
IPv6 Excuses - sajal83
https://ipv6excuses.com/
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TheAceOfHearts
I had IPv6 enabled for a few months but eventually turned it off since I
wasn't confident I had configured my home network securely. When I tried
asking for help, I was criticized and told that I should just read the RFCs...

Does anyone have suggestions for a beginner friendly home networking guide?
How are others setting up their home network?

It's also a bit frustrating to me that routers provide so many options, yet it
seems nigh impossible to find clear explanations of what different features
mean, along with clear examples of use-cases of when I might want to enable or
disable said features. I'll typically keep the defaults if I'm not as
familiarized with a subject matter, but if experience has shown anything it's
that most system's defaults are typically not designed with security as the
top priority.

Can't say I saw any benefits during my brief IPv6 trial. First of all, typing
out an IPv6 address is rather tedious. Second, I wasn't able to get a URL with
an IPv6 address as the host to work with my browser. Maybe I had to include a
scope, or perhaps I screwed something else up. I have no clue.

~~~
kop316
I am in the same boat as you. I took a few days to read the RFCs to figure it
out (as I never found any sort of good guide for IPv6), and I am not confident
I set up my hone network securely, mainly because of the "I don't know what I
don't know."

I also had a few different subnets (to separate IoT and untrusted devices from
my network), and I could never consistently get a stable subnet from my ISP
outside of a /64 (mind you I am using Pfsense, not a consumer router). When
did get a /56 subnet, I had a lot of connectivity issues I never had with only
IPv4, and they went away instantly once I blocked all IPv6 off my network. I
was also never able to confirm outside connectivity into my network via IPv6
either.

I may try it again, but I really don't want to go through a lot of pain and
suffering to try and get IPv6 "working" to only have those connectivity issues
again.

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blackflame7000
There's something to be said for aesthetics when it comes to anything human.
IPv6 appears far more complex than the traditional 4 octets and its an
immediate turn-off especially to those (most) who don't know that octal and
hexadecimal are just different ways of representing the same thing. If they
simply would have extended IPv4 to 8 octets (64 bits) I think that would have
been a better middle ground solution from an intuitive standpoint. 128bit
addressing is overkill and I doubt we will still be using the Internet
Protocol if 2^128 (3.4X10^38) devices are ever online.

~~~
vetinari
It's not "real" 128-bit addressing; for addressing routable networks you have
only 64 bits. The rest is for devices inside that network. Additionally, it is
quite possible that any single device will have more than one IP (with SLAAC,
it can ask for how many it needs. With DHCPv6, it can be limited, and that's
exactly why Android doesn't support it. Your cellphone company would be able
to prevent you from tethering). There's no NAT, so you can't hide a network
behind a single IP.

~~~
delinka
“There's no NAT...”

Are you saying that NAT is technically impossible with IPv6? Because I have
doubts about such a statement.

~~~
vetinari
Not imposible, but brings more problems than it solves. It's better to forget,
that it exists.

RFC6296, by Cisco.

------
drewg123
What irked me about IPv6 was extension headers. At first they sound like a
great idea. It is very flexible to chain headers. However, hardware engineers
_hate_ them, because the number of IPv6 extension headers is potentially
unbounded, leading to all kinds of "interesting" corner cases in networking
hardware. So they end up not being supported in hardware, which means the
either don't work at all, or they kick into a slow firmware exception path. I
would not be surprised if there is eventually a DOS attack against IPv6
enabled gear using extension headers.

------
HenryBemis
Or you can go straight to the IPv6 Bingo:

[https://ipv6bingo.com/](https://ipv6bingo.com/)

------
donatj
In my case it’s largely “I tried and it didn’t work so I gave up because I
didn’t know nor care enough to figure out why”.

At this point it seems to me it’s more of a nice to have than a requirement.

~~~
tcd
> At this point it seems to me it’s more of a nice to have than a requirement.

Except for the fact that, you know, we've _literally_ ran out of addresses bar
a very, very limited supply? And that _billions_ of people won't be able to
access the internet as a result?

I can only imagine we'll be this complacent with things like oil, or plastic
pollution or anything. Only acting when it's _far_ too late. Every ISP around
the world should have pledged IPv6 20 years ago, but some are _still_ not
starting today!

You may think you're fine because you are able to access ycombinator.com and
leave your message, but imagine how many people simply cannot access the v4
network due to address shortages.

~~~
nateguchi
ISPs can always (and sometimes do) use NAT, Then they only need a few IPs. I
know most mobile providers do this.

~~~
tcd
That is absolutely, entirely useless and a completely stupid way of prolonging
the demise of IPv4; CGN doesn't help in regards to you wanting an IPv4 for
your next billion-dollar project which may require several v4's for all the
different layers (because most web apps are not that simple these days).

So sure, sharing an IP amongst many people may help a little, but we've
already ran out _today_. There are people living right now that will _never_
be able to access the internet or make a website because of this.

One example: Digital Ocean have a cap on the number of servers they can run at
one time due to the fact each droplet gets a unique v4.

V4 is dead, time for money to be spent in the right places :)

~~~
hungerstrike
> There are people living right now that will _never_ be able to access the
> internet or make a website because of this.

Well, if that's the only problem then I think we can tone down the sense of
urgency because 1) there are much, much bigger problems to deal with in life
and 2) the web has become a shithole with its growth in popularity.

That's my opinion of course. I'm guessing that you think Internet access and
Internet publishing are basic rights of human existence, but I would disagree
with that.

~~~
tcd
How do you think problems are resolved if not using the internet as a medium
to share thoughts with the world? And even if you think it's a 'shithole' you
cannot deny how important it is in everyday life. Entire government services
are going and have gone online only, and if you were barred from using the
internet you'd find it very difficult to exist within modern society.

I don't know you, but I bet given enough information I can find ways the
internet are vital to your way of life.

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Valmar
For me, the turn off was that any ipv6 connection on Linux was ALWAYS slow as
hell to resolve, often leading to timeouts. Tore my hair out for ages, only to
discover after much frustration and searching online that the solution was as
simple as disabling the kernel's ipv6 module.

With ipv4, never had a problem.

~~~
acdha
That’s a local configuration error but it’s common enough that the community
standardized a better approach which is widely implemented now:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6555](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6555)

------
philg_jr
Verizon (Fios), are you listening? Comcast has you beat by a mile here...

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dekhn
For the first three times I enabled IPv6 on my home network, it broke at least
one functionality (typically, something involving apple and streaming).

More recently, I enabled IPv6 and everything Just Worked. Now I want to turn
off IPv4...

------
janitor61
Maybe it would be good to develop IPv5: just add another octet or two to IPv4
addresses, without the all the added complexity and overengineering that made
the IPv6 rollout & adoption the failure that it is?

------
singularity2001
Not seen: IPv6 makes unique user tracking easier

