
IPv6 Adoption - AndrewDucker
https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#20
======
SwellJoe
We added support for IPv6 to Virtualmin projects about a decade ago. Even
today, only a tiny percentage of our users ever enable it (this mostly
includes our own sites, embarrassingly enough, even though some of our servers
in colo do have IPv6 subnets available to them). I should work on making that
a thing that happens more by default.

There's a lot of cool things you can do when you don't have to worry about
running out of IP addresses. A lot of complex stuff people are doing with
cloud meshnets and overlay networks and bridged private networks with port
forwarding and such becomes mostly moot if every VM and container can have as
many dedicated real IPs as it needs to do its job.

It's also funny/weird to think about how much development effort has gone into
stretching IPv4. NAT, port forwarding, SNI (and some hacky other SSL tricks
before that to fit multiple SSL sites on one IP), masquerading, tunneling,
VPNs, etc. The list is incredibly long and the hours spent on development
unfathomable.

~~~
oblio
Well, the good news is that IPv6 is winning. If Google's stats are accurate -
and they probably are - IPv6 went from 1% usage to 16% usage in 5 years
(January 2012 - January 2017). And in tech it's all about critical mass. We've
passed innovators and early adopters and we're getting closer to early
majority. I'd bet that once we're around 30-40% adoption will ramp up since
few people want to be considered laggards.

And according to Google's graph I'd say we're about 5 years away from reaching
40%.

~~~
tomjen3
I can buy that argument, but I cannot buy IPv6. I mean that literally, my ISP
doesn't offer it. Instead I am given two ipv4 addresses, but because of NAT I
only need one - which is of course a total joke.

I would love a network where there are no bridges and every mote of dust (or
VM) has an ip, but if I cannot buy the addresses, what good does it do me?

~~~
_ncxu
You may not be able to now, but the pressure GP mentioned will also apply to
ISPs, and they'll soon start seeing IPv6 as a competitive edge, or at the very
least, something to not lag behind in making them lose customers. Especially
if there's a "killer app" that makes the switch and ONLY uses IPv6, e.g. say,
google.com.

~~~
syncsynchalt
As CG-NAT becomes more common, the "killer app" might be improved experience
for gamers.

------
sspiff
I run IPv6 only servers on Scaleway because IPv4 addresses are €1/month extra
and my node costs €2/month. That's a 50% cost increase.

The biggest stumbling blocks for IPv6 are the fact that many prominent cloud
services don't fully support IPv6. The biggest problems for me are Amazon S3
and Github. I end up having to pass traffic for those services through an SSH
tunnel to a nearby node with both IPv4 and IPv6.

On an unrelated note, I'm happy to see that apparently my home country Belgium
has one of the highest adoption levels worldwide, if not the highest.

~~~
btgeekboy
S3 is available over IPv6, but you need to use a different endpoint.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-
ipv6-support-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-ipv6-support-
for-amazon-s3/)

------
Symbiote

      $ host -t aaaa news.ycombinator.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.
      news.ycombinator.com.cdn.cloudflare.net has no AAAA record
    

But there's an option to turn it on, documented here:
[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200168746-H...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200168746-How-do-I-turn-the-Cloudflare-IPv6-gateway-on-or-off-)

~~~
ancarda
Hacker News used to have a GitHub repo somewhere on
[https://github.com/HackerNews/](https://github.com/HackerNews/) where they
hosted an issue tracker - several people raised this and their response was
something along the lines of "we can't yet as our anti-spam code relies on
accurate geolocation and some other things easier/possible in IPv4".

Unfortunately I can't find a link - I think they closed the issue tracker.
Perhaps dang can comment? I'm typing from memory so it might be remembering
incorrectly.

~~~
zubspace
Does someone know how to ban single users based on IPv6? Is this even
possible? What is the alternative?

~~~
admiun
I think the rough IPv6 equivalent of a single IPv4 ban would be to ban a /64
subnet. This bans all users in that subnet which is the same as banning an
IPv4 subnet hiding behind a single NAT address.

~~~
kuschku
This would be the case, except home users can often get a /56 or /48.

------
ter0
Why does the percentage of IPv6 usage peak over weekends? Perhaps there's more
people in offices on weekdays, which are less likely to use IPv6?

