thought that an app that is purportedly an app for
         | site X but that cannot actually talk to site X when on an
         | IPv6-only network would fail that requirement, but maybe I'm
         | overestimating what Apple actually checks. Are they only
         | checking that the app will correctly attempt an IPv6 connection
         | to the site?
        
           | realityking wrote:
           | The App Store only requires Apps to work on networks
           | employing DNS64/NAT64 [0].
           | 
           | That means the app internally needs to be able to handle IPv6
           | addresses and not hardcore any IPv4 addresses as those can't
           | be reached. There's no requirement that the service
           | underlying the app is directly reachable via IPv6.
           | 
           | 0: https://developer.apple.com/support/ipv6/
        
             | rynes wrote:
             | Once upon a time I had an original iPhone and a router that
             | did nor have ipv6, but the App Store worked. So I don't
             | understand your "ipv4 addresses can't be reached" part.
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | On _some people 's phones_ IPv4 addresses can't be
               | reached. Their carrier doesn't bother moving IPv4 over a
               | network that doesn't need IPv4. It does translation at
               | the edge, and the iPhone is OK with that.
               | 
               | Apple's requirement is that even though you know your
               | server is definitely 10.20.30.40+ on the public network,
               | and you hate IPv6 you _must not_ hard code 10.20.30.40
               | inside the app and ship that to the App Store.
               | 
               | Once you reluctantly change it to a DNS name ten-twenty-
               | thirty-forty.fuck-off-apple.example that resolves to
               | 10.20.30.40 - Apple allows that.
               | 
               | Because _now_ when your app is used on some IPv6-only
               | carrier network, the carrier goes  "ten-twenty-thirty-
               | forty.fuck-off-apple.example ?" and it gets 10.20.30.40
               | and it says that's an IPv4 address, don't use those
               | around here, and it adds a translator step, it gives the
               | phone an _IPv6 address_ for ten-twenty-thirty-forty.fuck-
               | off-apple.example and the phone connects to that address,
               | which is a translator that connects to 10.20.30.40 on the
               | IPv4 Internet.
               | 
               | This stuff _happens all the time_ and you don 't notice.
               | But if Apple allowed app vendors to just scribble IPv4
               | addresses inside their app software it would break.
               | 
               | + No that isn't a public IP address. It's an example.
        
       | nikkinana wrote:
       | Just do the needful.
        
       | aloknnikhil wrote:
       | This seems to be particularly because of Reliance Jio (the
       | largest Mobile network in India?)
       | https://conference.apnic.net/50/assets/files/APCS790/Harness...
       | 
       | The adoption timeline matches Google's stats here
        
         | tumblewit wrote:
         | I believe so. They use a dual stack model and last I checked
         | Airtel doesn't support IPv6 yet and neither does Vi which
         | leaves Jio to be the only ones contributing to the stats.
        
           | gopkarthik wrote:
           | Airtel does dual stack model. I've been using it for about 2
           | years now.
        
             | amjd wrote:
             | Airtel doesn't seem to support IPv6 for their broadband
             | services yet, at least in my state. Have you experienced
             | this with broadband or mobile services?
        
               | asaddhamani wrote:
               | Airtel mobile supports IPv6
        
           | quaintdev wrote:
           | Airtel supports dual stack as well. I have been using Airtel
           | Internet with IPv6 for a year or two now.
        
             | tumblewit wrote:
             | I tried on my iPhone SE (2020) 3 months ago and I could not
             | get iPv6. Could be location specific. Because I
             | specifically tested for iPv6 support.
        
       | crims0n wrote:
       | Ah yes... the IPv6 migration. Been hearing about this for two
       | decades now. The reason it isn't ubiquitous in 2021 is because
       | there are fundamental issues with the protocol, not least of
       | which is incompatibility with what the entire rest of the world
       | is current running. If we are ever going to get the world on the
       | same protocol, we need something new.
        
         | onefortree wrote:
         | Do you mind describing what those issues are? Or linking some
         | reading about it?
        
