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?
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.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.
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.
- streaming music - you pay Spotify for it's browsing and discovery services and the fact that you don't pay for every album you would like to listen to. Not to access "my music collection at home". Quite frankly it doesn't seem to me you can even do that on Spotify, but I may be wrong.
- power/solar monitoring - you would need a server which would specifically handle the metric collection and make decisions upon this. Obviously cloud is cheaper than a separate box stationed in your house.
- IoT/Dropcams/Nest thermostats - Philips Hue doesn't work through cloud since it doesn't have to. Dropcams are usually a separate device which does not provide server capabilities per se - so require a box.
- security services, garage door control, smart home - all of that is controllable directly, but I am not going to start on how much you will be overpaying for every of the devices for them to have a separate fully-functional IP stack that is easily connected to a (W)LAN (wi-fi, ethernet, bluetooth - all of that is either expensive, bulky or power-hungry). So a box/cloud is always a solution.
- netflix - same points as Spotify. You don't pay them to manage your collection, you pay them to have access to a constantly curated list of newly available items.
- skype, google hangouts, etc. - please do show everyone how to create a chat service that would allow me to chat with anyone I would like to without having to resort to a centralised storage of identities and at the same time solve the issue of spam.
Except there is already a box stationed in your house, otherwise no data collection. Whether you might want to be able to use cloud-provided storage for reliability reasons would be a separate issue (which (a) could be completely application agnostic and (b) could just as well use your home server if you preferred that).
> Dropcams are usually a separate device which does not provide server capabilities per se - so require a box.
Or adding "server capabilities", whatever that is.
> but I am not going to start on how much you will be overpaying for every of the devices for them to have a separate fully-functional IP stack that is easily connected to a (W)LAN (wi-fi, ethernet, bluetooth - all of that is either expensive, bulky or power-hungry). So a box/cloud is always a solution.
How exactly do any of those connect to "the cloud" without a "fully-functional IP stack"?
Exactly the point I am making in my previous message. This tech is available independently from you using ipv4 or ipv6. You can still do all of this with ipv4 and the reason engineers would prefer to have the "cloud" method is because then they keep their clients on the platform and because most of their clients would not be setting their own server up anytime soon.
It is a business decision and not a technical one. You're making a point from a perspective of a geeky software engineer.
>> Or adding "server capabilities", whatever that is.
You can still do that with IPv4. My point stands.
>> How exactly do any of those connect to "the cloud" without a "fully-functional IP stack"?
For example, Philips Hue uses ZigBee to connect to "the box", which provides the HTTP interface; if they used wi-fi or bluetooth - the price for their lamps would go up by about ~$10 +-$2. So while you don't have to use "the cloud", you'd still need to have a separate piece of hardware that provides the ip connectivity. How does ipv6 solve the problem here?
With IPv6, your device has a global address, so the user can just use a web browser to control the device from anywhere on the planet without any need for port forwarding, that is what IPv4 with NAT prevents.
You could give friends/family access to your photos, you could receive/send messages even if your phone/laptop was down, off, stolen, or gasp without a network connection. You could share files, and if someone wanted to confiscate it they would have to come knocking.
IRC never did async well (you have to be online at the same time) and never became popular with the general public. Skype did p2p well, back when most had an IP address, a physical network cable, and left their machine on (unlimited power). As NAT and mobile devices (that couldn't constantly be available for bouncing around a NAT and participating in a DHT). As a result Microsoft centralized it, so low power clients could connect as needed.
IPv4 basically turns a home computer into a consumer of internet services, even for silly things like using your cell phone to open your garage door requires a cloud service to be involved.
My main point is many traditional web services could be provided by the individual. You can share docs, communicate, and manage your increasingly complicated home environment easily with IPv6. Sure some would still use centralized services, but many more would do it yourself.
You could, for example, configure the firewall to give access to your IoT fridge, camera, baby monitor and toaster's web interfaces, all on port 80. With IPv4 NAT, you'd need to remember a port number for all but one of these services.
You can more easily accept an incoming connection, whether that's for gaming, video chat, P2P file sharing, etc. The computer knows its own address.
If the ISP is so short of IPv4 addresses that even the router only gets a private address (so, two layers of NAT), then without IPv6 there's no way to set up any type of server.
The IPv6 firewall user interface (my router calls it "pinholes") is simpler than the IPv4 port forwarding interface.
Of course for most users it's going to make no difference at the moment, but for those who need it, it is useful.
You might want to run apps that benefit from robust P2P connectivity, like VoIP or WebRTC apps.
You might use a VPN to connect to another network and get addressing conflicts.