nanog mailing list archives

Re: understanding IPv6


From: Denys Fedoryshchenko <nuclearcat () nuclearcat com>
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2020 13:01:01 +0300

On 2020-06-07 12:35, Daniel Sterling wrote:
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 2:00 AM Fred Baker <fredbakersba () gmail com> wrote:
I'm sorry you have chosen to ignore documents like RFC 3315, which is where DHCP PD was first described (in 2003). It's not like anyone's hiding it.
So while it may be true that no one is hiding this information, in my
experience no one is shining a spot light on it either, and until I
was told about it, I was simply unable to understand IPv6.
I can give you that easily reasons to understand it:

1 - we can avoid using virtual hosts, when you can identify things on L3, things become much more clear in software. Making virtual hosts in some protocols are living hell.
2 - P2P communications are possible again.
2.1 As soon as you need to access ANYTHING at your home, your choice only begging ISP for one real IP(most often dynamic), then you struggle with port forwarding stuff. With IPv6 it gets really simple. 2.2 Direct P2P file transfers from friend to a friend, you don't need cloud services anymore and/or headache with NAT pinning and etc
2.3 Gaming
2.4 Some industrial equipment really love P2P VPN, with IPv4 they are forced to use some "middle point" in "cloud", that decrease reliability, increase latency and most important jack up operational costs and require continuous support of this "middle point". 3 - As user can be easily identified, no more "captcha" stuff or struggling with NAT pool IP bans (very painful with gaming services, twitter, google).
4 - Dealing with LEA requests is much easier and cheaper

There are very interesting and unobvious moments on IPv4 vs IPv6, for example related to battery lifetime in embedded electronics. In ipv4, many devices are forced to send "keepalives" so that the NAT entry does not disappear, with IPv6 it is not required and bidirectional communications possible at any time. And in fact, it has a huge impact on the cost and battery life of IoT devices. When I developed some IoT devices for clients, it turned out that if "IPv6-only" is possible, this significantly reduces the cost of the solution and simplify setup.

But there is one huge minus. We cannot switch to ipv6 completely and are forced to bear the costs of ipv4 too. In addition, many services (like Sony playstation stuff) continue to ban ipv4 address, and doesn't bother themself to implement ipv6 (which is supreme stupidity and technical idiocy).


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