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Context:
People have been asking for IPv6 Support on GitHub since years (probably a decade by now)
... and someone even got so annoyed that they decided to setup a dedicated website for checking this: https://isgithubipv6.live/
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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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As a networker, ipv6 is the future. I'm a fan of it, but I don't really talk about it anymore because there's no point.
I threw in the towel after an ISP messed up so badly that I just couldn't bother anymore.
At a previous job a client I was doing some work for got a new internet connection at a new site, the ISP ran brand new fiber for it. This wasn't a new building or anything, but the fiber was new. They allocated them a static IPv4 thing as usual, and I asked the tech about V6, and they said we would have to take it up with the planning team, so I did. I was involved in the email chain at the end of the sales process to coordinate the hookup. So I asked. After many emails back and forth, I was informed the connection was allocated.
They allocated one single IPv6 subnet directly off of their device. I couldn't even.
For those that don't understand, the firewall we had connected to the device is an ipv6 router. What normally happens, especially in DHCP customer connections, is that the router will use DHCP-PD to allocate a subnet for the router to use on the LAN, and automatically set up a route to say "reach this subnet we allocated for this router, via this router" kind of thing. I'm dramatically simplifying, but that's the gist. In DHCP-PD, the router will also have an IPv6 address on the ISP-facing link to facilitate the connection. In the case of the earlier story, they gave us an entire subnet to communicate between the ISP and the router, and didn't give us a subnet for the client systems inside the network.
I did ask about this and I can only describe their reply as "visible confusion".
I know many who will still be confused by this point are people who have not used IPv6; to explain further: the IP on your local (LAN) systems needs to be a public IP address, because the router no longer does network address translation when sending your data to the internet. So the IP on the router has no bearing on your computer having a connection to the internet over v6. If your local computer does not have a globally unique ipv6 address, you cannot use IPv6. There are ways around this, NAT66 exists but it's incredibly bad practice in most cases. The firewall I was working with didn't really support NAT66 (at least, at the time) and I wasn't really going to set that up.
ISPs are the reason I gave up on IPv6.
I'll add this other story to reinforce it. I'll keep it brief. A different ISP for a different company at a different site entirely. The client purchased a static IPv4 address, and I asked about IPv6, as you do. To preface, I know this company and used them for my own connection at the time. They have IPv6 for residential clients via DHCP-PD. I was told, no joke, that because of the static IPv4 assignment, and how they execute that for businesses, that they couldn't add IPv6 to the connection, at all.
The last thing I want to mention is a video I saw, which is aptly named "CGN, a driver for IPv6 adoption" or something similar. It's a short lecture about the evils of carrier grade NAT, and how IPv6 actually fixes pretty much all the bs that goes with CGN, with fewer requirements and less overhead.
IPv6 is coming. You will prefer IPv4 until you understand how horrific CGN is.
Yep. It was mostly a joke. Mostly. The bungled adoption of v6 plus all the ways we can still leverage v4 is what's keeping v6 from being adopted any time soon, but one day we're going to have to rip off the band-aid and just go for it. Sure, v6 is going to bring its own issues and weirdness, but FUTURE!
I swear it's going to be a generational change where it takes a slow adoption by the younger network people as the older network people slowly retire. Kind of like how racism and sexism has diminished. It wasn't like we changed anyone's mind, just that people held onto it until they died and younger people just said, "The future is now, old man." and moved past it.
"IP address are four sets of numbers with dots in between AND THAT'S HOW I LIKES IT!" - Me, an old network guy
Honestly the fact that I can't remember or type IPv6 addresses is a big reason I haven't bothered figuring it out.
I imagine you sitting there like Scotty, "Give me an ip address, not no colon, not no hexadecimal, and not no bloody double colon. Just 4 numbers between 0 and 255 with a dot in between."
So, my argument here is.... Why the hell are you memorizing IP addresses?
Is your DNS so misconfigured that you're still punching in IPs by hand?
DNS is the solution. Going to "router.domain.local" or whatever your internal domain is, is easier to remember than.... Which subnet am I on again? Is this one 192.168.22.254? Or 192.168.21.1?
Stop punching in numbers like a cave man. Use DNS. You won't even notice if it's IPv6 after that
And what happens when DNS inevitably falls over and I need to fix it?
And when I'm watching IP addresses scroll by, IPv6 ones are a lot harder to read than v4
some super gigabrained chad linux nerd will have written a tool to automatically configure it and have open sourced it.
