6 ms·

Purely from a business perspective, for VM there is no point. They have more than enough v4 to keep them going, customers (outside of a tiny technical minority

Purely from a business perspective, for VM there is no point. They have more than enough v4 to keep them going, customers (outside of a tiny technical minority who probably wouldn't chose VM anyway) do not see any benefit. That plus other ISPs v6 implementations breaking things randomly, I understand why they don't bother.

Hizonner 3mo ago
Right. Which is why this is not a choice businesses should be allowed to make.
- post-it 3mo ago
  Of all the things to regulate why bother with this one? It's not like IPv6 is better for the environment or useful to the consumer.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    It reduces the monopolization power of big cloud providers. This is especially relevant to countries that aren't the US, because it reduces reliance on the US. It also just reduces resource waste (of labor time). Countries like China that have insufficient IPv4 addresses and political power have mandated it. One IP per home is manageable, for now, but CGNAT is really bad.
  - dijit 3mo ago
    depends on how you look at it. Right now it's very much a tragedy of the commons. IPv6 not being supported in many places means the internet is more centralised, less likely to use proper p2p tech- because it's a lot harder to make it work rather than throwing up a TURN box and relaying everything. "The latency? Who cares? IPv6 sometimes breaks right now" - because nobody is testing it, so why should people be the first to support it? There's no easy upside. The only real upside for businesses is not having to pay for increasingly expensive IPv4 allocations. But they don't really care, its not nearly expensive enough yet. Customers will get GCNAT, businesses will continue as normal. All that will happen is that the internet gets slower and less equal. Which is exactly the same thing that's happening with inefficient memory hungry software: people either have to buy a more expensive laptop or they have a shitty experience.. Nobody is advocating for them, they just feel things getting shittier year on year and many are just choosing to avoid technology instead.
    - lwhi 3mo ago
      Maybe the solution is to make IPv4 prohibitively expensive.
      - lazide 3mo ago
        Or even just expensive.
        topranks 3mo ago
        It definitely costs them a lot. Implementing v6 without doubt saves money for ISPs. Especially in the CGNAT game as those boxes aren’t cheap.
    - gruez 3mo ago
      >IPv6 not being supported in many places means the internet is more centralised, less likely to use proper p2p tech- Realistically nobody outside some devoted HN readers are going to self host their own content. At best you'd see something like netflix trying to offload their video hosting costs onto their customers.
      - dijit 3mo ago
        The sheer amount of times Airdrop has been the "best" way to share files takes away from your point a bit. It's almost always faster than anything else available, and ipv6 would make that method of sending files closer to the default for most people. Having VOIP in games or 1v1 lobbies is, in the strictest sense, "hosting" something in the same way. FD: I work in video games so I speak from this bias.
        inquirerGeneral 3mo ago
        [dead]
        crote 3mo ago
