Both countries have roughly the same population. The IPv4 problem has been swept under the rug with CGNAT and a normal person doesn't even notice it. But it sucks. Forget having a dedicated IP, even on a broadband connection, you don't get a public IP that's truly yours. According to IPInfo[1], there are around 1,000 users sharing my IP. I get flagged for malicious activity, and online gaming is impossible without a Tailscale relay.
Of course, much of this comes down to the bad luck (+ policies) of developing late, when most IPv4 blocks had already been allocated. But it's pretty unfair how US DoD, Apple, Ford, and others [1] are sitting on enormous IPv4 blocks they'll probably never fully use, and may never sell. Meanwhile I am sharing a single public IP with a thousand strangers.
> But it's pretty unfair how US DoD, Apple, Ford, and others [1] are sitting on enormous IPv4 blocks
Maybe Apple and Ford, but it's more than fair that DoD has large blocks since they created ipv4 to connect themselves to other networks. It was only 10 years ago that the US government decided to give up control of IANA.
I'd love to do that, if my ISP would provide me an IPv6 address. Windstream doesn't provide IPv6s. They did a trial a few years ago rolling it out and then undid it.
It's crazy I can get fiber to my house in the US, but not IPv6.
Our free tunnel broker service enables you to reach the IPv6 Internet by tunneling over existing IPv4 connections from your IPv6 enabled host or router to one of our IPv6 routers.
https://tunnelbroker.net/
It's something I've only recently been made aware of as well. Shocked we're not seeing more push for ipv6 everywhere given that it sounds common enough. If I don't have an IP address, I'm not getting the Internet I'm paying for; I'm getting access to a network that happens to itself have a connection to the Internet. Not unlike some of the BBS's in the early 90s which had Internet access -- I might be dialed in, but that didn't mean my computer itself was on the Internet.
I don't think it's sarcasm, I didn't know this was a thing either! At first, I thought OP was writing about their mobile connection.
Some carriers in my country have recently started to share the same IP between 4 customers, each having a port range (1-16363, ...), but you can always request a full IP for free.
That explains a lot of the sentiments I've seen on HN then...
I, unfortunately, have been on CGNATed residential internet since 2016, though I used to still get a public IP on request (they stopped doing that though.) I live in South East Asia, for context.
Without IPv6 my only choice would have been relying on a centralized service like Zerotier and Tailscale.
My current setup is CGNAT on 5G WAN (T-Mobile US), which obviously doesn't open public ports besides needed NAT.
Worse is I have IPv6 connectivity for devices, yet still no open ports available, so no serving available. And I only receive a /64 so no delegation available through router.
So now it's Hurricane Electric tunnel to their nearest (in my city) hosted node for IPv6 and a prepaid 50 USD/year node (technically x2 since I wanted a backup to play around with) for IPv4 port forwarding.
Both options are acceptable because the needed infra is close by in the largest metroplex in Texas, it just sucks to have to do all this extra work to replicate what I could do with a dial-up ISP.
I'll say this - having LLM assistants handle the nasty routing and firewall rules needed to make this hodge podge work without needing to be a network engineer has been very helpful.
In Sweden CGNAT was not a thing for a long time, the large incumbents still have their huge blocks of IPs so its "just" go to them if you want a pulic IP. Apparently smaller ISPs do use CGNAT, so its fairly common.
Me as somewhat of a nerd, even doubt if I need a public IP, seeing how cyber security is looking today.
IPv6 got some real traction in the last decade. From around 10% adoption up to 50%. It's not dead, like many are claiming. It works fine, just keep implementing it.
I keep IPv4 off on a media computer all the time out of curiosity. IPv6-only is still unusable because only about 5% to 10% of top sites that I find during a Google Search work. It's almost guaranteed that a website will not load on all the top results.
So even if it's true 50% of clients support IPv6, only about 5% to 10% of website hosts do.
It's the hobbyists who LARP as network engineers, and that end users and hiring managers can't tell the difference, who are holding everyone back.
Anyone who doesn't by default set up IPv6-only networks by default with NAT64 and DNS64, or who present any notion that IPv4 is somehow "okay", shouldn't have a job anywhere, not even an entry-level desktop support job.
If you have a dedicated IPv4 address, those behind NAT and CGNAT face significant throttling and false positive blocking. It's been made worse by scraper botnets.
This is quite similar situation indeed. It was once easier to adopt the metric system when the infrastructure was not yet as developed around the previous ones.
Austria-Hungary adopted the metric system in the 1870s. Back then: no cars, no highways, no speeding laws etc. Oxen-drawn wagons in the countryside were not built to a precise spec.
Only the railway, the architects and the artillery had to really switch. Ordinary people would still ask the grocer for half a pound of ham in the 1930s.
USA in the 1970s would have to remeasure all the land communications etc., or end up with a weird hybrid like the UK.
