[HN Gopher] IPv4 Waiting List
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       IPv4 Waiting List
        
       Author : Sami_Lehtinen
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2021-12-09 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ripe.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ripe.net)
        
       | jakub_g wrote:
       | IPv6 adoption graph: 32.59% as of today, as measured by Google
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
        
         | mlyle wrote:
         | "We are continuously measuring the availability of IPv6
         | connectivity among Google users. The graph shows the percentage
         | of users that access Google over IPv6."
         | 
         | I'm not sure what this graph means. The first sentence implies
         | it's the number of users with IPV6 connectivity. The second
         | sentence implies it's the number of users that access over
         | IPV6-- but a big subset of users with valid IPV6 connectivity
         | might end up only connecting with IPV4 for various reasons.
        
           | ratorx wrote:
           | The first sentence is correct. It should be "that can access
           | Google over IPv6".
        
           | bostonpete wrote:
           | The second sentence explicitly tells you what the graph is
           | showing. The first sentence doesn't contradict that, it just
           | seems to provide some context. (?)
        
       | graton wrote:
       | Makes me think I should figure out how to sell my /24 ARIN block
       | I registered years ago. I wonder what it is worth...
        
         | mrkurt wrote:
         | We wrote about this! https://fly.io/blog/32-bit-real-estate/
         | 
         | I'd hold them for 3+ years really. It seems very unlikely that
         | IPs are going to lose value within 5 years. We're betting on
         | 10+ years before the bottom falls out (you can see some of our
         | math at the bottom).
        
           | miki123211 wrote:
           | I was wondering when I will see speculation on IP address
           | blocks, and here we are.
           | 
           | IP addresses truly were the first NFTs.
        
         | umanwizard wrote:
         | Seems to be around $10k-15k, according to
         | https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales .
        
           | Maxburn wrote:
           | Dang, that's more than I was thinking.
        
         | moduspol wrote:
         | I'd only do that if you think it's likely to decrease in value.
         | Do you think it'll be more or less valuable in 5-10 years?
        
           | judge2020 wrote:
           | I imagine some critical mass will be reached where cloud
           | providers start charging exuberant fees for IPv4 addresses
           | and many businesses go IPv6 only (which wouldn't even be a
           | big hit for mobile users[0]), and this news will be
           | widespread enough to encourage ISPs to actually roll it out
           | at a faster pace. Now, whether that's in 10 years or 20 is
           | to-be-seen, but I agree with you and I doubt the rollout of
           | IPv6 hits the point where people stop wanting IPv4 addresses
           | all-together within 30 years.
           | 
           | 0: most all cellular/5g networks already provide IPv6 since
           | even CGNAT is expensive compared to assigning a /128 per-
           | device. iPhone 13 (or ios 15 with iPhone 12) also has a 'data
           | mode' switch, which will use 5G if it's faster than the local
           | wifi - this likely opens up the device using cellular to
           | allow access to IPv6-only sites when their WiFi doesn't
           | support it.
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | about $45 an IP right now if you're eligible to transfer out,
         | but if you only have one /24, I'd hold onto it.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | lgierth wrote:
       | I registered with RIPE this year, requested an IPv4 /24 in July,
       | and got it immediately. I guess RIPE's last blocks depleted in
       | November?
       | 
       | Market prices on the other hand have exploded this year, $50 per
       | address isn't uncommon anymore.
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | According to the linked article there was no wait until about a
         | month ago, except for a short blip at the end of 2019. But now
         | the waiting list is growing rapidly and the wait is increasing
         | by about three quarters of a day per day.
        
       | jagger27 wrote:
       | LIR = Local Internet Registry, for those wondering.
       | 
       | Funny how their site has a handy pop-up definition when you hover
       | over IPv4, but not for LIR.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | HN doesn't like to hear this, but the shortage crated is
       | artificial, and there also is nothing wrong with NAT.
       | 
       | First, running exactly one open port per IP (443 or 80) is the
       | worst use of resources. The whole "crisis" could be solved with
       | simple browser support of something like SRV records. This could
       | be implemented with "here and now" technology, rather than
       | adopting a new standard for the entire internet backbone.
       | 
       | Next, widespread use of NAT provides plausible deniability for
       | everyone on the internet. Google, Facebook, Comcast, Verizon, etc
       | push ipv6 hard in order to enable causing tracking of individual
       | traffic on the internet. These institutions have exactly 0
       | business knowing how many physical devices are behind a firewall.
       | No, ipv6 privacy extensions do not provide the same sort of
       | anonymity that a NAT firewall does before you hit that downvote
       | button and take away some of my fake internet points.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | SRV records could work for alternative ports, but those
         | websites wouldn't be able to get Let's Encrypt certificates
         | without talking to the API of their DNS provider. ACME does not
         | allow alternative ports to be used for security reasons, so
         | we'll need a solution for that.
         | 
         | Many ports have also been restricted by the browser because you
         | can format malicious HTTP requests to be an DoS vector for
         | certain services, like IRC, which has been abused by
         | malvertisers in the past. Because of this you'd still be
         | working with a whitelist of ports, only extending the problem a
         | bit longer.
         | 
         | I'm not entirely sure what privacy your NAT guarantees for you.
         | Individual devices can already be fingerprinted by their
         | behaviour, so you'd need to run identical software on identical
         | hardware to combat that. If you manage to do that, you're only
         | one Set-Cookie away from unique identifiers anyway.
         | 
         | Because of the refreshing nature of privacy extensions, you
         | can't derive an exact number of devices active on a network.
         | More and more random new addresses become in use over time to
         | the point where you'd need access to your router (which your
         | ISP already has, unless you configure your own) to get a proper
         | count. You can at best get guesstimations, but that's not much
         | different from the result of NAT.
         | 
         | In theory, I agree with you: pasdive fingerprinting IPv6 is
         | easier than passive fingerprinting IPv4 on an ISP scale or
         | larger. In practice, though, I don't think it matters. Someone
         | who has access to all traffic from your network, probably has
         | access to some kind of boundary as well.
         | 
         | If you already install your own traffic collector to NAT
         | everything through so your ISP modem doesn't see your devices,
         | you can do the exact same for IPv6. NAT may be strongly
         | discouraged, but it's still possible using the same techniques.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | > SRV records could work for alternative ports, but those
           | websites wouldn't be able to get Let's Encrypt certificates
           | without talking to the API of their DNS provider. ACME does
           | not allow alternative ports to be used for security reasons,
           | so we'll need a solution for that.
           | 
           | The security reasons would go away with the presence of the
           | SRV record specifying the allowed port for the domain though.
           | Well, at least as much as any other DNS challenged based
           | method is secure.
        