~~~
wtallis
Corporate networks with professional IT staff are where you'll find the legacy
systems and equipment that get in the way of using IPv6. Home users have all
been running operating systems with IPv6 on by default for years, and their
routers are mostly new enough to make IPv6 work out of the box as soon as the
ISP is ready.

~~~
technofiend
Considering what's at stake if you accidentally make some part of your
infrastructure routable it seems pretty reasonable corporate environments want
to be very careful about IPV6 adoption. Personally I think they should still
do it but if HSBC is in the news tomorrow after leaking customer details
because of a routing woops there would be a lot of "they should have known
better!" here and in the press. It's going to a take a long time for sensitive
corporate environments to decide the rewards outweigh the risks.

~~~
stephen_g
I think any enterprise that fails in this way has way bigger issues, and I
would expect to have already been compromised. Every single enterprise should
_already_ have the firewall rules on their edge routers that would prevent
that set up even with IPv4 (remember, NAT is not intended as a security
feature and only kind-of works like one. Any competent network engineer should
not be relying on NAT to add _any_ security).

------
optimog
As a Belgian, can anyone explain why the adoption of IPv6 in Belgium is that
high (51,51%) compared to all the other countries?

~~~
Tharkun
Because the dominant ISP (Telenet) has enabled IPv6 by default on all their
residential gateways. And because they (possibly somewhat surprisingly) have
some smart people working for them.

~~~
optimog
That's remarkable, since Telenet is part of Liberty Global, who owns so many
ISP's. Eg. neighbouring country The Netherlands has Ziggo (also owned by
Liberty Global). Adaptation in The Netherlands is only 9 pct. Makes me wonder
if Belgium is used as a technical testing playground for Liberty Global or if
it's just a smart move by Telenet.

~~~
danieldk
_Makes me wonder if Belgium is used as a technical testing playground for
Liberty Global_

Not really, UnityMedia Germany is also owned by Liberty Global and we have had
IPv6 for years (since I moved here in 2013).

------
johnhenry
Just wondering about the data collection, -- why isn't it strictly monotonic
over time?

Edit: Answered my own question -- it looks like the data specify access daily,
not what I assumed was overall adoption. This does present some interesting
patterns, however. For instance, noting that there's a peak weekly on Friday
and bottom out on Monday, one might be able to make a conclusion about
workplace adoption versus home usage.

~~~
mrb
You are absolutely right. Home networks are more IPv6-enabled than company
networks!

~~~
syncsynchalt
Makes sense. I've had home IPv6 via Comcast for at least half a decade, and
they're the largest ISP in the US.

They are an early adopter and innovator of IPv6, partly because they had more
modems in their private network than the number of all possible 10.x
addresses.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
"Early adopter and innovator" because they started using a technology that was
being used by other people for 10 to 15 years before that?!

~~~
syncsynchalt
Yes. As an inventor of CG transition technologies like DS-Lite (RFC 6333),
Comcast has really led in building the technologies that were needed for
transition in the past decade.

I was on 6bone too, but there's a lot of difference between ping6'ing each
other over tunnels and rolling out v6 to millions of customers without them
noticing.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
I dunno ... I had native IPv6 on DSL ~ 12 years ago. I mean, sure, they have
actually developed technology in that area, so maybe innovator is somewhat
appropriate, but early adopter?

------
nemetroid
I was surprised to see such a low level of adoption for Sweden, so I looked up
the IPv4 assignments by country[0]. Sweden has the second highest number of
IPv4 addresses per capita, at 3.3. I wonder if that is the reason why.

~~~
BillinghamJ
Where is your [0]?

~~~
jakobgm
[0] [http://www.nationmaster.com/country-
info/stats/Media/Interne...](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-
info/stats/Media/Internet/IP-addresses-per-capita)

------
squeed
And yet, three of the four most valuable companies in the world are cloud
providers, and none of them have more than rudimentary support for IPv6.

This is a disaster. Half the world is not yet online. If we're going to change
that, then we need to move to ipv6, and soon.

~~~
cronjobber
"We" don't have to move to ipv6, even if "they" have to. The internet can
plausibly support both protocols forever.