WHat we have in IPv4 and IPv6 is the weird UK-like hybrid...
Creating an IPng was always going to be complicated:
So it's a matter of mathematical and physical fact that to expand
the address size, you must change the protocol, and that means
[three] things immediately:
You have to change the version number.
You have to add new code to handle the new version.
[…]
You need a coexistence technique so that updated systems,
with the new protocol, can connect to old systems that know
nothing of the new protocol.
Two minutes of thought show that this third requirement has only
two solutions:
(3A) Dual stack, in which the new machines speak both
the old (IPv4) and new (IPng) protocol.
(3B) Translation, in which something translates addresses
between the old and new protocols.
I have seen people suggesting this before, but it's problematic for a few reasons:
- If you are managing the 4to6 mappings manually, it's obviously not going to be scalable. Just to give people an idea, websites nowadays can connect to 10+ IPs in a single page due to CDN load balancing and stuff.
- If you are handling the mappings automatically, such as by monitoring DNS queries and creating dynamic mappings based on that, the issues become more insidious: applications with hardcoded IP literals would fail without an obvious reason.
Ran across a comment a while ago on some fun "IPv6 math":
On the surface of the Earth [land+water], there are 8.4 IPv4 addresses per km². Not counting the oceans, that would be 28 IPv4 addresses per km² land.
IPv6 gives 10¹⁷ addresses per mm² (yes, square millimetre).
In terms of volume, 10⁸ IPv6 addresses per mm³ throughout the Earth.
* So (4x10¹¹)x(2x10¹²) = 8x10²³ stars in the universe.
* Size of IPv6 address space: 3.4x10³⁸
* Find the ratio between addresses and stars: 3.4x10³⁸ / 8x10²³
IPv6 offers about 430 trillion times more addresses than estimated stars in the universe. From Tom Coffee's presentation "An Enterprise IPv6 Address Planning Case-Study":
But it is really about more than just the available pool of addresses.
Much of the IPv6 rollout challenges have been centered around routing and security. It's great that I can personally have (in theory) more IP addresses than I would ever practically need (and I am saying this as someone with 200 IP endpoints just in my house), but if I can't easily manage and control access much of the theoretical benefit goes away.
IMO, IPv6 solved the address pool size part of the issue, but it made managing the v4 to v6 transition very painful.
Comparing land area to IP address assignments is one of the sillier visualizations I've ever seen. I can't imagine what this is intending to convey. Should Siberia have more IP addresses than all of Europe?
I still think we should just extend the length of IPv4. In my proposed system, existing addresses would become a subnet of the new set.
Eg 192.168.0.1 becomes 0.0.0.0.192.168.0.1
And then we dish out all the new address space. You would get the network providers to handle address conversion until software and hardware has been updated. Because all the existing addresses are reserved in the new set, it doesn’t affect them.
Keeps all the nice parts of IPv4, doesn’t require everyone to switch to an entirely new system, backwards compatible with existing hardware/software. Problem solved.
> backwards compatible with existing hardware/software
Absolutely not. Existing IPv4 hardware and software expects addresses to be 4 bytes long. They expect packets to have a 4 byte source address at offset 12 in the header, then a 4 byte destination address at offset 16. Everything breaks if you try to give them a header with an 8 byte source address at offset 12 and an 8 byte destination address at offset 20.
> Absolutely not. Existing IPv4 hardware and software expects addresses to be 4 bytes long.
As does DNS.
"A" records are fixed at 32 bits, so you have to add a new record type and update all DNS software, plus user-space API/library code and data structures to ask for and store the new record type.
Just like IPv6.
There is no "just" adding more addresses: whatever scheme anyone comes up with is the same amount of work as IPv6.
The set of all ip hardware and software is much much larger than just what currently exists, as it includes all hardware and software that is yet to be produced. Said another way, it’s a foolish consistency.
That would still constitute an entirely new system, just one that looks very like the previous one. So much code and other infrastructure (routing tables in hardware etc.) relies on IPv4 addresses being 32-bits not 64 and that would all need to change, complete with extra new stuff being added for that translation layer while both are in operation (which would end up being near permanent, people will find ways to keep the old stuff running as long as they can). I expect that this new scheme would just become a new version of CGNAT, “Global NAT” perhaps, with the same problems that adds.
IIRC something like that was considered when IPv6 was first being designed, be deemed insufficient for the long-term future. 64-bits is thought to be enough to stave off address starvation though, which is why IPv6 address ranges are usually assigned as /64s (my homer link has a /48 range should I wish to use it all!), so I can see your reasoning on that level.
Computers use binary. Hex is a human convenience. For anyone in computers hex is much better than decimal for obvious reasons. For anybody not in computers hex makes no sense and I'd need weeks of math lectures (which they wouldn't do the homework for and thus fail) to explain it.