         | greyface- wrote:
         | > First, running exactly one open port per IP (443 or 80) is
         | the worst use of resources. The whole "crisis" could be solved
         | with simple browser support of something like SRV records.
         | 
         | TLS SNI[1] and the HTTP Host: header[2] already do this.
         | Enabling multiple HTTP(s) serving ports with something like SRV
         | wouldn't give us any additional capacity here.
         | 
         | > These institutions have exactly 0 business knowing how many
         | physical devices are behind a firewall.
         | 
         | These institutions can already analyze TTL, source port, IPid,
         | and other packet metadata to enumerate hosts behind NAT.[3]
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
         | 
         | [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_hosting#Name-based
         | 
         | [3]: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/fnat.pdf
        
         | tehbeard wrote:
         | > there also is nothing wrong with NAT
         | 
         | Hahahaha....
         | 
         | Oh.... The amount of bullshit I've dealt with over the literal
         | decades, going back to secondary school, college and
         | University, as a consumer, because of NAT (The joys of console
         | gaming and "Strict NAT" or skype in the early days just falling
         | straight over).
         | 
         | The privacy implications I will however grant you.
        
         | gm wrote:
         | That's a very pre-emptively defensive statement... Why doesn't
         | HN like to hear this?
        
           | anonomousename wrote:
           | NAT makes it significantly harder to self host things, and as
           | a consequence limits decentralization.
        
           | exabrial wrote:
           | I've been downvoted in the past for pointing out what
           | everyone says works in theory vs what actually happens in the
           | real world.
        
             | dang wrote:
             | Ok, but please don't bait the community like that. Pre-
             | emptive defensiveness puts a negative torque on
             | conversation.
        
             | Arnt wrote:
             | NAT works for some use cases, not so well for others.
             | 
             | I know a database that's updated every night via a server-
             | to-server connection that passes five levels of NAT, and
             | when that crontab broke someone had to fix it by finding
             | and correcting a bug in a 1500-line NAT configuration on
             | one important router where the consequences of a mistake
             | would be very bad indeed.
             | 
             | It works in the sense that the database is updated, but I
             | cannot help thinking of Truth 3 in RFC1925.
        
         | throw0101a wrote:
         | > _there also is nothing wrong with NAT._
         | 
         | Try hole punching for games through CGN:
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT
         | 
         | AFAIK there is no way to do it, so you're SOL if that's what
         | your ISP uses.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | IPv6 does not make it any easier or any harder to know the
         | number of physical devices behind a firewall. Even if you sat
         | directly in front of the handoff to the ISP with a packet
         | sniffer counting the number of unique sources you'd still get
         | the wrong number. Correlating source tuple with destination
         | tuple and making inference would get you a more accurate number
         | (though still not perfect) but that doesn't care about v4 vs
         | v6.
        
       | baggy_trough wrote:
       | I wish Google Cloud Platform would support ipv6 (internally).
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | Or Azure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29327773
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | At least AWS is slowly creeping towards supporting IPv6:
           | 
           | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-
           | delivery...
           | 
           | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
           | new/2021/11/applicati...
           | 
           | I guess we can thank US government partially for that:
           | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-enables-us-
           | fed...
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | All of the cloud providers and even VPS services have been
         | dragging their heels on IPv6 for ages and it makes no sense to
         | me. These services could all benefit from having IPv6 only
         | options for people who don't need IPv4 addresses. V4 addresses
         | are turning into real money, you would expect the services to
         | try to optimize their use to save costs.
         | 
         | Even worse is when someone deploys IPv6 but does it in a
         | comically nonsensical way like Digital Ocean[1]. Yes, you read
         | that right, they assign /124s even though the smallest
         | allocation is supposed to be a /64. And if you think this means
         | you're sharing the same IPv6 address with virtually every other
         | droplet in a datacenter, you would be right. Welcome to every
         | blacklist everywhere. It is kind of like hosting an entire
         | datacenter off of a single IPv4 address.
         | 
         | [1] https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/ipv6/
        
       | woofcat wrote:
       | I'm really curious when this will change. In Canada, my home
       | internet provider and cellular provider are both ipv4 only. I've
       | asked about it in the past and the answer seems to constantly be
       | "Meh".
        
       | tempnow987 wrote:
       | Just charge $5/year/ip to all existing holders. A fair bit of
       | wasted space would free up fast.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | IP Georgism.
        