~~~
simias
The main reason I haven't switched my networks to IPv6 is that I plainly don't
want to support both protocols at the same time. If I could just switch over
to IPv6 and leave v4 behind I would, but I just can't be bothered to do twice
the work every time I setup a firewall or a router. Double the config, double
the tests and on top of that you have to make sure everything inter-operates
smoothly when IPv4 alone still just works.

As you mention in your other post it really is the "billion dollar mistake",
it's obvious to me in hindsight that they should have made IPv6 completely
backwards compatible with IPv4, no matter the cost. Have a deprecation
procedure later on if you want to remove the hacks necessary to support IPv4.
Have a clear and simple upgrade path, one step at a time.

Sure, having a clean new standard is compelling but clearly it's making things
way more difficult that they ought to be. And that's how we end up more than
20 years after RFC1883 was released with "barely" 20% adoption. NATing was
easier than IPv6, so people NAT'ed everything and the _inter_ net became the
net.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> As you mention in your other post it really is the "billion dollar mistake",
> it's obvious to me in hindsight that they should have made IPv6 completely
> backwards compatible with IPv4, no matter the cost.

It's not a matter of cost, it's simply impossible.

IPv4 has a 32 bit field for the source address and a 32 bit field for the
destination address, and every connection over IP needs to send packets back
and forth between the two addresses. As soon as one party has a longer
address, the other party has to know how to handle that, otherwise, they
cannot possibly communicate.

The only point where compatibility would be possible to some degree is the
network, but (a) that compatibility is in effect a tunnel, and there are lots
of ways to tunnel IPv6 over IPv4 just fine, and (b) most of the global
internet supports IPv6 just fine, and has been for a long time. The problem is
the migration of the endpoints, not so much the network.

~~~
cronjobber
IPv6 could have done three things. First, embed the "legacy" address space.
Second, have legacy-to-legacy connections use v4 on the wire. Third, strongly
encourage existing user-maintained configuration (config file formats etc.) to
remain perfectly valid as long as they don't use v6 addresses (or other v6
features.)

You are right, you'd still need a "legacy" address to connect to "true" v4
servers, but that address would be _all_ you need, while most operating
systems, routers, client and server software could be, technically, all-v6
all-the-time by now.

~~~
pdkl95
> embed the "legacy" address space

They did. Every IPv4 address is in a reserved area of the IPv6 address space.

    
    
       a.b.c.d           # v4
       ::FFFF:a.b.c.d    # v6
    

[http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2....](http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2.htm)

> software could be, technically, all-v6 all-the-time by now.

I started using v6 in the late 90s.

Software developed post-2000(-ish) should already be compatible.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of developers that think this is
hard/impossible (or they are lazy), and so we have software that is defunct by
design.

> that address would be all you need

Regardless of how the address was represented, software would still need to be
updated.

~~~
cronjobber
I stand corrected, RFC 4038 seems to be what I was looking for. But it seems
to be a late addition, and OS support is optional. If developers think moving
their apps to IPv6 is too complicated, I can't fault them.

~~~
Avernar
> If developers think moving their apps to IPv6 is too complicated, I can't
> fault them.

I can. I'm a developer and it's easy to add support for IPV6 to apps.

Parsing and displaying IPV6 addresses? There are many libraries and articles
for that. Connecting to a host name? Call one function and loop through the
list of address structures returned and connect like normal with them skipping
the ones that failed. Accepting connections? A little more tricky but since
you're writing a server it's not difficult in comparison. The tricky part is
figuring out what order you should bind to the socket or if you should use
IPV4 mapped addresses.

And if you're using a higher level language or library then it becomes even
easier. You just have to worry about the larger size of the address in both
binary and text representation if you care about that at all (connecting to a
host name you don't have to worry).

The only difficult bit is convincing management it's a good idea to support
IPV6. But then the problem shifts from the technical to the political.