Honestly IPv4 addresses should always have been formatted in hex, like FF 00 00 69, with whatever delimiter. Would make it trivial to write directly as a 32-bit int, and parsing and formatting a string would also be cheaper. And you could have funny blocks like CAFE.0.0.
You can indeed make good use of those funny names in IPv6. If your /64 or /56 prefix is $prefix you can assign your coffee pot to $prefix::cafe or maybe keep it just fe80::cafe if you only want link local access to your coffee pot.
How does 192.168.0.1 talk to 192.0.0.0.0.168.0.1? Like, literally, how does it make a packet with that destination address?
The entire ipv4 space is already mapped to reserved subsets of ipv6, by the way. e.g. ::ffff:0:0/96 (i.e. 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.255.255.w.x.y.z) or 64:ff9b::/96. v6 devices can already "talk to" v4. The problem is the ipv6 space is obviously not a subset of ipv4, so v4 doesn't have a clean way to talk to or even about v6.
Lots have thoughts on this, few take the time to review the existing implementations/proposals and explain both how it is their approach doesn't run in to the same problems as well as the problems their proposal still doesn't resolve.
Most of the time, this results in people thinking the big problems are one set like "if only there was a way to translate" while the real remaining problems are another set like "and how do you get people to want to transition when it works well enough for those clients in the translated state".
You just drop the top half. Or xor it? That'd make for some nice traffic-pattern art ;)
Now the reason this doesn't work is that the address length is not encoded, so if you make the address longer, no one knows about it and they [routers and destinations] just assume the wrong address and send it on or discard the frame
I can read one at a glance and the other makes me fill in the blanks myself after having to count how many invisible blanks I need to fill in.
Of all the sins of IPv6, its tied between using ':' as the separator, and the god awful '::' "just skip writing the address because we made them too fucking big lol"
Wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't given every square millimeter of the planet 100 billion addresses.
> I can read one at a glance and the other makes me fill in the blanks myself after having to count how many invisible blanks I need to fill in.
The protocol chosen for IPng, SIPP, did actually have "only" 64 bits, but this was deemed not enough as folks did not want to have to worry about running out again (amongst other reasons), and so tweaked it to have a fixed 128 bits:
You're right, my 100B per square millimeter undershot by six orders of magnitude.
I woulda thought 18 quintillion would've been enough addresses for the next century or two but good thing we locked in all this extra data we throw away with a '::'.
I'm sure it was all well considered by intelligent people, but it was still a dumb decision.
What problem does 128 bits cause? Just that you don't like :: for a run of 0s? Do you need to care about ipv6 addresses in your work? Because I can tell you that when I'm trying to design simple, efficient routing and firewall rules (with e.g. 100s of thousands of endpoints across different datacenters on different continents), it's really nice to be able to subnet things the way I'd like instead of the way I must to squeeze things into the space I have, and not have to worry about backing myself into a corner later because I gave the wrong number of bits to various dimensions. And worst case, if you somehow got it wrong, just give yourself an entire /64 or more to try again, with it being compatible with what you did (no need to do a phased migration that requires reclamation as you go along).
Like I only tangentially interact with this stuff, but I can't imagine how a network operator wouldn't prefer we live in an all ipv6 world.
That being said, we should take the time to understand why IPv4 is still hanging around when IPv6 has been around since before most people got internet access. What is really holding IPv6 back?
> I still think we should just extend the length of IPv4. In my proposed system, existing addresses would become a subnet of the new set.
There is no "just" extending the address length:
So it's a matter of mathematical and physical fact that to expand
the address size, you must change the protocol, and that means
[three] things immediately:
You have to change the version number.
You have to add new code to handle the new version.
[…]
You need a coexistence technique so that updated systems,
with the new protocol, can connect to old systems that know
nothing of the new protocol.
Two minutes of thought show that this third requirement has only
two solutions:
(3A) Dual stack, in which the new machines speak both
the old (IPv4) and new (IPng) protocol.
(3B) Translation, in which something translates addresses
between the old and new protocols.
> Keeps all the nice parts of IPv4, doesn’t require everyone to switch to an entirely new system, backwards compatible with existing hardware/software. Problem solved.
You have to ship new code to every 'network element' to support your "IPv4+" plan. Just like with IPv6.
You also have to update DNS to create new resource record types ("A" is hard-coded to 32-bits) to support the new longer addresses, and have all user-land code start asking for, using, and understanding the new record replies. Just like with IPv6. (A lot of legacy code did not have room in data structures for multiple reply types: sure you'd get the "A" but unless you updated the code to get the "A+" address (for "IPv4+" addresses) you could never get to the longer with address… just like IPv6 needed code updates to recognize AAAA, otherwise you were A-only.)