         | vetinari wrote:
         | Nah, as protocol the IPv6 is fine.
         | 
         | What is not fine is the real-world implementations. ISPs that
         | give you a /64 subnet? ISPs that insist, that with IPv6 you
         | must use their CPE as a router, where you have almost zero
         | control? ISPs that give you /56, but prefix delegation on the
         | router they force on you is broken?
         | 
         | There's so much brokenness, that even as a IPv6 fan, I keep my
         | IPv4 addresses. And if it means DS-Lite or IPv4, then IPv4 is
         | it.
        
       | moonchrome wrote:
       | IPv6 is a perfect example of where a legislator can make a
       | positive market impact. I like market principles, but relying on
       | market alone for this just leads to local optimum (squeezing
       | every last drop from IPv4 with various hacks).
       | 
       | Just mandate that every ISP must provide IPv6 for new contracts
       | within a year and then for all existing contract within two - or
       | whatever reasonable timeline - and be done with it.
        
         | techsupporter wrote:
         | Didn't the US government require that all cloud services
         | provided to and by the government be done over IPv4 and IPv6
         | some time ago?
         | 
         | In opening another tab to answer my own question, I see that
         | they've broadened the scope and that the US government networks
         | should be IPv6-only, with some caveats I'm sure, by 2023:
         | https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2021/03/how-make-progres...
        
           | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
           | The cynic in me wants to know if all government cloud
           | services support IPv6 as mandated, on paper only or in
           | practice? :)
           | 
           | The linked article isn't as ambitious as to claim IPv6-only
           | government networks by 2023, only that _new_ systems should
           | support IPv6 by 2023.
           | 
           | I'd also be _very_ surprised if the government was able to
           | hit _any_ of the IPv6-only targets put forth in the article.
        
         | tzs wrote:
         | Simpler: put a cap on the number of IPv4 addresses that can be
         | transferred per quarter, and lower that cap each quarter.
        
           | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
           | This just cements the IPv4 incumbents as winners.
        
             | tzs wrote:
             | I think you might be overlooking network effects (pun
             | intended).
             | 
             | Yes, the current incumbents will buy up all the IPv4
             | addresses they can before trading stops. That will cement
             | them as the permanent winners for IPv4 services.
             | 
             | But with IPv4 addresses no longer tradable, hosting
             | companies and ISPs will have no choice but to adopt IPv6 if
             | they want to grow. New hosting companies and ISPs will be
             | IPv6-only.
             | 
             | I'd expect at that point most large mobile networks, which
             | are largely IPv6 already with IPv6 compatibility bolted on
             | so customers can reach IPv4-only sites, to go IPv6-only.
             | 
             | There will be legacy applications that still need a real
             | IPv4 address on the server side. The current incumbents
             | will end up cemented as the winners of that service.
        
               | 2fastpost wrote:
               | You assume new entrants or smaller entities would have a
               | fighting chance in this scenario. They would not.
               | 
               | The incumbents would become king makers. They would
               | decide which services would be allowed on the IPv4
               | Internet, which would be the only Internet, and which
               | services would be allowed to prosper.
               | 
               | The incumbents would either acquire all successful
               | startups and smaller companies or clone their services.
               | 
               | New entrants would wither on the wine on this obscure
               | IPv6-only network that hardly anybody knows about or is
               | able to access.
               | 
               | This would also kill off IPv6 completely. The incumbents
               | would have a collective interest in maintaining and
               | propping up their position. IPv6 would be a threat to
               | this, so it would be given the axe.
               | 
               | This isn't some far out fantasy either. This is how
               | mobile phone services worked during the SMS era before
               | the Internet was a thing.
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | Don't force IPv6. Make IPv4 illegal. Now they can't half-ass
         | the IPv6 support.
        