       | scandox wrote:
       | At the General Meeting in November, RIPE proposed some
       | substantial changes to the charging scheme, to be implemented
       | from 2023 (1 year away), and one notable difference is that RIPE
       | is considering charging a fair market value for IPv4 assignments,
       | in addition, to set up and maintenance fees.
       | 
       | That is the cause of the current spike/backlog.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | But since IPv4 has run out there won't be any new assignments?
        
       | Thorentis wrote:
       | IPv6 is a pain in the ass to work with and think about. We should
       | have added extra octets to IPv4 and been done with it.
        
       | slivanes wrote:
       | Am I right in thinking that IPv4 will only go away if all clients
       | can support IPv6? For example, there are many embedded devices
       | that will never be updated to have dualstack (including many home
       | routers).
       | 
       | Does anyone have IPv6 only facing servers for public consumption
       | without any IPv4 alternatives?
        
         | WorldMaker wrote:
         | Home/consumer use is where IPv6 is at highest adoption. It's
         | businesses that lag behind. Still amazing to see clear 9-to-5
         | weekday difference between IPv4 and IPv6 traffic in graphs in
         | 2021.
        
         | ghshephard wrote:
         | Home routers have a very short life-cycle. Most of them have a
         | median life of < 10 years, and it's reasonable to expect that
         | the majority of them will be upgraded every 20 years or so.
         | It's the other embedded (manufacturing, utility, etc...)
         | devices that have 20+ year median lives that will prevent IPv4
         | from ever going away. Dual Stack (as the vast majority of
         | Windows/MacOS/Linux/BSD systems are capable of) - creates a
         | nice transition path - slowly but surely more and more IPv6
         | creeps into DNS/Local Addresses. If you deployed a IPv6 only
         | facing server today - then some 20-30% +/- of your potential
         | customer base wouldn't be able to connect - but that number
         | will go down by 1-2% each year for the next while, until, in
         | 10-15 years, you'll be able to reach 98+% of your audience, so
         | you'll say WTH and go for it.
        
           | edgyquant wrote:
           | I worked IT for years before switching to programming and
           | I've almost never seen a home router last 10 years, let alone
           | 20.
        
             | Gigachad wrote:
             | You probably want to upgrade sooner for faster wifi anyway.
             | My router I only just got from my ISP caps out at 100Mbps
             | while the ISP provides gigabit speeds.
        
             | jeroenhd wrote:
             | I don't think 20 years will happen but I've seen
             | modem/router combos that lasted for ten years. Customers
             | bought them way back when, and never considered buying
             | replacements because they just worked. If all you do is
             | read news and do taxes, you can still get away with 802.11g
             | easily. You can pull about 10 to 20mbps down that, and for
             | many people that's more bandwidth than their ISP provides
             | then with.
             | 
             | Why buy an 802.11ax capable router when the best connection
             | you can get is an 8mbps DSL connection that drops out when
             | it rains?
             | 
             | Even at that price it was cheaper to rent a modem for a
             | buck a month, but some people like to own things, I guess.
        
         | unilynx wrote:
         | > Does anyone have IPv6 only facing servers for public
         | consumption without any IPv4 alternatives?
         | 
         | well, kame.net will only give you a dancing turtle over ipv6..
        
       | pablodavila wrote:
       | Fly posted a sort of related blog post about IPv4
       | 
       | https://fly.io/blog/32-bit-real-estate/
        
       | geek_at wrote:
       | Just yesterday I witched my office network to IPv6 and one
       | thought kept creeping in regarding security.
       | 
       | If I'm on IPv6 there is no NAT and it's basically security by
       | obscurity (not really but port scans would take forever)
       | 
       | What if I host a small web script on my machine and I surf the
       | web with my IPv6. Couldn't all website owners do port scans on my
       | address (because they obviously see my address) and then access
       | my local site or even God forbid one of my staff is running an
       | unpatched windows. How is it safe if it's basically (in ipv4
       | terms) a 1:1 NAT for all my machines?
        
         | jgeralnik wrote:
         | IPv6 doesn't mean no firewall and NAT!=firewall
         | 
         | You should still be blocking incoming requests for IPv6
         | endpoints and only open ports you intend to serve publicly.
        
           | geek_at wrote:
           | I do understand that but NAT was acting like another layer of
           | firewall because I could be sure that none of my devices
           | behind the nat could be accessed without port forwarding.
           | With IPv6 they can
        
             | xnyan wrote:
             | This is not exactly true. There are many tricks in the NAT
             | traversal toolkit, depending on your configuration it can
             | be fairly simple to work around. In every case where you
             | use NAT, you also use a firewall.
             | 
             | 100% of consumer IPv6-capible routers block unsolicited
             | inbound IPv6 by default. It's not something you need to
             | worry about unless you are hosting, and in that case your
             | concerns are the same as if you're using IPv4.
        
             | jeroenhd wrote:
             | Not from a passive, receiving network, no. If anyone on the
             | network uses a web browser, there's a good chance your
             | network can be attacked by a malicious ad through NAT
             | slipstreaming, through (https://samy.pl/slipstream/)
             | 
             | NAT wasn't meant to be a security mechanism and because of
             | that, the practical designs found in most devices don't
             | treat it as such.
             | 
             | On IPv4, NAT and firewalls are usually one and the same
             | rule set. That rule set is slightly smaller with IPv6
             | because of the lack of NAT, but the mechanisms are still
             | the same. If your IPv4 firewall fails, NAT won't save you,
             | because that's part of the system that failed.
             | 
             | If you're still insistent on using NAT then... use NAT. The
             | core technique works on both protocols, you'll just have to
             | set it up yourself because router vendors don't usually
             | implement it.
        