You could probably just use that. I think like most things in life, the answer is automation.
I wouldn't trust it unless I wrote it myself. And even then maybe not.
well then go and do it manually, surely you as a human wouldn't make any mistakes. Would you?
DNS, by its very nature is redundant. So DNS shouldn't just fall over. If it does, you're doing something wrong.
If you absolutely need to go to IP addresses, they should be documented.
Unless DNS is outright wrong, there should not be an issue.
For scrolling: are you staring at active log files? Who isn't using a syslog aggregator? You can easily look up the IP of whatever device that is interesting and filter the log by that IP.
That's not what an IP is though, that's just dotted representation
All I want to say about this is that the technology specialists, especially in networking, are usually not this opposed to change. Things change for networking and systems folks all the time. We're used to it. Most of the time the hard sell is with the management folks who Green light projects. They don't want to "waste" money on something that "nobody wants".
Legitimately, one company I asked about IPv6 said to me that customers had not requested it, so they haven't spent any time on implementing it.
As if customers know what's good for them....
I see you've worked with my employer
Speaking of being an old man, let me tell you:
"The future is now old man" != "The future is now, old man."
I genuinely tripped over this sentence thanks to the lack of punctuation.
Fixed. Thanks!
Next up, the Oxford comma; Meet the strippers, Hitler and Stalin
The important bit is that almost every major web service is already running fully dual stacked. Azure, Amazon, Meta, CloudFlare, Google.... If it's a commonly known internet company, it's probably ready for IPv6.
There's still plenty that isn't ready, but most well known things have been ready for years at this point.
The fact that almost the entire internet is controlled by those evil companies is really fucking sad. I remember the old days when people, you know, hosted their own shit and used manual load balancing to keep large sites up and working.
I gave it the old college try about 6 months ago. Found out how to send the req for a subnet to my ISP. Configured my opnsense. When it worked, it worked. But it would randomly stop routing regularly. After a lot of troubleshooting determined it was the isp and have up.
Maybe I'll try again in another 6 months.
This is remarkably common. A major factor is how to handle renewals. There appears to either be bugs with the procedure or there's disagreement on how it should be handled. So it will work, for a while, until a renewal needs to happen, then everything goes to shit.
I've directly witnessed this in router/firewall logs. That there's an attempt to renew the DHCP-PD, which does not get a valid reply.
so is there just no standard for renewal? Or are ISPs just refusing to use the standard, for whatever reason?
I can't imagine we don't already have a standard for this shit. I'd be baffled if we didn't. So surely it's just ISPs being their usual, useless selves.
This is less to do with the ISPs and more to do with the implementation of DHCP-PD renewals on various software/hardware devices. I'm not going to point any fingers, but it seems that some vendors don't play very nicely with other vendors.
oh so it's a classic instance of shitty hardware vendors doing shitty software things.
Gotta love technology.
Always has been
CGnat is an abomination.
Thanks for the comment. Kinda confirms my approach (mostly out of laziness) of "I'll do it when the ISP starts pushing it" is the correct one.
I think tech advocacy generally doesn't work, and in the case of IPv6 I can't see it working at all unless they can convince the ISPs to devote a lot more resources to it. But since I'm not an ISP... meh, whatever I guess.
At least you can talk to someone at your ISP who can change things, in 10 years I was literally never been able to contact someone who knows anything about networks in any of the 3 big ISPs here.. all I get is this:
"oh you have speed issue? Let me "refresh" your connection"
"No sir i have no speed issues, I just need to be able to open IPv6 ports"
"Oh trying to changing the cable port?"
"Sigh.. can you transfer me to advanced support plz"
"Sure thing"
Advanced support: "So you having speed issues?"
"No i just need to be able to open IPv6 ports"
"Ah ports, you can do that from your router settings i think"
"No sir, you are the only ISP here where I can't open ports or receive any ICMP on my ipv6"
"Let me see.. i'll refresh your connections"
And it's the same of many different issues, you can't get a hold of anyone who can change anything in any layer about any config. Take it or leave it..
At most, the difference between your experience and mine was that the support I recieved at least understood what IPv6 was, which is likely a function of most of my stories being from business support, rather than residential support.
Almost every time I call I get nowhere. Which is why I've given up. Obviously, someone high up in the technical teams is trying to implement IPv6 with very limited success. So I'm just trying to be patient, as they navigate the hellscape of corporate approvals and get things working.
It's slow going, but at least it's going.