           | 2fastpost wrote:
           | Hard pass. Nobody wants more government involvement. Not to
           | mention the unspeakable amount of waste and chaos this would
           | entail.
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | If regulation is to be attempted, we gotta do it right.
             | Can't leave loopholes around to make things cheaper for
             | them and worse for everybody else. They should have
             | literally no choice but the right one. Waste and chaos
             | don't matter. Do things right or give up.
             | 
             | Letting them keep IPv4 resulted in them dragging their ass,
             | implementing NAT everywhere and killing end-to-end
             | conectivity on the internet, repurposing IPv4 as a
             | reputation system, god knows what else. We gotta get rid of
             | it.
        
         | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
         | Forcing IPv6 upon ISPs by decree will only make them do the
         | very least possible in order to be able to check a box.
         | 
         | To truly drive IPv6 adoption there has to be a real need for
         | IPv6 and/or a revenue driver.
         | 
         | Very large ISPs and mobile carriers _need_ IPv6 because they
         | are simply running out of IPv4 addresses, even non-public IPv4
         | addresses!
         | 
         | This still does not mean they can go IPv6-only, they still need
         | IPv4 and translation technologies to reach the Internet.
         | 
         | The core problem of IPv6 adoption is that insensitive do not
         | align across the whole Internet ecosystem.
        
           | ClumsyPilot wrote:
           | "Forcing IPv6 upon ISPs by decree will only make them do the
           | very least possible in order to be able to check a box."
           | 
           | Which is more than they are doing now.
           | 
           | What real-world issues do you forcee. IPv6 either works, or
           | doesn't
        
             | 2fastpost wrote:
             | > IPv6 either works, or doesn't
             | 
             | Oh, you sweet summer child! :)
             | 
             | IPv6 "just works" only if you completely control the
             | routing stack end-to-end.
             | 
             | Once end user equipment and hosts are introduced into the
             | network all bets are off.
             | 
             | In a mobile network, where the carrier controls what user
             | terminals are allowed on the network, it is at least
             | nominally possible to achieve "just works" status.
             | 
             | So, in the real world, forcing IPv6 would result in IPv6
             | being supported only in a particular configuration used in
             | a particular way. Everybody will be told to go pound sand
             | and no effort will be made to keep IPv6 working or prevent
             | breakage.
        
         | citrin_ru wrote:
         | IPv6 is a bad technical standard to begin with (which is on of
         | the reasons behind slow adoption). Forcing it with legislation
         | would only make everyone involved to hate it more.
        
           | throw0101a wrote:
           | > _IPv6 is a bad technical standard to begin with_
           | 
           | Can you expound on why you think this is the case?
        
             | snuxoll wrote:
             | Not GP, but I think IPv6 is generally fine. The big issue
             | is around mid sized enterprises, where multi homing becomes
             | a need and for so long PI address space was reserved for
             | peering-sizes entities. This makes sense from the
             | perspective of reducing routing table size, but to date
             | there's no good way to do multihoming with multiple PA
             | blocks (there are ways, but they all suck).
             | 
             | The IETF really needs to fix this issue in particular, it's
             | the last big hurdle in seeing adoption IMO.
        
               | ikiris wrote:
               | PI was never reserved for peering sized entities... just
               | get PI space.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | > _but to date there's no good way to do multihoming with
               | multiple PA blocks (there are ways, but they all suck)._
               | 
               | Is using ULA and NPTv6 any worse than using NAT44?
        
               | snuxoll wrote:
               | It's not - but that doesn't mean it's a good solution.
               | Clients should be able to know their globally routable
               | address and ULA with NPTv6 seriously fucks with that, so
               | I'm not a fan.
        
               | magila wrote:
               | What would a good solution to that even look like? Giving
               | every mid-sized company it's own PI block would massively
               | bloat the routing table so that's not going to happen.
               | The solution space that's left basically comes down to
               | some form of NAT/NPT or multi-home support at the
               | endpoints. The IETF's preferred solution is the latter
               | which seems reasonable to me.
        
               | snuxoll wrote:
               | I fully agree that giving PI blocks out like candy is not
               | the ideal solution - but the solutions for dealing with
               | multiple PA spaces are woefully inadequate right now. I'd
               | really like to see the IETF step in here and come up with
               | some workable proposals before we ruin IPv6 while it's
               | still possible to fix these issues.
        