         | awestroke wrote:
         | Why can you not have NAT when running the network on IPv6? I've
         | never seen anyone explain this
        
           | hvgk wrote:
           | NAT is a workaround for the small amount of address space
           | that was allocated originally. That's not the case on IPv6.
           | I'm sure you can NAT stuff but why the hell would you want to
           | do that and have to maintain all the stateful pain in the ass
           | stuff required such as NAT tables which are going to be much
           | larger.
        
             | awestroke wrote:
             | To prevent the machines in the network from being exposed
             | publicly
        
               | nybble41 wrote:
               | If you have machines in the network which you don't trust
               | to handle their own incoming connections securely you can
               | block those connections at the firewall, without port or
               | address translation. Ideally you'd put those on hosts on
               | their own locked-down VLAN. NAT (or NAPT) doesn't add any
               | security (see: NAT traversal) and having different
               | internal vs. external addresses significantly increases
               | the complexity of the system--not just the router but
               | applications as well, which are forced to deal with their
               | public addresses and ports differing from the ones they
               | were assigned.
        
           | makeworld wrote:
           | You can, but the point is that you shouldn't have to because
           | there are enough addresses. NAT only makes networking code
           | for applications harder.
        
             | warkdarrior wrote:
             | NAT complexity is only marginally more than for a stateful
             | firewall, and is probably lower than for an application
             | firewall. And you still want a stateful firewall in IPv6
             | networks!
        
               | ArchOversight wrote:
               | Not needing to do address translation is a large amount
               | of code that you don't need to run to keep IP traffic
               | flowing.
               | 
               | Sure, you absolutely need a stateful firewall, but not
               | needing address translation makes it easier to
               | troubleshoot, makes it easier to establish end to end
               | connectivity and no need to port forward or things of
               | that nature so multiple clients can all use the same
               | port.
        
               | throw0101a wrote:
               | With NAT you may need STUN, TURN, ICE, and probably a few
               | more acronyms:
               | 
               | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN
               | 
               | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traversal_Using_Relays_ar
               | ound_...
               | 
               | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Connectivity_
               | Estab...
               | 
               | Not sure if that's more or less complicated than already
               | knowing your IP address and 'just' using UPnP/PCP:
               | 
               | * http://upnp.org/specs/arch/UPnP-arch-AnnexAIPv6-v1.pdf
               | 
               | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Control_Protocol
        
           | edgyquant wrote:
           | The whole point of a NAT is negated by a switch to IPv6
        
             | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
             | No it's not -- maybe I'd prefer not to advertise how many
             | devices I have on my network.
        
         | easrng wrote:
         | You want a firewall, not NAT.
        
         | throw0101a wrote:
         | > _If I 'm on IPv6 there is no NAT and it's basically security
         | by obscurity (not really but port scans would take forever)_
         | 
         | That's why firewalls exist. And they work with IPv6.
         | 
         | My ISP gives out an IPv6 address to my Asus, which also picks
         | up some prefixes for allocation via DHCP-PD. This causes my
         | printer pick up an IPv6 address, but it is not accessible to
         | the outside world.
         | 
         | Statefull firewalls still exist with IPv6, so by default
         | connections from the general Internal cannot connect to your
         | 'internal' systems. Hole punching still needs to be done with
         | UPNP/PCP (at least on residential systems; SMB may not want
         | this)
         | 
         | * http://upnp.org/specs/arch/UPnP-arch-AnnexAIPv6-v1.pdf
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Control_Protocol
         | 
         | The advantage of IPv6 is that you no longer have to have things
         | like STUN, TURN, etc. (Remember Skype super-nodes?) Your client
         | knows its own IP(v6) address, gets the IP address of the other
         | end, and then tells your firewall to allow connections between
         | just those two addresses. Once your session is done the ACL is
         | deleted and you're completely default-blocked from the outside
         | again.
         | 
         | Copy-pasting from a previous discussion a little while ago:
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | An IP connection is started from the 'inside' to the 'outside',
         | and the source-destination tuple is recorded. When an 'outside'
         | packet arrives the firewall checks its parameters to see if it
         | corresponds with an existing connection, and if it does it
         | passes it through. If the parameters do not correspond with
         | anything in the firewall's table(s) it assumes that someone is
         | trying to create a new connection, which is generally not
         | allowed by default, and therefore drops it.
         | 
         | The main difference is that with IPv4 and NAT the original (RFC
         | 1918?) source address and port are changed to something
         | corresponding to the 'outside' interface of the firewall. With
         | IPv6 the address/port rewriting is not done.+ Only state tables
         | are updated and checked.
         | 
         | New connections are not allowed past the firewall towards the
         | inside with either protocol, and only replies to connections
         | opened from the inside are passed through.++
         | 
         | There's no magical security behind NAT: tuples and packet flags
         | are read, looked up in a state table, allowed or not depending
         | on either firewall rule or state presence. The security comes
         | from the state checking.
         | 
         | + It is possible to have private IPv6 addresses using ULA, and
         | then the router/firewall uses NPTv6 to rewrite the prefix
         | (leaving the /64 interface component alone).
         | 
         | ++ Just like with IPv4 (NAT), to allow unsolicited 'new'
         | connections in you have to do do firewall hole punching with
         | (e.g.) UPNP. But by default things are blocked.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | No-NAT != access from the Internet.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kingcharles wrote:
         | There was no NAT when I was a wee nipper. That's what your
         | firewall is for?
        
         | makeworld wrote:
         | You can still have an NAT with IPv6. But ideally you don't, and
         | you just put all traffic through a firewall. You can still
         | block incoming connections or whatever you relied on that NAT
         | for before.
        