You need to update socket APIs to hold new data structures for longer addresses so your app can tell the kernel to send packets to the new addresses. Just like with IPv6. In any 'address extension' plan the legacy code cannot use the new address space; you have to:
* update the IP stack (like with IPv6)
* tell applications about new DNS records (like IPv6)
* set up translation layers for legacy-only code that cannot be update to reach IPv4+-only destination (like IPv6 with DNS64/NAT64, CLAT, etc)
You're updating the exact same code paths in both the "IPv4+" and IPv6 scenarios: dual-stack, DNS, socket address structures, dealing with legacy-only code that is never touched to deal with the larger address space.
"Just adding more bits" means updating a whole bunch of code (routers, firewalls, DNS, APIs, userland, etc) to handle the new data structures. There is no "just": it's the same work for IPv6 as with any other idea.
I recall something like this, what did you call this? ipv8?
the thing is that it does require a switch similar to ipv6. but maybe there’s a subnet that maps 1 to 1 with the legacy block?
something like this could theoretically be pinned onto ipv6 AND anyone could do it, just select a 98 bit prefix you own, and the rest of the 32 bits you can map to ipv4.
phase -1 could be tunneling traffic through a single zone proxy which would be inefficient and is purely conceptual
phase 0 would be the same, but with an anycast ipv6,same ip that resolves differently based on location, like 8.8.8.8
phase 1 would be the mapping prefix to ipv4 (and viceversa?) being distributed to the routing tables like, which could be done via application logic (most efficient), or via some deep arcane isp routing conf files, or just a hell of a lot of routing table entries for each ipv4 but duplicated, possibly programatically controlled by an application that generates router table files as a target, thus avoiding desyncs and effectively becoming the first option of application level implementation
maybe something like this already exists though
of course it’s horrible hacking (as hacking in the non crime sense often is), but it allows for a purely technical solution to issues of political and administrative nature.. which is all the rage nowadays
That was kinda the way IPv5 proposed to handle it.
But the big big problem isn't windows/Linux/mac. Writing drivers for those are "easy".
The problem lies in all the networking gear speaks only IPv4 and/or 6. LLM assisted hacks can get into maintenance areas, but these devices are also built to support the least amount of things. Like, there may not be enough ram or storage to even run it.
And 20 years in, you see how well IPv6 has taken off :eyeroll:
And even on my network, I disabled IPv6. My upstream ISP is doing something that makes '6 unstable, but '4 is fine. And I find most network engineers don't have to maintain '6, so they never really learn it.
I initially read the "As" in the "As land" label as "land of plural letter A". Which I understood as the land of DNS A records, which seemed like a whimsical yet fitting name.
There is nothing that makes sense. The world population is about twice the total number of IPv4 addresses total. Many people own more than one device, and there are good networking reasons that you want most of the possible addresses on any network segment unused. There is no way to solve all of those problems at the same time and so nothing make sense when we are talking about IPv4 and it never will.
Either I've lost it, or there are other countries there that are bigger losers than the DRC. North Korea says it is 1069.6 times smaller, Greenland says it is 1507.8 times smaller, etc.
A lot of European cloud machines geolocate to the Netherlands. A lot of AWS instances use IPs from the Netherlands, although they are running somewhere else. No idea why, but it's a pattern I've observed many times. Get some cloud instance in Europe and it's often going to be geolocated to Amsterdam.
First impression: Poland stronk. Even Czechia strong. Charles IV.'s realm restored. Russia in shambles, not a very efficient conqueror of the address space. And the glory of Rome restored, with pitiful Constantinople looking at their backs from afar.
Second impression: Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa as the African heavy-weights. Corresponds to what I know.
Third impression: the real bosses are Taiwan and South Korea - just wow.
Hi, I’m helping a hospital in Buenos Aires that has lost their IPv4 due to their ISP moving to CGNAT, putting their on prem imaging servers offline for 7 days. (it’s ok for us though, we have a backup failover isp)
Might have to do something horrible like:
- setup an ipv4 tunnel, which will require hacking a VPN to allow TCP listening, and routing connections to some external proxy with a dedicated static ipv4 address
- or do some modem router level nat port forwarding, and use a ddns to avoid ip changes breaking stuff. but that won’t work probably since public ip is shared
will investigate the isp to see if they are truly short in ipv4 or if they are just moving clients off them in order to sell them to higher bidders and plans, which is likely since I’ve been upsold into optic fiber, static ip surcharge, sd-wan, dedicated connection so far
if you have any advice or RIR contacts (or an ipv4 block to donate, invest or sell), I’d be thankful, my email is in my profile
The first thing you need to ask is: Why do you need IPv4?
I don't know much about your imaging servers: Do they accept incoming https connections, or is it some other kind of TCP or UDP protocol? Assuming it's https, why do you need to stick with IPv4?