------
notheguyouthink
Here's a question, I know next to nothing about IPv6, but I imagine a big part
of the problem is migration of IPv4 _(of course)_. So, for new projects.. I
don't have this issue, right? What are my options to implement proper IPv6
support for my new apps right from the start?

~~~
stepik777
Off the top of my head:

* If you store IP addresses ensure that you can store IPv6 address if necessary.

* Rent servers only from IPv6 capable providers.

* When configuring DNS don't forget AAAA records.

* If you ban users by IP you might need to ban entire IPv6 subnets.

------
heipei
If you want to see the percentage of requests from a website that are IPv6, my
service [https://urlscan.io](https://urlscan.io) supports both IPv4 and IPv6.
A lot of similar services only scan via IPv4, which I believe is an oversight.

~~~
TekMol
Interesting service. What is the use case? What is your motivation to build
it?

~~~
heipei
My original motivation was: "This website is slow as shit, let me fire up
Chrome Devtools to see how many requests it is making." This doesn't scale and
doesn't contain additional info such as GeoIP information, so I created
[https://urlscan.io](https://urlscan.io). By now it has become a service that
is heavily used by security researchers for detecting such things as phishing
websites.

------
avian
In my experience IPv6 support in home Wi-Fi routers is still hit or miss. I
recently had to replace a new TP-link router because some wireless devices
refused to get a IPv6 address due to failing duplicate address detection (it
was some kind of multicast issue as far as I could see)

The router in question got several firmware updates where changelog mentioned
an unspecified "IPv6 fix", but none fixed the issue for me. Finally I just
gave up and bought a new one from a different vendor.

[https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2017/04/ipv6_pro...](https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2017/04/ipv6_problems_on_tp_link_archer_c20/)

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
> I recently had to replace a new TP-link router because some wireless devices
> refused to get a IPv6 address

What's the advantage of having an ipv6 home lan? I think for a home network
the 192.168.0.0 subnet should be more than enough. Or am I missing something?

~~~
sliken
Approximately half the internet exists because of the lack of IPv6.

A partial list:

    
    
      * Streaming music - because you can't connect to your music collection at home
    
      * drop box - because neither you or the person you shared with can direct connect
    
      * power/solar monitoring - cloud service because you can't connect to your system
    
      * IoT/Dropcams/Nest thermostats - require cloud services... because your phone/tablet/desktop can't connect to your clients automatically
    
      * security services, garage door control, smart home - another cloud service because you can't monitor/control directly.
    
      * netflix - can't connect to your home plex
    
      * skype (after they ditched p2p), google hangouts etc - requires cloud because the clients can't connect to each other
    
      * pretty much every chat client - central servers because you can't direct connect.

~~~
SonOfLilit
Sorry, I just can't agree with this.

IRC had servers decades before IPv4 address scarcity became a thing.

Skype was popular before they had to ditch P2P, and most users aren't aware of
the issue.

DropBox is first and foremost a backup service, and you always want backup to
be off-premise.

[..]

Cloud services are awesome and we would all use them even if we could accept
incoming connections.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> IRC had servers decades before IPv4 address scarcity became a thing.

Because it's a group chat, where a server is much more natural than for two
parties communicating. Plus, it has DCC, so you can actually efectively use
IRC without an IRC server.

------
Icedcool
I work for a major university hospital in IT, and when IPv6 was enabled as a
default additional component to IPv4, it caused all kinds of hell.

The issues were generally around the OS prioritizing IPv6 over IPv4 which a
lot of applications aren't ready for.

I know IPv6 is more secure, better, conditions your hair for you, but I am not
excited to move IPv6 forward with our network.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> The issues were generally around the OS prioritizing IPv6 over IPv4 which a
> lot of applications aren't ready for.

If the application doesn't explicitly request IPv6, it doesn't get IPv6.

~~~
wmf
Almost all popular apps started requesting IPv6 before IPv6 was broadly
deployed, so they weren't actually using it. Then when IPv6 was deployed, it
was less reliable because stuff was untested and suddenly there was
intermittent breakage everywhere. So apps had to be updated to use happy
eyeballs.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
If an app needs happy eyeballs, then that is because the IPv6 connectivity is
broken, so you don't get to say that the app was not ready for IPv6.