         | labcomputer wrote:
         | They thought of that already.
         | 
         | One of the differences between IPv6 and IPv4 is that the v6
         | address space is enormous and stack assumes your interface will
         | have multiple addresses.
         | 
         | In particular, on each interface you normally have:
         | 
         | * A link-local IPv6 address (non route-able). This is used for
         | neighbor discovery and router solicitation, among other things.
         | 
         | * A static-ish cryptographically generated address (often
         | called a secured address). This is used for incoming
         | connections.
         | 
         | * One or more temporary addresses with relatively short
         | lifetimes. These are preferred for outgoing connections. The
         | lifetime of these addresses often overlap because any the OS
         | has to maintain the address for any open connections.
         | 
         | Note that these addresses can be generated automatically using
         | SLAAC, and you would normally have a set of secured and
         | temporary addresses for _each_ upstream router that is sending
         | router advertisements. You may also have another set of secured
         | and temporary addresses in the IPv6 private range (equivalent
         | to 10.0.0.0), if your router is advertising that (useful for
         | internal services like DNS, where you want to configure the
         | server address in the DHCPv6 config). So it's not unusual for a
         | given host on a simple home network to have a dozen addresses
         | in 2 or 3 subnets (on one Ethernet interface).
         | 
         | The bottom line is that your server should be listening on the
         | secured address and your web browser should be using temporary
         | addresses for outbound connections.
        
           | exabrial wrote:
           | > Relatively short lifetimes
           | 
           | If it's not a unique address for every request, it's
           | unfortunately too long.
        
             | labcomputer wrote:
             | It's no worse than IPv4, which tends to maintain the same
             | address until you reboot your CPE.
             | 
             | You can always change the configuration to reduce the
             | address refresh interval for your OS.
        
         | mmh0000 wrote:
         | Please DO NOT rely on a NAT for any sort of security. "Getting
         | around" a NAT is so common today that Wikipedia even has a
         | fairly comprehensive article dedicated to it [0].
         | 
         | Whether IPv4 or IPv6 does not negate the need for a firewall at
         | the ingress/egress.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT_traversal
        
           | azdle wrote:
           | Wouldn't those all apply to a simple stateful firewall too?
           | 
           | I mean, clearly OP doesn't need to worry about the lack of
           | NAT, but not having gone through all of the things listed on
           | that list, I would assume that they all require an active
           | participant behind the NAT/firewall, and would still be
           | required for just a plain old stateful firewall (assuming you
           | don't have the ports open) when you want to communicate with
           | some other endpoint behind another firewall.
        
         | Gigachad wrote:
         | Basically all consumer routers block incoming connections by
         | default. It works almost the same as NAT except you can allow
         | the same port on multiple machines in the network now.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jaywalk wrote:
         | In addition to all of the comments mentioning that a firewall
         | accomplishes what you're looking for (and it is almost
         | certainly built into your router) I'm curious as to what
         | exactly you mean by "switching" your office network to IPv6.
         | Are you just saying that you enabled it? Because you'd hit more
         | than a couple speedbumps browsing the web if you completely got
         | rid of IPv4.
        
         | josho wrote:
         | Of potential interest is that IPv6 also has the concept of link
         | local addresses. These are automatically assigned and not
         | routable.
         | 
         | But, yeh, I went through the same moment of fear that you did
         | when I first turned on ipv6.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ghshephard wrote:
       | At some point, some low-hanging companies are just going to start
       | running IPv6 only applications and deal with the fall-out of some
       | nn% of their customer not being compatible. Those customers will
       | complain to their ISPs, which will provide incentive to get IPv6
       | deployed (should have been done 10 years ago honestly at any
       | credible ISP). Getting the number closer to 100% will make it
       | easier for new companies to deploy IPv6 only, until we get to the
       | point that IPv4 is seen as some legacy thing that isn't relevant
       | but used to be important in the dark ages of Web Deployments.
       | 
       | I'm very surprised at work and at home how often most of my
       | Internet communications is running over IPv6. There are some
       | surprising exceptions though [1].
       | 
       | I'd be willing to place a wager that there will be a $100mm
       | company that is only IPv6 by 2030. And that the "Default IPv6
       | only on the Internet unless there is some weird edge case" will
       | occur by 2040.
       | 
       | IPv4 as a protocol, though, will never, ever, go away - we'll see
       | it widely deployed for the next 100 years.
       | 
       | [1]                   $ dig news.ycombinator.com AAAA
       | ; <<>> DiG 9.16.1-Ubuntu <<>> news.ycombinator.com AAAA        ;;
       | global options: +cmd        ;; Got answer:        ;; ->>HEADER<<-
       | opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46616        ;; flags: qr rd
       | ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
       | ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:        ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp:
       | 65494        ;; QUESTION SECTION:        ;news.ycombinator.com.
       | IN      AAAA             ;; Query time: 176 msec        ;;
       | SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53)        ;; WHEN: Thu Dec 09
       | 15:21:09 EST 2021        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 49
        
         | mdaniel wrote:
         | > Those customers will complain to their ISPs, which will
         | provide incentive to get IPv6 deployed
         | 
         | Your experience with huge ISPs has obviously been different
         | from mine. I am deeply grateful that I've benefited from two
         | "first world" advantages: Comcast has (surprisingly) been very
         | proactive about IPv6 support, and here in the Bay Area I have
         | actual competition available for me to switch to. But in other
         | parts of the country, that's for sure not true
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | to address the dig portion of your comment, the AAAA record
         | (err, or lack of it) for github.com likely is a _lot_ more
         | impactful than HN
         | 
         | It's not that I think major users are going to switch, but I'll
         | point out that GitLab actually does have AAAA records
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | fun fact: comcast have been proactive about ipv6 because
           | their management network grew so large and unwieldy, through
           | various acquisitions and long term inefficient use of space,
           | that ipv4 RFC1918 10/8 (and 192.168 etc) was no longer
           | sufficient to address all of their individual netblocks.
           | 
           | turns out that if you allocate a private /24 to every POP you
           | can absolutely exhaust 10/8 in a big last mile ISP.
           | 
           | they started with ipv6 for their own management network
           | before any public netblocks started getting rolled out to
           | customers.
        