> Hi, I’m helping a hospital in Buenos Aires that has lost their IPv4 due to their ISP moving to CGNAT, putting their on prem imaging servers offline for 7 days. (it’s ok for us though, we have a backup failover isp)
Two more things:
1: If you require IPv4, that needs to be part of the contract with your ISP. If they just arbitrarily turned you off, it means that you didn't contract for the services you thought you had.
2: IPv6 is supposed to solve a lot of these problems... So again, why can't you move to IPv6?
> I don't know much about your imaging servers: Do they accept incoming https connections, or is it some other kind of TCP or UDP protocol?
Yes
>why do you need to stick with IPv4?
To support devices and routes that do not have ipv6 support?
>1: If you require IPv4, that needs to be part of the contract with your ISP. If they just arbitrarily turned you off, it means that you didn't contract for the services you thought you had.
That is correct in principle. Although, in the absence of a contract, if a service has been provided for a long time in one way, I'd say there's an argument for breach of contract when that way changes for the worst.
Another argument for breach of contract, which can work jointly with the previous, are industry standards, as far as they define the terms that are implied by common words like "internet connection".
Finally, there's the specifications themselves, since the service is billed as "internet", one can refer to the Internet Protocol Specification, although if they do offer IPv6, that might be reasonably considered a substitute, it is a material change that was not agreed to originally (this being a pre IPv6 contract). That said, an IPv4 with a local address might technically still be defined as internet, what is broken in this case is TCP, not the IP, although by lacking a public IP address, TCP is broken via an IP protocol failure, so there's an argument that something is being sold as Internet but it isn't really internet, there's no written contract necessary, the term used to describe the product creates the contract in the same way that selling a carton labeled Milk would create a contract based on milk coming from mammaries of a domestic mammal, and not pressed Soy Juice with artificial coloring.
>2: IPv6 is supposed to solve a lot of these problems... So again, why can't you move to IPv6?
I'm open to proposals to moving IPv6, I'm not content with having that be forced and removing it from people and institutions, if there's a shortage, then that means no new IP addresses can be issued, why are we normalizing the removal of IPv4 addresses? Are they being removed from lower priority users in order to serve high priority usecases? If so is a hospital a low priority user?
The main issue with IPv6 seems to be IPv6 proponents that try to kill IPv4, no one will migrate if you force them to, if you propose, we will consider.
Reddit shadowbanned me multiple times for either absurd or political reasons, but my ISP used to assign dynamic IPv4 addresses, so I could easily create a new account. Then it switched to IPv6 with a static address, and now I can't create new Reddit accounts anymore.
Most consumer ISPs regularly rotate the prefix. IPv6 has proper support for that and can keep connections on the old and new prefix alive for a while in parallel.
With IPv4 most ISPs only rotate IPs on new connections (router restart). But my old home internet even stayed on the same ipv4 for years. Only if I shut down the router for a longer time it got a fresh ipv4 assigned.
So it's an implementation detail, not a technical limitation. Not rotating the prefix is a bad implementation.
China: 358M
Both countries have roughly the same population. The IPv4 problem has been swept under the rug with CGNAT and a normal person doesn't even notice it. But it sucks. Forget having a dedicated IP, even on a broadband connection, you don't get a public IP that's truly yours. According to IPInfo[1], there are around 1,000 users sharing my IP. I get flagged for malicious activity, and online gaming is impossible without a Tailscale relay.
Of course, much of this comes down to the bad luck (+ policies) of developing late, when most IPv4 blocks had already been allocated. But it's pretty unfair how US DoD, Apple, Ford, and others [1] are sitting on enormous IPv4 blocks they'll probably never fully use, and may never sell. Meanwhile I am sharing a single public IP with a thousand strangers.
[1]: https://ipinfo.io/223.233.77.184
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...
Maybe Apple and Ford, but it's more than fair that DoD has large blocks since they created ipv4 to connect themselves to other networks. It was only 10 years ago that the US government decided to give up control of IANA.
> "China: 358M
> "Both countries have roughly the same population"
To save anyone else curious from looking it up - their populations are about 1.4 billion (1400 million) each.
Configuring my OS to prefer IPv6 addresses of DNS responses significantly reduced the number of web captchas I see (on NAT444 with native IPv6).
IPv4 is old and broken, use IPv6.
It's crazy I can get fiber to my house in the US, but not IPv6.
But if you are living in a Western country, then you are probably blessed with CGNAT-free residential internet.
Some carriers in my country have recently started to share the same IP between 4 customers, each having a port range (1-16363, ...), but you can always request a full IP for free.
I, unfortunately, have been on CGNATed residential internet since 2016, though I used to still get a public IP on request (they stopped doing that though.) I live in South East Asia, for context.
Without IPv6 my only choice would have been relying on a centralized service like Zerotier and Tailscale.
Worse is I have IPv6 connectivity for devices, yet still no open ports available, so no serving available. And I only receive a /64 so no delegation available through router.