        IPv6 doesn't solve the Airdrop problem. It'll only work at reasonably-fast speeds in the rare case that both people are connected to the same wifi network - but there's already tools like LocalSend[0] for that. Having a file go via cellular provider A, halfway across the country, through some IX, halfway across the country back, and via cellular provider B tends to make things a bit slow. Similarly, using P2P for game VOIP is a Really Bad Idea as it basically doxxes the player. Even 1v1 lobbies aren't always with people you trust enough to invite them into your house, so you shouldn't be handing them your IP address! In 99% of cases it is better to proxy it via a server instead. [0]: https://localsend.org/ https://localsend.org/
  - Hizonner 3mo ago
    Actually not as much point now. The reason to regulate in maybe 2000 or so was that staying with IPv4 led to NAT. NAT led to it being impossible for users to receive incoming connections. Inability to receive incoming connections led to (a) horrendous protocol complexity, (b) probably some applications never even being invented, and, (c) everybody using ultra-centralized services. Ultra-centralized services led to advertising-driven distortions of service utility, concentration of political and economic power, and choke points. Choke points led to surveillance state bullshit that's just fully ripening today. And, yes, this was (in broad outline) foreseeable in 2000. I wasn't the only one.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago...
  - throw0101a 3mo ago
    > Of all the things to regulate why bother with this one? It's not like IPv6 is better for the environment or useful to the consumer. If I'm with a small-time ISP that has to use CG-NAT because they don't have the cash to buy/lease enough IPv4 addresses to give one to each CPE WAN interface, then using things like Xbox/PS multiplayer/P2P gaming is no longer possible. Want to host a Minecraft server? Too bad. Are those two use-cases "useful to the consumer"?
    - icedchai 3mo ago
      You are right, but ISPs will tell you that you're not allowed to host servers anyway. Most have it in the AUP.
      - throw0101a 3mo ago
        1. Is trying to use Xbox/PS2 multi-player functionality "hosting"? 2. Perhaps our expectations of what you should be allowed to do is too low?
        icedchai 3mo ago
        1. I'd say "no", but if it involves opening a port, I could see the ISP argument even if I disagree with it. 2. I agree. The Internet was supposed to offer end-to-end connectivity. That went out the door with NAT...
    - jjmarr 3mo ago
      I did port forwarding in 2010 for a Minecraft server. Basically every router supports it. It wasn't meaningfully more difficult than setting up the server.
      - lazide 3mo ago
        Most isps, you can’t do that anymore as you no longer have a publically reachable IPv4 address. It moved the ‘just configure your router’ part to their equipment, as they now use CGNAT. It’s gotten much worse.
  - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
    We are locked into apple and google backup services because of CGNAT. If ipv6, and symmetric fiber internet, was ubiquitous when smartphones came out, there could have been a competing option that backs up your own data to an appliance in your own home.
lambdaone 3mo ago
The slow adoption of IPv6 by many older companies is at least in part a paradoxical result of the success of IPv6 elsewhere, particularly in new builds where there is practically no overhead in deploying IPv6 in a green-field environment - see for example the mobile telecoms market in developing countries, where new builds are IPv6-first. This has taken pressure off the IPv4 legacy address pool, reducing the urgency for older providers. End-users are typically completely unaware of whether their traffic is being carried over IPv6 or IPv4, and so simply do not care one way or the other. (This particular post is more than likely being made over IPv6, since news.ycombinator.com has an IPv6 address and my OS, browser, router and ISP all support IPv6 straight out of the box, as is now true for the majority of users in my country.)