             | ArchOversight wrote:
             | The issue is that each set top box, cable modem and
             | everything else gets a management IP address on the network
             | as well for allowing configuration changes/validating
             | status/all that fun stuff.
             | 
             | The large push for IPv6 was started so that management of
             | set top boxes/cable modems no longer required large islands
             | of RFC1918 space where they had to deploy multiple NAT's to
             | get traffic in/out of those environments.
        
               | walrus01 wrote:
               | yes, from what I've heard, they specified full ipv6 as a
               | non-negotiable "must have" with their CPE vendors (and
               | CMTS) almost 16, 18 years ago. Comcast gets a lot of shit
               | for its poor customer service practices, as does any huge
               | cable company, but the people who run the core IP network
               | knew, and still do know what they're doing.
        
             | hackbinary wrote:
             | Does that mean they will need to deploy IPv8 with 256 bits
             | of address space?
             | 
             | Or will IPv8 go straight to 1024 bits?
             | 
             | ;)
        
         | marbu wrote:
         | I wonder when (or if) we will see new IPv6 only ISPs. That
         | would be an indication that the transition is actually
         | happening. Even though you note that most of your internet
         | communications are done over IPv6, I doubt that you would be
         | willing to go for IPv6 only ISP.
         | 
         | Lack of IPv4 addresses is a problem for new ISPs trying to
         | enter the market, as even with levels of NAT, you need some
         | minimal address space to serve your customers, which is harder
         | and more expensive to get. So on one hand starting with IPv6
         | only stack would avoid these problems, but on the other hand it
         | also means that every potential customer will be unhappy and in
         | the end, you won't get many customers willing to pay you for
         | IPv6 only connection.
        
           | throw0101a wrote:
           | > _I wonder when (or if) we will see new IPv6 only ISPs._
           | 
           | If you have a mobile device on US T-Mobile you only get a
           | IPv6 address on it:
           | 
           | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNMNglk_CvE
           | 
           | * https://pc.nanog.org/static/published/meetings/NANOG73/1645
           | /...
           | 
           | * https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/deploy360/2014/ca
           | s...
           | 
           | Any access to IPv4 is through a proxy.
        
             | jandrese wrote:
             | As long as your ISP supports 6 to 4 tunneling it is really
             | no problem.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | The big hold up, IMO, is ISPs. They seem completely unmotivated
         | to upgrade their infrastructure to support IPv6. Until a
         | majority of them do that, I don't think any 100mm company will
         | do a "IPv6 only" thing.
         | 
         | The cost of IPv4 addresses is slowly creeping upward, but
         | hasn't hit a point of being prohibitive for a company. Once
         | they hit near the $1k level, that's when I think things will
         | start to change.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | Maybe someday Verzion FiOS will support native v6. When I set
           | up a Hurricane Electric tunnel _over a decade ago_ I never
           | thought I would still be using it in the 2020s.
        
         | miki123211 wrote:
         | I wonder if it would be commercially viable for Amazon to offer
         | discounts to customers who connect over IPV6.
         | 
         | Amazon spends a _lot_ of money on IPV4 blocks for AWS. They
         | would directly benefit from wider IPV 6adoption.
         | 
         | This would be a great way to get regular people to care about
         | this technology. That, in turn, would make ISPS care much more
         | than they currently do.
        
         | mr_mitm wrote:
         | How will large corporate networks transition? I've recently
         | seen a large organization using the 5.0.0.0/8 address space.
         | The decision to use these addresses was made a long time ago
         | and they still didn't switch to an actual private address space
         | and choose to deal with all the issues instead.
        
           | merb wrote:
           | just use 64:ff9b::/96 first if you own a subnet? if not just
           | buy a good firewall that supports v6 (sadly cisco meraki does
           | not work well, tough)
        
           | ghshephard wrote:
           | Dual Stack. Start off with by deploying IPv6 across the
           | network without touching the IPv4 environment. Most modern
           | operating systems will just automatically detect they have an
           | IPv6 router and auto-configure. Big advantage of IPv6 is that
           | address autoconfiguration is built _into the protocol_ itself
           | - no need for DHCP, Static Configuration, etc...
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | They mostly won't.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | I think a lot of SMBs are the holdouts for IPv6; their entire
         | IT infrastructure is IPv4, and switching will be expensive
         | because every router, subnet, VLAN, &c. must be upgraded. Small
         | home networks are comparatively easy once all clients support
         | IPv6: switch from a single subnet in the private range to a
         | single /64 and add a stateful firewall. Since SMBs can run a
         | lot of clients with very few (or even one!) public IP, IPv4
         | addresses will need to become _much_ more expensive (or
         | critical remote services will need to switch to IPv6 only)
         | before it 's cheaper to upgrade internal infrastructure to
         | IPv6.
         | 
         | Note that NAT64/464XLAT solve the reverse problem. NAT-PT was
         | the theoretical solution, but see RFC 4966 for all the reasons
         | why that was a failure.
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | Many SMBs should probably go full cloud and once that's done
           | they can "downgrade" the office network to zero-trust and
           | maybe deploy IPv6 at the same time.
        