             | magpi3 wrote:
             | I'm not the person you are responding to, but from what I
             | understand the main issues are:
             | 
             | ipv6 is not backwards compatible with ipv4.
             | 
             | Consequently adding support for ipv6 requires a dual stack
             | solution (since supporting ipv4 is a must).
             | 
             | An alternative solution to the problem of the limited
             | number of ipv4 addresses has been reliance on NATs. This is
             | much simpler than supporting ipv6 and is already widely
             | adopted everywhere, and so that's what people are choosing
             | to do.
             | 
             | The obvious conclusion (from a casual observer like
             | myself): the successor to ipv4 has to be backwards
             | compatible with it, similar to how UTF-8 is backwards
             | compatible with ASCII.
             | 
             | EDIT: I should note that I am not a network engineer, so if
             | anything I have written is incorrect, I hope someone
             | corrects me.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | > _ipv6 is not backwards compatible with ipv4._
               | 
               | I've seen this objection, and I do not see how it could
               | be otherwise.
               | 
               | If all the code out there was for 32-bit-only addresses
               | (of IPv4), then expanding the addresses space to
               | something >32 bits would entailed updating every single
               | IP-capable code. Which is exactly that needed to be done
               | for IPv6: every device needed to have code updated (and
               | this included 'hardware code' of things like ASICs).
        
               | magpi3 wrote:
               | Again, I am not a network engineer and so I am a little
               | of my depth. But I will respond in the hopes someone will
               | educate me if I am wrong.
               | 
               | While UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII, it did of
               | course require programmers to add support for it just
               | like you are suggesting any successor to IPV4 would. But
               | once that support was added, ASCII could be treated as
               | part of UTF-8 standard.
               | 
               | From what I understand, this is not the case with IPV6
               | and IPV4. The former requires its own software stack and
               | the IPV6 standard was written (from what I have read)
               | without any attempt to make it possible for IPV4 and IPV6
               | addresses to coexist in the same software stack easily.
        
               | betterunix2 wrote:
               | Actually, IPv4 address can be mapped to the IPv6 address
               | space and routed across an IPv6-only network; you have
               | stateless NAT gateways at the edges. That allows network
               | operators to manage a single-stack network while still
               | giving users an IPv4 network. 464XLAT adds one more
               | component to the picture, which is a stateful NAT gateway
               | that allows a network operator to provide limited IPv4
               | service without giving each user a public IPv4 address.
               | For reference:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_mapped_address#IPv4-ma
               | ppe...
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | Yes, and all software had to be rewritten to use UTF-8.
               | If you tried sending UTF-8 bits through an ASCII-only
               | system, you'd display a bunch of garbage and even cause
               | larger issues (as some bit sequences could have been
               | interpreted as control/escape characters).
               | 
               | So, just like expanding address space (IP: 32-bit to
               | 128-bit; ASCII: 8-bit/1-byte to multi-byte), you had to
               | rewrite all the software to handle things.
        
               | magicalhippo wrote:
               | The problem is packets flow both ways in a network.
               | 
               | It's not like an actual pipe where one end doesn't care
               | where the other end is. The recipient of a packet has to
               | know where to send the reply.
               | 
               | So while a host with a larger address could easily talk
               | to a legacy host with an older, smaller address, the
               | legacy host couldn't reply because it wouldn't know how
               | to address it.
        
