
IPv6 versus NAT (and a proposal to bring back SOCKS) - alyrik
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/04/11/ipv6-versus-nat/
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throwaway32
Adding socks support to everything is just as daunting as supporting a
migration to ipv6 via transition mechanisms such as 6to4/6in4 and leaves us
with something that is even MORE restrictive and less scalable than NAT. It
also provides no upgrade path to solve these issues (it is much easier to
switch from 6(to|in)4 to native ipv6 than socks to anything). This is not a
workable solution.

~~~
wladimir
So you'd effectively have pockets of IPv4 space bordered by SOCKS proxies. If
this would be done hierarchically, you need proxy chaining to connect to a
server on a different network.

It's a kludge. I can't see how it would be preferable in any way to a single
global "namespace".

~~~
alyrik
I agree... the problem is, how are we to get a single global namespace?

I have serious concerns with IPv6's practicality, even with 6in4 et al. Is
trying to implement it just flogging a dead horse?

If somebody comes up with a way to actually get _IPv6-only nodes_ widespread -
not just nodes with joint IPv4 and IPv6 machines - then I'll have hope for
mainstream IPv6. But while every client and server _has_ to have IPv4 as well
to be of any use, then what benefit does having IPv6 connectivity give it?

~~~
wladimir
How is it a dead horse? Many ISPs are working on implementing IPv6. Some ISPs
here in the Netherland have been offering it for quite a long time. Large
sites (Google, Facebook, etc) are also slowly adapting it.

Yes, the transition is going very very slowly. But I don't think there is a
problem. One could argue it's the same with IPv4 addresses as with oil.
Eventually, it will get more expensive as it gets more scarce, and people will
gradually switch to alternatives.

At a certain moment all the important sites will have adapted IPv6 that it's
economical for some users to drop expensive IPv4. Sites will then hurry to go
to IPv6 as they lose customers. But I guess there's no need to hurry yet... at
least for us IPv4-rich western countries.

~~~
alyrik
I've seen the "IPv4 will get more and more expensive, and more and more sites
will provide IPv6 connectivity, and (for some unspecified reason) clients will
put out the effort to get IPv6 connectivity for no near-term benefit, and then
when nearly everyone has IPv6 connectivity, IPv4 support will become like IE4
support and sites will start dropping it, and the IPv4-only people will then
demand an upgrade" argument, and I think it has flaws.

* Why do clients - home ADSL users, small offices, wifi hotspots - want to bother with IPv6? It offers them no benefit for at least several years. Everything that's good is IPv4 only, or maybe IPv4 and IPv6. All they need is one external IPv4 - or they can share an upstream IPv4 via carrier-grade NAT, so they needn't bear any "rising cost" of IPv4.

* Why should important sites really bother about IPv6? They already have large IPv4 allocations, and there's endless tricks to make better use of them (they can vhost any HTTP-based service, for a start). Moving to IPv6 will make it easier for startups to get IPs to compete with them. I'm not sure why some of them have offered limited IPv6 access (Facebook's is just a proxy that forwards on the connections via IPv4, it seems), but they don't seem to maintain them well (bit.ly was inaccessible via IPv6 all day; nobody seemed to notice) - I suspect they're mainly "20% time" projects.

* Just how near is the point where it's a good idea to drop IPv4, for clients or servers? There's a lot of legacy networks to shift... more so on the client end than on the server end, which is dominated by a "top 100 sites" or so that could all conceivably add IPv6 support with little effort.

~~~
wladimir
Hey, I'm explicitly saying in my post that there is no hurry. It could still
take ages. Maybe 20 years. But eventually we need more addresses than IPv4 can
provide. Hacks such as NAT will make the IPv4 range a bit more stretchable,
but they don't scale and won't hold up forever.

I know what the current state of affairs is. I don't understand why all the
"IPv6 is not widely adopted yet so let's rationalize it as if we'll be on IPv4
forever" posts on HN lately. It is a slow, gradual process. If you don't want
to worry about it yet then just don't.

Back when 64 bit CPUs were entering the consumer realm, you also had people
saying "Man, addresses will take two times as much space and who needs to
address that amount of memory? And there are plenty of memory mapping tricks
to keep us on 32-bit for a long time"...

------
api
"I don't wanna use IPv6! I'll have to change things! Waaaah!"

Just shut up. Do it. Do the transition. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it might
break shit. No, IPv6 is not perfect. But do this transition __once __and we
have enough address space to make it to the galactic civilization level. 2^128
addresses is big. It's a one-time thing.

~~~
alyrik
I've run IPv6, to try it out... I just didn't bother setting it up again next
time I replaced things, as it gained me nothing, so I didn't want to repeat
the effort.

So it's in my best interests to wait until I have to.

Which means I'll continue to use IPv4.

Which means the sites I want to connect to aren't motivated to turn off IPv4.

Ad infinitum.

------
alyrik
Of course, what I'm proposing here - fixing the problems with NAT as a way of
making IPv4 address exhaustion not be a problem _for clients_ \- doesn't help
with IPv4 exhaustion for servers.

What would I propose for that?

* Using them more efficiently by having protocols support endpoint identification within a server (HTTP supports virtual hosting, SSL has spreading support for host identification in the SSL handshake process, SMTP has been fine with it for years, etc).

* Using incoming connection proxies / load balancers to have a small number of external IPs, connections to which are handled by a large number of backend servers

* Perhaps in the longer run, better usage of SRV records so that well-known ports fall into disuse, and server ports can be assigned by the administrator and then placed into the SRV record for that service, in effect making IPv4 addresses be 48 bits long.

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Fice
The real reason for low adoption of IPv6 is that it would decrease demand in
hosting and clould services at least for personal use as everyone will be able
to access their home computers from everywhere. Service providers does not
want IPv6.

~~~
alyrik
Interesting point, that... Addresses being scarce and valuable would play into
the hands of large ISPs who already have a lot of addresses! Discuss! :-)

~~~
ch0wn
That's already reality. In March Microsoft bought a block pof IPv4 addresses
for about 7.5 Million USD: [http://www.dotspress.com/microsoft-buys-
ipv4-addresses/77150...](http://www.dotspress.com/microsoft-buys-
ipv4-addresses/771505/)