         | alerighi wrote:
         | IPv6 is a disaster. It's too difficult to understand or
         | configure properly, and it's too different from IPv4. There is
         | a ton of software that breaks with IPv6, and a ton of system
         | administrators that doesn't understand it (and for a reason,
         | it's too complicated for nothing).
         | 
         | I would have preferred an IPv4 version 2, and extension to the
         | address space of IPv4, possibly in a backward compatible way,
         | so that applications, routers and equipment not built for the
         | new protocol can continue to work, of course considering only a
         | part of the address (e.g. if the network passes trough some old
         | routers, it's not a problem since they only have to look at the
         | most significant part of the address that is in the same place
         | of the IPv4 address) and can ignore the extension.
         | 
         | Having a dual stack network is also a mess, and I don't get how
         | it was considered a good idea. IPv4 this way will never go
         | away, and we will always have two network stacks on every
         | computer. And if you have to choose between two, you will
         | choose the easier one, or the one you know, that is IPv4. A
         | simple extension would have been far more easier to rollout.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | IPv6 isn't all that difficult, insomuch as IPv4 is not basic
           | itself. In fact it's probably easier to teach someone with no
           | prior knowledge IPv6 instead of IPv4. "What's the netmask"
           | isn't a question for user endpoints, it's /64. You can still
           | DHCP, you can still hardcode, but the replacement for ARP can
           | also assign you an IP without having to configure external
           | services to make that happen.
           | 
           | The IPv4 header and the way routers work wouldn't allow for a
           | variable address. The source/destination sit in front of
           | variable length extensions and the actual payload. Not to
           | mention it'd be god awful to implement that kind of thing in
           | non programmable level hardware. You could always implement
           | it as an option header but then you've basically invented "v6
           | over v4" which is already a thing. Of course there is always
           | NAT which v4 endpoints are already used to so this is a non-
           | problem anyways, I've run v6 only at home for years at this
           | point.
           | 
           | A lot of applications break on it sure but that's because a
           | lot of applications are hardcoded with the assumptions about
           | how big the address is not because the address gets put into
           | a container named "v6" instead of "v4 version 2" by the OS.
        
           | throw0101a wrote:
           | > _possibly in a backward compatible way_
           | 
           | Pre-IPv6 all IP code had 32 bits reserved for addresses. For
           | more addresses, you would need >32 bits.
           | 
           | How do you squeeze >32 bits of data into 32 bit data
           | structures?
           | 
           | You would need to touch every bit of IP code out there to
           | expand the corresponding address filed (e.g., in a _struct
           | in_addr_ )--which is what had to be done for IPv6.
        
             | patentatt wrote:
             | I'd argue that that's in essence what NAT (especially
             | CGNAT) does by abusing the 16 bit port number: extend the
             | 32-bit assessing space to ~48 bits. And it pretty much
             | works just fine for many many use cases.
        
           | Arnavion wrote:
           | I'm just a programmer with a tiny homelab, and it took me
           | less than a week to understand enough to be able to set up an
           | IPv6 LAN. This included learning enough to be diagnosing and
           | fixing routing issues within my router OS and all the LAN
           | machines, implementing prefix-delegation to one of the LAN
           | machines to make it a subrouter for Docker containers, and
           | setting up NAT64 and DNS64 on the router so that the LAN
           | machines could even disable IPv4 entirely. And those latter
           | two were just me flexing because it was a homelab; a regular
           | LAN wouldn't go that far.
           | 
           | I'm not sure what this "ton of system administrators that
           | don't understand it" is having difficulty with.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | IPv6 is no more difficult to understand than IPv4. In many
           | ways it is easier since there are fewer legacy RFCs
           | pertaining to it. System administrators don't understand it
           | because they have not been forced to learn about it yet the
           | same way they were forced to learn about IPv4.
           | 
           | Backwards compatibility would have made it far more complex.
           | 
           | If you sit down to look at IPv6 it's really quite
           | straightforward. I think a lot of network admins are secretly
           | hoping to retire before they have to learn a new technology
           | though.
        
           | iknowstuff wrote:
           | For home users and non-professionals, IPv6 is simpler than
           | IPv4. Every device autoconfigs selecting its own address via
           | SLAAC. No DHCP needed. No need to understand NAT and no
           | dealing with subnets.
           | 
           | Especially when mDNS is in the mix and every device gets its
           | own .local domain, which already happens with iOS, macOS and
           | Windows devices (plus Linux with avahi), it is dead simple to
           | have a very reliable local network.
        
             | ghshephard wrote:
             | Ditching Ethernet broadcast that hit _every single
             | interface on a network_ when you only wanted to communicate
             | with a _single device on a specific protocol_ is a big win.
             | Getting rid of Subnets by making the smallest possible
             | subnet infinitely large eliminated 90% of network confusion
             | around subnets. Privacy based IP addresses also a nice
             | addition. After working with IPv6 for 10 or so years, you
             | really grew to appreciate what an architectural advantage
             | it has over IPv4. As for deploying it? I dunno - I just
             | plug my Ubuntu laptop into a WiFi Network and it just seems
             | to work. I 'm pretty sure the comcast routers I've
             | connected to have had zero configuration beyond what they
             | can pick up connecting to comcast. In the future - people
             | (other than say Network Engineers working for IT) probably
             | won't even discuss things like "IP" addresses.
        
         | nikanj wrote:
         | That's an easy bet to make, as today $100m is late-seed, pre-
         | launch valuation for any company that promises both AI and
         | blockchains.
         | 
         | Assuming company valuations continue to inflate, by 2030 $100m
         | goes to any team who manage to agree on a business card design
        
         | nly wrote:
         | Virgin here in the UK, with 20% of broadband residential market
         | share, one of the top 3, don't seem to give a fuck. Still ipv4
         | only.
        