             | citrin_ru wrote:
             | It's too late to discuss alternatives to IPv6, so I haven't
             | spend time collecting what I think wrong with it (and below
             | just random thoughts).
             | 
             | The main reason I don't like it - it is much more complex
             | than IPv4 and this complexity provides from little to now
             | real benefits (but a lot of advertised by IPv6
             | evangelists). The only reason networks migrate to IPv6 is
             | the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, not other features which
             | was envisioned as improvements over IPv4, but on practice
             | turned out to be not very useful.
             | 
             | 128bit per address from which usable only 64bit looks like
             | a waste of resources (CPU/RAM) to me. Idea was to embed
             | MAC-address in lower 64bit, but it turned out to be a bad
             | idea because of privacy implications and for most end-user
             | devices lower 64bit are now random. Given that /64 prefix
             | in most cases used by single host a 64bit address would be
             | sufficient. If we had 64bit addresses we would save RAM for
             | routers and OS kernels and simplify implementation (64bit
             | integers are available in practically all modern
             | programming languages and 64bit operations are fast, while
             | 128bit is a slower extension which is not universally
             | available).
             | 
             | For me IPv6 is an example of the second-system effect:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
        
               | betterunix2 wrote:
               | In my experience IPv6 is much simpler to deal with than
               | IPv4; in fact the large address space with a 64-bit
               | prefix as the network number greatly simplifies
               | management and configuration and theoretically improves
               | the CPU performance of routers by allowing allowing more
               | aggressive route aggregation. When ISPs give /56 prefixes
               | to users, users can easily set up subnets according to
               | their own needs without requiring extra coordination and
               | without breaking end-to-end connectivity. You are wrong
               | that /64 prefixes are usually assigned to a single host;
               | in fact the number of Internet-connected devices in a
               | typical home has grown over time and can easily be a
               | dozen or more.
               | 
               | If I were running an ISP, I would migrate the backbone
               | network to IPv6 and just use embedded IPv4 addresses to
               | avoid the headaches that come with router-to-router IPv4
               | links. With IPv6 you always have a link-local address on
               | every port that can be used by routing protocols without
               | relying on proprietary solutions that are not
               | interoperable between vendors or having to assign an IPv4
               | address (and hoping that you assigned a large enough
               | subnet for future growth). It is much easier to scale up
               | an IPv6-only network and much easier to connect one
               | IPv6-only network to another.
               | 
               | Of course IPv6 is not perfect. SLAAC did not really work
               | out as planned and now we are stuck with an annoying mix
               | of SLAAC and DHCPv6. Reverse-DNS is still a bit of a
               | pain. IPSec is not what it should have been and too many
               | IPv6 standards rely on IPSec for security/authentication.
               | Even so, the core of IPv6 is a huge improvement over IPv4
               | for individual users, small network operators, large
               | network operators, and the Internet as a whole.
        
               | magicalhippo wrote:
               | > In my experience IPv6 is much simpler to deal with than
               | IPv4
               | 
               | My experience is the complete opposite. Lot of software
               | is still very immature when it comes to IPv6. A prime
               | example is that I had to abandon pfSense because it just
               | didn't handle prefix delegation. And no, switching ISP is
               | not an option for me.
               | 
               | I'm now on OpenWRT which is miles better, but getting
               | IPv6 to play nice is still lot more work. For example
               | there were a lot more steps to getting split-horizon DNS
               | working compared to regular IPv4.
               | 
               | > Even so, the core of IPv6 is a huge improvement over
               | IPv4 for individual users, small network operators, large
               | network operators, and the Internet as a whole.
               | 
               | Maybe in another decade or two when IPv6 and the
               | ecosystem around it has matured a bit. Though it still
               | seems to have a lot of moving parts compared to IPv4,
               | thus requiring more to keep track of.
        
               | Dagger2 wrote:
               | All 128 bits are usable, it's not limited to just 64.
               | 
               | A total length of 64 bits would be too small for the
               | eventual size of the internet. Our choice was between
               | deploying something with too many addresses or something
               | with too few addresses, and the former is by far better
               | than the latter. We _do not_ want to be going through
               | another IP family transition to increase the bit length
               | again, so we need to get it right the first time.
               | 
               | v6 mostly just took v4 and made the addresses longer, so
               | I'm not sure it's reasonable to describe it as bloated.
               | About the only thing it actually adds over v4 is SLAAC
               | (and IPsec, but that was immediately backported to v4).
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | > A total length of 64 bits would be too small for the
               | eventual size of the internet.
               | 
               | Even home consumers are getting at least a /64. Unless
               | you're expecting consumers to start having ~2^64 devices,
               | it doesn't seem like anyone is concerned with the public
               | internet needing more than ~2^64 addresses.
        