------
z3t4
Can anyone recommend a guides on IPv6 for developers and sysops ?

~~~
tajen
I once ticked "IPv6" when ordering a Debian VPS. It was super-slow and I
didn't know IPv6 was the cause. Basically the system always tries IPv6 first,
times out at 30s, then tries IPv4. I never completed an `apt-get update` and I
assumed my provider had sold me crap. Years later, I discovered that disabling
IPv6 did the trick.

So, my noob advice: If you ask for a guide about IPv6, it's not for you yet.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Actually, your provider did sell you crap. IPv6 will only be tried if your
host has configured IPv6 connectivity and the destination host has IPv6 DNS
entries. Debian mirrors generally support IPv6, so apt-get hanging probably
means that the IPv6 connectivity of your provider was broken.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
That was my thought too. IPv6 shouldn't cause hangs if it is configured
correctly.

~~~
deathanatos
I just want to emphasize this a bit: IPv6 won't cause hangs _even if the
connection is IPv4 only_ if things are configured correctly.

(That said, I've seen incorrect configurations: Comcast, at one point,
assigned me an IPv6 address (automatically) and led the system to believe that
their was a valid IPv6 route, but proceeded to drop all IPv6 packets. This
same scenario can happen on IPv4, too, and the resolution is the same: worm
your way through the bowels of support until you reach someone competent.)

------
vbernat
Related, LinkedIn has more than 50% usage:
[https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2017/07/linkedin-
passe...](https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2017/07/linkedin-passes-
ipv6-milestone).

~~~
koffiezet
Mostly due to it being "mobile devices" \- where every major platform has good
support for IPv6, and the carriers need a massive amount of IP's - which are
simply not available.

------
TekMol
I just googled some IPv6 test tools and they all say "IPv6 not supported". Is
there a way to find out why? If it's my settings, machine, my router, my
provider...?

~~~
ac29
Try running 'ip addr' in Linux or 'ipconfig' in Windows. Do you even have a
IPv6 address assigned to any interface? If not, it is your router or ISP, most
likely.

~~~
TekMol
I'm on Linux. Yes, looks like my machine has ipv6. It shows an ipv6 address in
the output of "ip addr".

~~~
scott_karana
Your router's LAN switch might support IPv6, but it might not support it on
its WAN/NAT side, or you might not have any public IPv6 addresses assigned by
your ISP, or no tunneling configured, etc.

------
rohan1024
Reliance jio has contributed a lot for the ipv6 adoption in India.

------
ghshephard
As much as I love and use IPv6 every day as my primary payload protocol (and
have done so for 10+ years) - I find it dubious that, "The graph shows the
percentage of users that access Google over IPv6." \- Really, 20% of people
are now connecting to Google over IPv6? If so, that's awesome and presumably a
side effect of Comcast giving everyone IPv6 addresses.

~~~
simias
What do you find dubious exactly? Why would Google lie about that? It doesn't
sound that hard to believe, all it takes is a few big ISPs starting to enable
IPv6 by default.

~~~
renesd
Google isn't even accessible in the biggest country with the most people on
the internet. So the HN title is misleading, in that it isn't 20% worldwide.

Mods, please fix the title?

~~~
ko27
"in that it isn't 20% worldwide."

You don't know that, even when you count in more Chinese people it could still
not change the world average. The title is fine since it represents an
extremely big sample on the most visited page on the Internet.

~~~
londons_explore
Baidu.com is the most visited page though...

~~~
pcr0
Not sure where you got that from. Alexa rankings show google.com as #1 and
baidu.com as #4.

[http://www.alexa.com/topsites](http://www.alexa.com/topsites)

~~~
earenndil
He probably means most visited site in china.

------
stretchwithme
Came across this useful description of how IPv6 addresses work. Is it still
true that Windows does not fully support IPv6?

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-
sho...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-should-know-
about-ipv6-addressing/)

~~~
stretchwithme
Oops, that's really old actually. From 2010.

------
jokoon
I wonder if there are hardware or software issues with IPv6. Issues like the
hardware/software being mature enough, security stuff, etc.

Since it is such a low level issue and implies a lot of software and hardware,
I would not be surprised to not see it progress fast enough.

------
nikon
Does Google Cloud even offer IPv6?

~~~
mikelward
Externally (load balancer VIPs, AppEngine, Cloud SQL), yes. Internally (GCE
instances), not yet.

