10 ms·

It's been a quarter of a century since IPv6 launch. There's some really good lessons learned here. IPv6 requires everyone, everywhere, needs to change their co

by RijilV 4y ago

It's been a quarter of a century since IPv6 launch. There's some really good lessons learned here. IPv6 requires everyone, everywhere, needs to change their configuration to add IPv6 addresses and network connectivity to every node/endpoint. The madness of course is that all the underlying infrastructure software (routers, OS, standard libraries) all support IPv6. It would seem, at a large enough scale, that software is the easy part, configuration is the hard part. DJB wrote this up two decades ago[0] and it remains relevant. In particular the comparison between IPv6 and MX records. It took me a little while to wrap my brain around just extending existing software to support sometimes 32bit and sometimes 128. Ultimately it wasn't hard to dream up a few solutions for how that would work. The other thing, FWIW, which has been slowing IPv6 adoption is business owners not asking for it as a high priority item from their providers. I've seen this happen way more often that I would like where provider asks a customer what they want and the customer never mentions IPv6, and when prompted shrugs it off because they don't see it as a business critical (and in fairness, it hasn't been). Yes provider isn't asking the 'nerds' at their customer's businesses, but those folks also aren't the ones paying the bills so... 0: https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html

noipv6 4y ago
anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008 part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened). that turned out to not be so effective since so many ppl ignored the realities of legacy ip depletion. at this juncture ipv6-only (w/ nat64) is becoming a more preferable approach, since you only need to maintain a single protocol in the majority of your environment (as evidenced by org's like tmobile us, facebook, etc). part 3, distractions: one could argue that rants like "ipv6mess" are the biggest distractions to ipv6 deployment. "no one is asking for ipv6" is a lie writ large in the provider space; i've seen plenty of examples where a provider has told multiple customers "you're the first person to ask for ipv6 support!" - the problem being is that most org's don't actually keep track of such requests in a unified place, & so every customer is pushing for it alone, so far as the provider is concerned.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  > anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. It was relevant then -and it is relevant now- because there are good lessons in how to migrate from thing A to thing B, even if some of the then-missing necessary bits are in place now. Still, it's almost certainly the case that DJB's rant had no real effect, and that the necessary steps were bound to be taken as the cost of sticking with IPv4 rose. Also, a significant period of time was always going to be necessary for software and tooling to catch up -- perhaps there wasn't much to be done about improving the transition 20 years ago. Yet DJB's rant isn't wrong or devoid of value -- it's mostly right and entertaining (still!), even if there just wasn't enough IETF and dev oomph to do better at the time.
  - Dagger2 4y ago
    I'm not sure it was ever relevant. All it does is describe the problem, which was already well-known at the time by the people working on v6. It doesn't give a fix for it. It doesn't give a fix because no fix is possible. Because the problem comes from the design of v4, not from v6. For some reason djb wasn't able to get his head around that, and people have been pointing to that damn page as if it's some big gotcha ever since. No, it's just the situation we're stuck with, thanks to the people that designed v4.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      I mean, v6 is still mostly a failure, so (rightly or not) the situation is going to be blamed on the people that have been pushing v6. That's just the cost of trying to push the entire world towards a new standard. (I know that v6 has been a success within datacenters and such.)
      - noipv6 4y ago
        by what definition would you call ipv6 "mostly a failure"? 30-40% global eyeball network (to the end user) adoption after ~10 years of active deployment, against very vocal opposition seems commendable enough to me.
xattt 4y ago
If we take a chapter on fixing broken implementations from the USB Forum, the clear solution is to come up with an IPv6 Rev. e^76.
connicpu 4y ago
I got a brand new router recently, IPv6 was still disabled by default! I honestly can't understand the reasoning, I don't even buy the internet visibility argument because the default incoming connection rules for IPv6 after I enabled it were deny-all. We really have a long way to go still in getting equipment everywhere enabled on it.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Some ISPs have v6 enabled but it's just broken or sub optimal. I imagine the logic is that v4 always works and the user could only see a benefit from having v6 off by default.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    True, on an individual level that probably represents the best benefit. Anyone who actually cares would also know to go through the settings to check the defaults on all of those things with a new router too.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  IPv6 is a security liability and provides no benefit to the user.
  - Dagger2 4y ago
    Both of those statements are wrong. It provides benefits to the user and it's no more of a security vulnerability than having any other networking protocol is. If anything, v4 is more of a vulnerability because it's so easy to scan and because NAT increases the complexity enough that most people don't understand how their networks work.
    - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
      Three decades of IPv6 mis-adoption shows otherwise. "Running out of IPv4 addresses" is not a problem you face unless you're an internet service provider or a mobile network. 99.99999% of the rest of us don't care because we use 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8 when we have to do networking. Yes, NAT is complex. That sucks. No, blindly stating "you don't need NAT and you're holding it wrong" is just plain incorrect. Please make NAT easier to use and configure, don't sweep it under the rug and pretend like the world can function without it.
solarkraft 4y ago
If it was easy to set up, the providers would just include it (or the price would be low enough to shrug it on). But it's not really trivial and IPv4 works well enough for most people to bother. Remember the typical workaround for network issues being disabling IPv6?

