Subj : What sense is a tunnel? (was: '-Unpublished-' with speed > 300)
To   : Dan Clough
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Sun Nov 09 2025 02:24 pm

Hello Dan,

On Friday November 07 2025 21:15, you wrote to me:

 MvV>> 4) And last but not least; what happened to that pioneer spirit
 MvV>> that made Fidonet sysops try out and help further develop new
 MvV>> technologies?

 DC> I'm really not sure that exists much any more.  I do understand what
 DC> you mean, and experienced it myself back in FidoNet in the 1990's.

For me it was the prime reason to get involved in IPv6. Now almost two decades ago I became aware of the IPv4 address space being finate and the expected depletion. I also learned about the proposed solution; IPv6. That triggered my curiosity. I wanted to know more about it. That in tur nbrought me in contact with SisXs and the use of tunnels. SixXs shut down in 2017 but there is still a lot of interestung material archived on their mo lomger maintained website: sixxs.net. Anyway, it was the pioneer spirit that made me into a Fidonet IPv6 evangelist...

 DC> Okay, so I can see that (running a server in an area only served by
 DC> CGNAT) as being a valid reason to want/need IPv6.  I guess I didn't
 DC> know that kind of thing was already happening.  Certainly haven't seen
 DC> or heard of it being a thing where I am.

That you may not have been in contact with CGNAT may be explained by the fact that when filling up the table of IPv4 address the US had the advantage of first choice. Those handing out the addresses didn't realise that four billion addresses might NOT be enough for the foreseeable future. Complete /8 were handed out to US companies and institutions. So in the US there usually is no shortage of IPv4 addresses. In Europe and other parts of the world most of the incumbamts still have enough IPv4 on stock but it is different for the newcomers. And with the fiberglass roll out there are many newcomers. They don't have "historic" IPv4, they have to buy it on the market and it is expensive. They need what money they have to invest in the hardware, so many have adopted a policy of not giving their customers a unique public IPv4 address but use CGNAT instead. Some of them (like mine) still offer the option of getting a unique public IPv4 on request but not all do. Hence the coming of CGNAT and the need to go IPv6.


Cheers, Michiel

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