So now it's Hurricane Electric tunnel to their nearest (in my city) hosted node for IPv6 and a prepaid 50 USD/year node (technically x2 since I wanted a backup to play around with) for IPv4 port forwarding.
Both options are acceptable because the needed infra is close by in the largest metroplex in Texas, it just sucks to have to do all this extra work to replicate what I could do with a dial-up ISP.
I'll say this - having LLM assistants handle the nasty routing and firewall rules needed to make this hodge podge work without needing to be a network engineer has been very helpful.
Me as somewhat of a nerd, even doubt if I need a public IP, seeing how cyber security is looking today.
So even if it's true 50% of clients support IPv6, only about 5% to 10% of website hosts do.
Google sees 70-80% from some countries:
* https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...
Anyone who doesn't by default set up IPv6-only networks by default with NAT64 and DNS64, or who present any notion that IPv4 is somehow "okay", shouldn't have a job anywhere, not even an entry-level desktop support job.
:grimace:
Also, that same tech industry has shown remarcable competence in working around IPv4's limitations.
Austria-Hungary adopted the metric system in the 1870s. Back then: no cars, no highways, no speeding laws etc. Oxen-drawn wagons in the countryside were not built to a precise spec.
Only the railway, the architects and the artillery had to really switch. Ordinary people would still ask the grocer for half a pound of ham in the 1930s.
USA in the 1970s would have to remeasure all the land communications etc., or end up with a weird hybrid like the UK.
WHat we have in IPv4 and IPv6 is the weird UK-like hybrid...
Creating an IPng was always going to be complicated:
* https://github.com/becarpenter/misc/blob/main/why6why.md* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1671
For anyone curious as to the decision-making process, here are the criteria for what the IETF was looking for in an IPng:
* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1726
Here are the candidates that were floating around at the time, and the reason why the winner was chosen:
* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752
IPv6 can be selectively applied to say, NAT addresses, but other than that, IPv4 is just fine and your statement is incorrect.
How would an IPv4 client send a packet to an IPv6 server? The IPv4 packet has only 4 bytes to spare for the destination address.
You can't.
Anything longer, even if it's just 1 bit, would require a new IP version.
- If you are managing the 4to6 mappings manually, it's obviously not going to be scalable. Just to give people an idea, websites nowadays can connect to 10+ IPs in a single page due to CDN load balancing and stuff.
- If you are handling the mappings automatically, such as by monitoring DNS queries and creating dynamic mappings based on that, the issues become more insidious: applications with hardcoded IP literals would fail without an obvious reason.
A second way of thinking about it:
* Stars in the Milky Way: 400 Billion
* Galaxies in the universe: 2 Trillion
* So (4x10¹¹)x(2x10¹²) = 8x10²³ stars in the universe.
* Size of IPv6 address space: 3.4x10³⁸
* Find the ratio between addresses and stars: 3.4x10³⁸ / 8x10²³
IPv6 offers about 430 trillion times more addresses than estimated stars in the universe. From Tom Coffee's presentation "An Enterprise IPv6 Address Planning Case-Study":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tnh4upTOC4
Much of the IPv6 rollout challenges have been centered around routing and security. It's great that I can personally have (in theory) more IP addresses than I would ever practically need (and I am saying this as someone with 200 IP endpoints just in my house), but if I can't easily manage and control access much of the theoretical benefit goes away.
IMO, IPv6 solved the address pool size part of the issue, but it made managing the v4 to v6 transition very painful.
Eg 192.168.0.1 becomes 0.0.0.0.192.168.0.1
And then we dish out all the new address space. You would get the network providers to handle address conversion until software and hardware has been updated. Because all the existing addresses are reserved in the new set, it doesn’t affect them.
Keeps all the nice parts of IPv4, doesn’t require everyone to switch to an entirely new system, backwards compatible with existing hardware/software. Problem solved.
Absolutely not. Existing IPv4 hardware and software expects addresses to be 4 bytes long. They expect packets to have a 4 byte source address at offset 12 in the header, then a 4 byte destination address at offset 16. Everything breaks if you try to give them a header with an 8 byte source address at offset 12 and an 8 byte destination address at offset 20.
As does DNS.
"A" records are fixed at 32 bits, so you have to add a new record type and update all DNS software, plus user-space API/library code and data structures to ask for and store the new record type.
Just like IPv6.
There is no "just" adding more addresses: whatever scheme anyone comes up with is the same amount of work as IPv6.
* https://github.com/becarpenter/misc/blob/main/why6why.md
IIRC something like that was considered when IPv6 was first being designed, be deemed insufficient for the long-term future. 64-bits is thought to be enough to stave off address starvation though, which is why IPv6 address ranges are usually assigned as /64s (my homer link has a /48 range should I wish to use it all!), so I can see your reasoning on that level.