           | dane-pgp wrote:
           | The obligatory link for that is:
           | 
           | https://havevirginmediaenabledipv6yet.co.uk/
           | 
           | > Answer: No [crying face emoji]
           | 
           | > We've been asking since March 2010.
        
         | moelf wrote:
         | >deployed for the next 100 years
         | 
         | bold for you to assume we will have active internet for 100
         | more years /s...
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | IPv4 is perfectly sufficient for your bunker community's LAN.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | > _deal with the fall-out of some nn% of their customer not
         | being compatible_
         | 
         | Most of their customers in pretty much everywhere. Global IPv6
         | adaptation is at like 33% and only a couple of countries pass
         | the 50% mark.
        
         | CrLf wrote:
         | Well, even when ISPs are dilligent in deploying IPv6, they
         | still have to deal with troublesome end-user hardware that
         | can't just be replaced overnight.
         | 
         | For example, here in Portugal the largest ISP (MEO) has had a
         | wide deployment of IPv6 for many years. However, it's (up to
         | very recently) main end-user router supplier
         | (Thomson/Technicolor) has also had chronic IPv6 bugs in its
         | firmware(1). MEO enables IPv6 by default nevertheless, but if
         | you're an advanced user you'll have a hard time overlooking the
         | random connection failures to IPv6 destinations.
         | 
         | (1) Specifically, it resets the flow label field randomly when
         | it is non-zero (the case with most recent versions of Linux,
         | macOS and, I guess, Windows). Turns out the flow label is taken
         | into consideration by many load balancers so, if it changes
         | mid-connection, your packets may end up in a server that has no
         | knowledge of you and you get a connection reset.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | You can run a whole company on one IPv4 address (or zero if you
         | use a CDN) so there's no reason to go IPv6-only.
        
         | rilindo wrote:
         | > I'd be willing to place a wager that there will be a $100mm
         | company that is only IPv6 by 2030.
         | 
         | And at 60 percent usage, it will probably be India[1]
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...
        
           | jesterpm wrote:
           | The trend on the "IPv6 Adoption" tab is fascinating. It looks
           | like the inverse of the usual "high traffic during the week,
           | low traffic during the weekend" pattern that I'm used to
           | seeing in traffic graphs.
           | 
           | I wonder why? Is IPv6 adoption significantly higher for
           | residential internet connections vs. corporate networks?
        
             | excalibur wrote:
             | I mean yes, people who don't know what an IP is use
             | whatever their ISP gives them, and ISPs have mostly rolled
             | out v6 by now (albeit imperfectly). Businesses actually
             | manage their networks actively, and they use what they
             | know, which is almost always v4.
        
             | dijit wrote:
             | Mobile Network operators have been quite forerunning with
             | regards to ipv6. That is primarily the driver for ipv6- iOS
             | forcing apps to have an ipv6 backend was a huge driver too
             | for services.
        
             | tialaramex wrote:
             | Yes, residential users have a lot more IPv6, a lot more of
             | almost anything modern (but somewhat regardless of whether
             | it's necessarily better).
        
             | jandrese wrote:
             | Corporate customers are very slow to transition to IPv6.
             | Most of them aren't feeling pressure on the IPv4 space the
             | way ISPs are and corporate security appliances are
             | notoriously slow to adopt IPv6.
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | Strictly limited supply... check.
       | 
       | Tradable... check.
       | 
       | Has some inherent usefulness... check.
       | 
       | Price is rising rapidly... check.
       | 
       | IPv4 is going to live forever as a non-crypto coin!
        
         | Thorentis wrote:
         | IPv4 NFTs will surely become a thing soon.
        
         | jayflux wrote:
         | > Tradable... check.
         | 
         | I know you're joking but it's not tradable (by home users). I
         | can't just sell my IP address to someone else. ISPs.. maybe,
         | but I can imagine they make more money continuously leasing
         | them out than selling them for a one off payment.
        
       | nerdponx wrote:
       | It looks like there was a big increase in the size of the waiting
       | list in November. Is this bigger than any past increase?
        
         | jakub_g wrote:
         | Previous big spike at beginning of chart was also in November,
         | in 2019. Can someone knowledgable explain why is this the case?
        
           | w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote:
           | "Since the RIPE NCC began operations in 1992, we have been
           | responsible for distributing IP addresses and AS Numbers in
           | our service region. In November 2019, we exhausted our
           | remaining IPv4 pool. This means that networks in Europe, the
           | Middle East and parts of Central Asia are no longer able to
           | receive "new" IPv4 addresses from us that haven't previously
           | been used by another network."
        
           | teaearlgraycold wrote:
           | Black Friday subnet prices are hard to ignore.
        
         | Maxburn wrote:
         | It would certainly be nice if the chart scrolled and went back
         | further.
        
           | zauguin wrote:
           | The graph starts in November 2019 because that is when the
           | waitlist system was introduced. There's not point in going
           | back further because further back the waitlist didn't exist.
        
             | nerdponx wrote:
             | So this really big increase in November 2022 is a brand new
             | phenomenon, and the waiting list has been sitting at 0 for
             | the entire time since the 2019 increase.
             | 
             | What's causing the big increase now?
        
               | ajb wrote:
               | RIPE ran out of spare addresses at the end of 2019. After
               | the queueing system was instituted some organisations
               | must have returned some address blocks, which were used
               | during 2020 and 2021, and my guess is that these have now
               | run out. (it could just be that the return rate is below
               | the request rate, but IMO the graph looks too straight
               | for that).
        
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