[https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load-
balancing/ipv6](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load-balancing/ipv6)
[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2010/07/app-engine-
and-...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2010/07/app-engine-and-
ipv6-round-2.html) [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2014/11/cloudsql-
instan...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2014/11/cloudsql-instances-
now-come-with-free-ipiv6-address.html)
[https://googlecloudplatform.uservoice.com/forums/302595-comp...](https://googlecloudplatform.uservoice.com/forums/302595-compute-
engine/suggestions/8518246-support-ipv6)

------
sliken
Google reports over 35% of their traffic is IPv6 for the USA.

Source (click on per country tab)

    
    
      https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption

------
kingosticks
Should the title be "peaks" rather than "breaks"?

~~~
foota
No, it is breaking past the limit of 20%. You generally only use peaks if you
are expecting it to drop in the future or if it has since dropped.

~~~
kingosticks
Fair enough, peaks isn't right,'reaches' maybe. Breaks just read wrong for me
at first glance, I thought it was saying the usage of ipv6 was broken for 20%
of users worldwide. That was obviously just a huge brain fail on my part.

------
shmerl
Verizon and Optimum still didn't deploy IPv6 support.

------
Arnt
So growth really is slowing down.

It used to double every ten to twelve months, the last two doublings took
fifteen (IIRC) and nineteen months. 40% around October 2019, then?

~~~
cm2187
Some countries seem to have not even started getting into IPv6: Spain, Italy,
Russia. So I think it could accelerate again the day the ISP in those
countries make the switch (if that ever happens).

~~~
mrkrabo
Spaniard here.

The only major ISP that has tried to enable IPv6 is Orange. They did so by
putting people in a DS-Lite connection. This is, CG-NAT for IPv4 and real IPv6
connectivity. Result: now everybody thinks "IPv6 sucks because it means I
won't have an external IPv4 address". So they stopped the IPv6 programme.

The other two major ISPs also are ready. They just have to flip the switch.

That said... I bet most of the CPEs that are currently deployed have no IPv6
capability. The only ones that work with IPv6 are usually the fibre CPEs,
which are more modern, by definition.

IPv6 is simply a failure, especially if you, as an ISP, can afford to buy all
the IPv4 addresses you need. And that's what happens in Spain for the three
major ISPs: they have all the IP addresses they need, so there is no need at
all for them to switch to IPv6. In fact, they are using this as a weapon
against the new ISPs: one of the three major ISPs mocked a smaller one for
having their clients behind a CG-NAT, which is something they had to do that
because they simply have no IPv4 addresses.

Our government forces the biggest ISP to share its last mile infrastructure
with every ISP that wants to use it, so my question is, why doesn't the
government force the big ISPs to share their IPv4 address pools?

~~~
ornitorrincos
yeah, Euskaltel(northern spain cable isp) had(and maybe still has) a huge
amount of ips.

Years ago they used to put a modem instead of a router in every home, the
modem had three ports with each of them being assigned a public ip address.

------
JepZ
Looks like we will see more than 50% IPv6 in about 4 years from today :-)

------
jakeNiemiec
Thats a great graph.

------
dingo_bat
Looks like India has better IPv6 adoption than Japan. Yay!

------
nepotism2018
Whats with the dip in Jan 2017 lol

------
toast42
The Google Fiber router doesn't support IPv6 port forwarding. That was a
frustrating afternoon and a bit of a surprise to learn.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
What would you possibly want to use IPv6 port forwarding for?

~~~
ianburrell
IPv6 port forwarding likely just means allowing incoming connections in IPv6
firewall. Exposing internal machines with IPv4 uses NAT and is called "port
forwarding". IPv6 doesn't need NAT but people still call it "port forwarding".

------
exabrial
All advertising companies (Google, FaceBook, Amazon) are pushing ipv6 hard for
good reason: it allows them to [easily] see how many individual hosts a
private network has and track them. I'm sure the NSA and other 3 letter
agencies are delighted as well.

~~~
stephen_g
Absolutely false. All modern IPv6 implementations support privacy extensions
and randomly generate new addresses periodically, so there is no practical
advantage over NAT'ed IPv4.