               | Dagger2 wrote:
               | Don't think in terms of addresses. In a hierarchically-
               | allocated and aggregated space like IP addresses, there's
               | a massive difference between 64 bits of address space and
               | 2^64 usable addresses.
               | 
               | By the time you've gone through six levels of allocations
               | (IANA -> RIR -> ISP -> Customer -> Network -> Device) the
               | vast majority of the total address space will be unused
               | -- or rather: used for the purpose of aggregation, but
               | not used for end machines. A 64-bit address space might
               | only reasonably be able to handle something like
               | 2^40-2^48 devices in total, which isn't that much more
               | than we already have today.
               | 
               | > Unless you're expecting consumers to start having ~2^64
               | devices
               | 
               | You'd definitely need something longer than 64 bits long,
               | _long_ before this point.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | To illustrate the scale, 2^32:
               | 
               | * is roughly equal to 4 300 000 000 (4e9, 4B)
               | 
               | * it is also the maximum number of IPv4 addresses
               | 
               | Going back to math class:
               | 
               | * 2^64 = 2^(32+32) = 2^32 * 2^32 = (4B) * (IPv4 Internet)
               | 
               | So a _single_ /64 IPv6 subnet can hold _four billion_
               | IPv4 Internets worth of systems.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | > _128bit per address from which usable only 64bit looks
               | like a waste of resources (CPU /RAM) to me._
               | 
               | I would recommend you check out Tom Coffeen, who wrote a
               | book on IPv6 address planning for O'Reilly. Even with
               | half the bits going to the subnet, there is a
               | astronomical amount of addresses available:
               | 
               | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tnh4upTOC4&t=27m
        
       | novok wrote:
       | How google would start a wave of ip6 migration: give a search
       | penalty for being ip4 only.
        
         | ipv6_or_nat wrote:
         | How would this benefit Google?
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | Less individual users behind NAT so they can track them
           | better?
        
             | 2fastpost wrote:
             | Between search, gmail, YouTube, maps, Chrome and Android I
             | don't think Google needs help tracking anybody on the
             | planet.
             | 
             | Even so, IPv6 privacy extensions more or less bring things
             | up to par with NAT in terms of trackability.
             | 
             | I guess there could be some small benefit, but very few it
             | applied to would be outside the Google dragnet to begin
             | with.
        
           | miyuru wrote:
           | Did the https migration benefit Google?
           | 
           | https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2014/08/https-
           | as-r...
        
             | 2fastpost wrote:
             | Https prevents ad injection.
        
           | novok wrote:
           | Could make future software plans more viable if the world is
           | majority of the world is ipv6
        
             | 2fastpost wrote:
             | This view I could endorse.
        
         | miyuru wrote:
         | In theory, having IPv6 website enabled should give a slight
         | boost to the ranking if the latency is lower.
         | 
         | But still Google crawls dualstack sites with IPv4 so it is yet
         | to be seen.
        
       | sgt wrote:
       | An idea (perhaps silly one) that I had to boost IPv6 adoption -
       | remember the old web 1.0? Interesting web sites and stuff you
       | don't easily find today? Let's create a unique experience that's
       | only accessible on sites that are IPv6 only. Not to exclude
       | people - even with IPv4 only from your ISP you can tunnel in.
       | Ideas?
        
         | nsgi wrote:
         | Do you mean restricting new web features to IPv6 sites? Or
         | something else?
        
         | bradfitz wrote:
         | Not an entirely new idea...
         | 
         | https://itwire.com/business-technology/good-news-bad-news-an...
         | 
         | > And the free porn? According to Labovitz, it's just one
         | incentive being offered to promote IPV6 "...IPv6 proponents
         | offer free high quality IPv6 porn (the porn-free, IPV4 home
         | page is https://www.ipv6porn.co.nz/ )
        
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