
Tell HN: Sprint no longer assigning IPv4 addresses - MaupitiBlue
After a few days of seemingly bizarre network errors from some, but not all,  apps, I realized my phone wasn&#x27;t getting an ipv4 address.  After three calls with poor tech support bodies who didn&#x27;t know what an ip address is, I tried Sprint&#x27;s chat support.  I was surprised when they promptly told me that all internet data is now ipv6.  However, they said they could do a workaround for me.<p>Moral, ipv6 is coming.   Google says it is at 18% worldwide, and 34% in the US.  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;intl&#x2F;en&#x2F;ipv6&#x2F;statistics.html
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subway
AFAIK, Sprint offers 464XLAT on their IPv6 network, the same as T-Mobile. This
uses a CLAT on your side to translate IPv4 to IPv6, then a PLAT on the Sprint
side to translate back from IPv6 to IPv4. Allowing IPv4-only apps to work over
the carrier's NAT64/DNS64.

It sounds like you might have a broken CLAT implementation.

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puzzle
Yes, T-Mobile has been doing it for four years now. See slides here:

[https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-
apricot-2014_13...](https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-
apricot-2014_1393236641.pdf)

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Aloha
I think your sprint rep sold you a line of bullshit - there was likely a
configuration issue with your account.

Sprint must have rolled out IPv6 in the last six months or so.

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runjake
IPv6 is already here and has been for years. The vast majority of my org's
Internet traffic is IPv6.

Some of you are just straggling.

~~~
justincormack
Thats very different to ipv6 only with some sort if 6to4. Many common things
(github etc) still fail to have ipv6 addresses so you are reduced to some
pseudo natv6 that works poorly.

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wmf
T-Mobile also went more or less IPv6-only a few years ago.

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Shelnutt2
Sprint has been IPV6 enable for several years. Some devices are/were duel
stack, some devices IPv6 only with the 464XLAT.

You can see the adoption of ipv6 enabled devices growing:
[http://www.worldipv6launch.org/apps/ipv6week/measurement/ima...](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/apps/ipv6week/measurement/images/graphs/SprintWireless.png)

All major providers ipv6 percentage can be see at
[http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/)

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russellbeattie
Interesting... What were the errors and what was the workaround? Do they have
some sort of 6to4 router that wasn't working?

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andrewf
That'd be an interesting take on Carrier-grade NAT. The approach I'm familiar
gives phones a non-routable IPv4 address to get to the carrier's NAT gateway,
but I can imagine shenanigans with some combination of 6to4, phone settings
and/or DNS.

Anyone seen such a setup in the wild? I'm interested in the errors OP saw..
was it just niche non-HTTP(S) access which broke, or all websites without an
AAAA record?

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zokier
Have you seen 464XLAT?

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dx034
Does anyone know why ipv6 usage is significantly higher on Saturdays than
other days for Google? They record a difference of ~3% which is a lot of
traffic. Is this due to different browsing patterns of countries with high
adoption vs. low adoption?

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html)

~~~
spystath
I would guess residential connections are more likely to be IPv6 enabled.
Corporate networks move slowly. In our organisation they actually removed
IPv6, go figure!

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cypherpunks01
All my Verizon android phones have been on ipv6 addresses for years, I think?
What is the status of other major carriers?

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edwhitesell
I'm IPv4 only at the moment, though I have sometimes seen both in various
markets across the US.

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gsich
If they sell you an "internet access", tell them that without a global
reachable IPv4 (and IPv6) it's not an internet access. Then go to another
provider.

~~~
jdamon96
I'm a bit of a rookie when it comes to understanding differences between IPv4
and IPv6.. can you explain to me what you mean by this comment?

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nathanaldensr
The difference is it's a totally different protocol. I'd be willing to guess
that most servers on the internet only listen on the IPv4 protocol, which
means, effectively, those servers are unavailable to you.

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jandrese
If they went IPv6 only and didn't implement NAT64 at the same time, then
someone is going to be fired--probably the CEO.

Mobile users won't notice because their IPv4 addresses were NATted anyway, and
the phone stacks make it harder for app developers to screw up the v6 support.
The v6 switchover should be mostly invisible to the users.

~~~
stevenAthompson
Very true. Verizon has been 6 only for ages, but they use NAT64 so most non-
nerds never noticed.

I believe that at the time of the rollout they were the largest IP6 network on
the planet. They may still be.

It works because smartphone users don't have the same needs as home and
business users. There aren't a ton of smartphone users demanding reachable
IPv4 addresses in the first place, and the ones who might want them are
probably smart enough to figure out how to use IPv6 instead.

~~~
jandrese
I can't imagine there is much demand for people running internet servers off
of their phone over the cell network.

~~~
stevenAthompson
You might be surprised. For instance, almost every emergency vehicle has a 4G
modem of some sort in it now. Also, there are tons of vending machines and
assorted manufacturing or mining equipment that use similar devices.

Often it's nice to be able to reach out to those devices and check the
location, status, or whatever instead of waiting for the device to check in
with you.

For those purposes though IPv6 is fine... as long as you know what you're
doing with IPv6.

~~~
dx034
Doesn't that decrease security? NAT plays a big role in anonymising users and
providing some basic security. If every device has their own ipv6 address,
scanning devices for vulnerabilities will be much easier.

Having secure devices is obviously the better solution but will never happen.
That 10 year old vending machine won't get an update anytime soon and hiding
it from the outer world could be the best way to prevent it being part of a
botnet.

~~~
gsich
Why? Just because you have a global address? This does not mean that all
inbound connections are open.

Also scanning IPv6 is not that easy as it is in v4.

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api
Good. Kill it.

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youseecomrade
ipv6 has any impact on privacy? (VPNs aside)

my ipv4 changes every 24 hours, what if my ISP tries to pin a fixed ipv6 on me
since they are "unlimited"?

I hope I can also stay under NAT, I don't understand the concept perfectly but
it's nice to have this extra indirect protection at home

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mgbmtl
There are plenty of other ways to track you. This is a really old argument
(and is off-topic).

~~~
dx034
But you can prevent all other ways. IP tracking doesn't work well currently,
the number of users sharing one IP can be significant. Other means of tracking
can be disabled with addins and by using common configurations (for browser
fingerprints). Once you start assigning one static ip per device, there's
nothing a user can do to prevent being tracked constantly.

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chiph
Until recently, I was on Spectrum (née Time-Warner) service in Austin. I was
running IPv6 on my gaming machine, and for general web browsing it was fine.
But I was seeing ping times of over 2000 ms for World of Warcraft and it made
the game unplayable. I switched back to IPv4 and got pings in the 50-70 ms
range. This showed me that IPv6 is still in the "try it and see" stage and
your latency will vary by application.