You still need to have routers, clients, and absolutely everything to understand the new scheme to use those new addresses.
Or octal:
* https://networkingtoolbox.net/ip-address-convertor/represent...
The entire ipv4 space is already mapped to reserved subsets of ipv6, by the way. e.g. ::ffff:0:0/96 (i.e. 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.255.255.w.x.y.z) or 64:ff9b::/96. v6 devices can already "talk to" v4. The problem is the ipv6 space is obviously not a subset of ipv4, so v4 doesn't have a clean way to talk to or even about v6.
Most of the time, this results in people thinking the big problems are one set like "if only there was a way to translate" while the real remaining problems are another set like "and how do you get people to want to transition when it works well enough for those clients in the translated state".
Yeah, about that part. This is a "now draw the rest of the fucking owl" type of idea.
It turns out when you ignore the hardest part of the problem, you can always make a good-looking proposal!
Now the reason this doesn't work is that the address length is not encoded, so if you make the address longer, no one knows about it and they [routers and destinations] just assume the wrong address and send it on or discard the frame
Dual-stack is also the default, and CG-NAT exists as a fallback. For IPv6 only websites there is still the option to use a HTTP proxy.
How is this different from ::192.168.0.1? :)
Of all the sins of IPv6, its tied between using ':' as the separator, and the god awful '::' "just skip writing the address because we made them too fucking big lol"
Wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't given every square millimeter of the planet 100 billion addresses.
The protocol chosen for IPng, SIPP, did actually have "only" 64 bits, but this was deemed not enough as folks did not want to have to worry about running out again (amongst other reasons), and so tweaked it to have a fixed 128 bits:
* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752
SIPP originally was variable-length capable, but it was decided fixed-length was better (e.g., for hardware like ASICs).
> Wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't given every square millimeter of the planet 100 billion addresses.
For the record: IPv6 gives 10¹⁷ addresses per mm²; in terms of volume, 10⁸ IPv6 addresses per mm³ throughout the Earth.
I woulda thought 18 quintillion would've been enough addresses for the next century or two but good thing we locked in all this extra data we throw away with a '::'.
I'm sure it was all well considered by intelligent people, but it was still a dumb decision.
Like I only tangentially interact with this stuff, but I can't imagine how a network operator wouldn't prefer we live in an all ipv6 world.
Fine, let's change the question.
Without counting, how many zeroes are there in 192.168.0.0.0.0.0.1?
See, no colons in sight!
That being said, we should take the time to understand why IPv4 is still hanging around when IPv6 has been around since before most people got internet access. What is really holding IPv6 back?
There is no "just" extending the address length:
* https://github.com/becarpenter/misc/blob/main/why6why.md* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1671
> Keeps all the nice parts of IPv4, doesn’t require everyone to switch to an entirely new system, backwards compatible with existing hardware/software. Problem solved.
You have to ship new code to every 'network element' to support your "IPv4+" plan. Just like with IPv6.
You also have to update DNS to create new resource record types ("A" is hard-coded to 32-bits) to support the new longer addresses, and have all user-land code start asking for, using, and understanding the new record replies. Just like with IPv6. (A lot of legacy code did not have room in data structures for multiple reply types: sure you'd get the "A" but unless you updated the code to get the "A+" address (for "IPv4+" addresses) you could never get to the longer with address… just like IPv6 needed code updates to recognize AAAA, otherwise you were A-only.)
You need to update socket APIs to hold new data structures for longer addresses so your app can tell the kernel to send packets to the new addresses. Just like with IPv6. In any 'address extension' plan the legacy code cannot use the new address space; you have to:
* update the IP stack (like with IPv6)
* tell applications about new DNS records (like IPv6)
* set up translation layers for legacy-only code that cannot be update to reach IPv4+-only destination (like IPv6 with DNS64/NAT64, CLAT, etc)
You're updating the exact same code paths in both the "IPv4+" and IPv6 scenarios: dual-stack, DNS, socket address structures, dealing with legacy-only code that is never touched to deal with the larger address space.
"Just adding more bits" means updating a whole bunch of code (routers, firewalls, DNS, APIs, userland, etc) to handle the new data structures. There is no "just": it's the same work for IPv6 as with any other idea.
the thing is that it does require a switch similar to ipv6. but maybe there’s a subnet that maps 1 to 1 with the legacy block?
something like this could theoretically be pinned onto ipv6 AND anyone could do it, just select a 98 bit prefix you own, and the rest of the 32 bits you can map to ipv4.
phase -1 could be tunneling traffic through a single zone proxy which would be inefficient and is purely conceptual
phase 0 would be the same, but with an anycast ipv6,same ip that resolves differently based on location, like 8.8.8.8
phase 1 would be the mapping prefix to ipv4 (and viceversa?) being distributed to the routing tables like, which could be done via application logic (most efficient), or via some deep arcane isp routing conf files, or just a hell of a lot of routing table entries for each ipv4 but duplicated, possibly programatically controlled by an application that generates router table files as a target, thus avoiding desyncs and effectively becoming the first option of application level implementation
maybe something like this already exists though
of course it’s horrible hacking (as hacking in the non crime sense often is), but it allows for a purely technical solution to issues of political and administrative nature.. which is all the rage nowadays
https://xkcd.com/927/
But the big big problem isn't windows/Linux/mac. Writing drivers for those are "easy".