by RijilV 4y ago

noipv6 4y ago

anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008 part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened). that turned out to not be so effective since so many ppl ignored the realities of legacy ip depletion. at this juncture ipv6-only (w/ nat64) is becoming a more preferable approach, since you only need to maintain a single protocol in the majority of your environment (as evidenced by org's like tmobile us, facebook, etc). part 3, distractions: one could argue that rants like "ipv6mess" are the biggest distractions to ipv6 deployment. "no one is asking for ipv6" is a lie writ large in the provider space; i've seen plenty of examples where a provider has told multiple customers "you're the first person to ask for ipv6 support!" - the problem being is that most org's don't actually keep track of such requests in a unified place, & so every customer is pushing for it alone, so far as the provider is concerned.

cryptonector 4y ago
> anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. It was relevant then -and it is relevant now- because there are good lessons in how to migrate from thing A to thing B, even if some of the then-missing necessary bits are in place now. Still, it's almost certainly the case that DJB's rant had no real effect, and that the necessary steps were bound to be taken as the cost of sticking with IPv4 rose. Also, a significant period of time was always going to be necessary for software and tooling to catch up -- perhaps there wasn't much to be done about improving the transition 20 years ago. Yet DJB's rant isn't wrong or devoid of value -- it's mostly right and entertaining (still!), even if there just wasn't enough IETF and dev oomph to do better at the time.
- Dagger2 4y ago
  I'm not sure it was ever relevant. All it does is describe the problem, which was already well-known at the time by the people working on v6. It doesn't give a fix for it. It doesn't give a fix because no fix is possible. Because the problem comes from the design of v4, not from v6. For some reason djb wasn't able to get his head around that, and people have been pointing to that damn page as if it's some big gotcha ever since. No, it's just the situation we're stuck with, thanks to the people that designed v4.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    I mean, v6 is still mostly a failure, so (rightly or not) the situation is going to be blamed on the people that have been pushing v6. That's just the cost of trying to push the entire world towards a new standard. (I know that v6 has been a success within datacenters and such.)
    - noipv6 4y ago
      by what definition would you call ipv6 "mostly a failure"? 30-40% global eyeball network (to the end user) adoption after ~10 years of active deployment, against very vocal opposition seems commendable enough to me.

xattt 4y ago

If we take a chapter on fixing broken implementations from the USB Forum, the clear solution is to come up with an IPv6 Rev. e^76.

connicpu 4y ago

I got a brand new router recently, IPv6 was still disabled by default! I honestly can't understand the reasoning, I don't even buy the internet visibility argument because the default incoming connection rules for IPv6 after I enabled it were deny-all. We really have a long way to go still in getting equipment everywhere enabled on it.

Gigachad 4y ago
Some ISPs have v6 enabled but it's just broken or sub optimal. I imagine the logic is that v4 always works and the user could only see a benefit from having v6 off by default.
- connicpu 4y ago
  True, on an individual level that probably represents the best benefit. Anyone who actually cares would also know to go through the settings to check the defaults on all of those things with a new router too.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
IPv6 is a security liability and provides no benefit to the user.
- Dagger2 4y ago
  Both of those statements are wrong. It provides benefits to the user and it's no more of a security vulnerability than having any other networking protocol is. If anything, v4 is more of a vulnerability because it's so easy to scan and because NAT increases the complexity enough that most people don't understand how their networks work.
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    Three decades of IPv6 mis-adoption shows otherwise. "Running out of IPv4 addresses" is not a problem you face unless you're an internet service provider or a mobile network. 99.99999% of the rest of us don't care because we use 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8 when we have to do networking. Yes, NAT is complex. That sucks. No, blindly stating "you don't need NAT and you're holding it wrong" is just plain incorrect. Please make NAT easier to use and configure, don't sweep it under the rug and pretend like the world can function without it.

solarkraft 4y ago

If it was easy to set up, the providers would just include it (or the price would be low enough to shrug it on). But it's not really trivial and IPv4 works well enough for most people to bother. Remember the typical workaround for network issues being disabling IPv6?