Hizonner 3mo ago

Right. Which is why this is not a choice businesses should be allowed to make.

post-it 3mo ago
Of all the things to regulate why bother with this one? It's not like IPv6 is better for the environment or useful to the consumer.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  It reduces the monopolization power of big cloud providers. This is especially relevant to countries that aren't the US, because it reduces reliance on the US. It also just reduces resource waste (of labor time). Countries like China that have insufficient IPv4 addresses and political power have mandated it. One IP per home is manageable, for now, but CGNAT is really bad.
- dijit 3mo ago
  depends on how you look at it. Right now it's very much a tragedy of the commons. IPv6 not being supported in many places means the internet is more centralised, less likely to use proper p2p tech- because it's a lot harder to make it work rather than throwing up a TURN box and relaying everything. "The latency? Who cares? IPv6 sometimes breaks right now" - because nobody is testing it, so why should people be the first to support it? There's no easy upside. The only real upside for businesses is not having to pay for increasingly expensive IPv4 allocations. But they don't really care, its not nearly expensive enough yet. Customers will get GCNAT, businesses will continue as normal. All that will happen is that the internet gets slower and less equal. Which is exactly the same thing that's happening with inefficient memory hungry software: people either have to buy a more expensive laptop or they have a shitty experience.. Nobody is advocating for them, they just feel things getting shittier year on year and many are just choosing to avoid technology instead.
  - lwhi 3mo ago
    Maybe the solution is to make IPv4 prohibitively expensive.
    - lazide 3mo ago
      Or even just expensive.
      - topranks 3mo ago
        It definitely costs them a lot. Implementing v6 without doubt saves money for ISPs. Especially in the CGNAT game as those boxes aren’t cheap.
  - gruez 3mo ago
    >IPv6 not being supported in many places means the internet is more centralised, less likely to use proper p2p tech- Realistically nobody outside some devoted HN readers are going to self host their own content. At best you'd see something like netflix trying to offload their video hosting costs onto their customers.
    - dijit 3mo ago
      The sheer amount of times Airdrop has been the "best" way to share files takes away from your point a bit. It's almost always faster than anything else available, and ipv6 would make that method of sending files closer to the default for most people. Having VOIP in games or 1v1 lobbies is, in the strictest sense, "hosting" something in the same way. FD: I work in video games so I speak from this bias.
      - inquirerGeneral 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - crote 3mo ago
        IPv6 doesn't solve the Airdrop problem. It'll only work at reasonably-fast speeds in the rare case that both people are connected to the same wifi network - but there's already tools like LocalSend[0] for that. Having a file go via cellular provider A, halfway across the country, through some IX, halfway across the country back, and via cellular provider B tends to make things a bit slow. Similarly, using P2P for game VOIP is a Really Bad Idea as it basically doxxes the player. Even 1v1 lobbies aren't always with people you trust enough to invite them into your house, so you shouldn't be handing them your IP address! In 99% of cases it is better to proxy it via a server instead. [0]: https://localsend.org/ https://localsend.org/
- Hizonner 3mo ago
  Actually not as much point now. The reason to regulate in maybe 2000 or so was that staying with IPv4 led to NAT. NAT led to it being impossible for users to receive incoming connections. Inability to receive incoming connections led to (a) horrendous protocol complexity, (b) probably some applications never even being invented, and, (c) everybody using ultra-centralized services. Ultra-centralized services led to advertising-driven distortions of service utility, concentration of political and economic power, and choke points. Choke points led to surveillance state bullshit that's just fully ripening today. And, yes, this was (in broad outline) foreseeable in 2000. I wasn't the only one.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago...
- throw0101a 3mo ago
  > Of all the things to regulate why bother with this one? It's not like IPv6 is better for the environment or useful to the consumer. If I'm with a small-time ISP that has to use CG-NAT because they don't have the cash to buy/lease enough IPv4 addresses to give one to each CPE WAN interface, then using things like Xbox/PS multiplayer/P2P gaming is no longer possible. Want to host a Minecraft server? Too bad. Are those two use-cases "useful to the consumer"?
  - icedchai 3mo ago
    You are right, but ISPs will tell you that you're not allowed to host servers anyway. Most have it in the AUP.
    - throw0101a 3mo ago
      1. Is trying to use Xbox/PS2 multi-player functionality "hosting"? 2. Perhaps our expectations of what you should be allowed to do is too low?
      - icedchai 3mo ago
        1. I'd say "no", but if it involves opening a port, I could see the ISP argument even if I disagree with it. 2. I agree. The Internet was supposed to offer end-to-end connectivity. That went out the door with NAT...
  - jjmarr 3mo ago
    I did port forwarding in 2010 for a Minecraft server. Basically every router supports it. It wasn't meaningfully more difficult than setting up the server.
    - lazide 3mo ago
      Most isps, you can’t do that anymore as you no longer have a publically reachable IPv4 address. It moved the ‘just configure your router’ part to their equipment, as they now use CGNAT. It’s gotten much worse.
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago
  We are locked into apple and google backup services because of CGNAT. If ipv6, and symmetric fiber internet, was ubiquitous when smartphones came out, there could have been a competing option that backs up your own data to an appliance in your own home.

lambdaone 3mo ago

The slow adoption of IPv6 by many older companies is at least in part a paradoxical result of the success of IPv6 elsewhere, particularly in new builds where there is practically no overhead in deploying IPv6 in a green-field environment - see for example the mobile telecoms market in developing countries, where new builds are IPv6-first. This has taken pressure off the IPv4 legacy address pool, reducing the urgency for older providers. End-users are typically completely unaware of whether their traffic is being carried over IPv6 or IPv4, and so simply do not care one way or the other. (This particular post is more than likely being made over IPv6, since news.ycombinator.com has an IPv6 address and my OS, browser, router and ISP all support IPv6 straight out of the box, as is now true for the majority of users in my country.)