The problem lies in all the networking gear speaks only IPv4 and/or 6. LLM assisted hacks can get into maintenance areas, but these devices are also built to support the least amount of things. Like, there may not be enough ram or storage to even run it.
And 20 years in, you see how well IPv6 has taken off :eyeroll:
And even on my network, I disabled IPv6. My upstream ISP is doing something that makes '6 unstable, but '4 is fine. And I find most network engineers don't have to maintain '6, so they never really learn it.
Anyway, the Netherlands also seems to be an attractive place to build datacenters.
You haven't lost your marbles, this looks like straight Claude slop, just look at the fonts.
First impression: Poland stronk. Even Czechia strong. Charles IV.'s realm restored. Russia in shambles, not a very efficient conqueror of the address space. And the glory of Rome restored, with pitiful Constantinople looking at their backs from afar.
Second impression: Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa as the African heavy-weights. Corresponds to what I know.
Third impression: the real bosses are Taiwan and South Korea - just wow.
Might have to do something horrible like:
- setup an ipv4 tunnel, which will require hacking a VPN to allow TCP listening, and routing connections to some external proxy with a dedicated static ipv4 address
- or do some modem router level nat port forwarding, and use a ddns to avoid ip changes breaking stuff. but that won’t work probably since public ip is shared
will investigate the isp to see if they are truly short in ipv4 or if they are just moving clients off them in order to sell them to higher bidders and plans, which is likely since I’ve been upsold into optic fiber, static ip surcharge, sd-wan, dedicated connection so far
if you have any advice or RIR contacts (or an ipv4 block to donate, invest or sell), I’d be thankful, my email is in my profile
I don't know much about your imaging servers: Do they accept incoming https connections, or is it some other kind of TCP or UDP protocol? Assuming it's https, why do you need to stick with IPv4?
> Hi, I’m helping a hospital in Buenos Aires that has lost their IPv4 due to their ISP moving to CGNAT, putting their on prem imaging servers offline for 7 days. (it’s ok for us though, we have a backup failover isp)
Two more things:
1: If you require IPv4, that needs to be part of the contract with your ISP. If they just arbitrarily turned you off, it means that you didn't contract for the services you thought you had.
2: IPv6 is supposed to solve a lot of these problems... So again, why can't you move to IPv6?
Yes
>why do you need to stick with IPv4?
To support devices and routes that do not have ipv6 support?
>1: If you require IPv4, that needs to be part of the contract with your ISP. If they just arbitrarily turned you off, it means that you didn't contract for the services you thought you had.
That is correct in principle. Although, in the absence of a contract, if a service has been provided for a long time in one way, I'd say there's an argument for breach of contract when that way changes for the worst.
Another argument for breach of contract, which can work jointly with the previous, are industry standards, as far as they define the terms that are implied by common words like "internet connection".
Finally, there's the specifications themselves, since the service is billed as "internet", one can refer to the Internet Protocol Specification, although if they do offer IPv6, that might be reasonably considered a substitute, it is a material change that was not agreed to originally (this being a pre IPv6 contract). That said, an IPv4 with a local address might technically still be defined as internet, what is broken in this case is TCP, not the IP, although by lacking a public IP address, TCP is broken via an IP protocol failure, so there's an argument that something is being sold as Internet but it isn't really internet, there's no written contract necessary, the term used to describe the product creates the contract in the same way that selling a carton labeled Milk would create a contract based on milk coming from mammaries of a domestic mammal, and not pressed Soy Juice with artificial coloring.
>2: IPv6 is supposed to solve a lot of these problems... So again, why can't you move to IPv6?
I'm open to proposals to moving IPv6, I'm not content with having that be forced and removing it from people and institutions, if there's a shortage, then that means no new IP addresses can be issued, why are we normalizing the removal of IPv4 addresses? Are they being removed from lower priority users in order to serve high priority usecases? If so is a hospital a low priority user?
The main issue with IPv6 seems to be IPv6 proponents that try to kill IPv4, no one will migrate if you force them to, if you propose, we will consider.
With IPv4 most ISPs only rotate IPs on new connections (router restart). But my old home internet even stayed on the same ipv4 for years. Only if I shut down the router for a longer time it got a fresh ipv4 assigned.
So it's an implementation detail, not a technical limitation. Not rotating the prefix is a bad implementation.