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Comment by big_chungus | Hacker News Reader

I wished IPv6 could be memorized. I can rattle the addresses of all the devices in my home network off with ease, but have trouble remembering a single IPv6. The "just use DNS" answer isn't a good one; stuff sometimes breaks, and it's much harder to fix when I've got to look everything up.

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There are many options.

1) ping6 ff02::1%eth0

2) Advertise the device and it's services (such as ssh) via avahi.

3) Set a static address such as fe80::1 (link local), fd00::1 (ULA), or 2001::1 (your prefix).

It can be, I have my server's memorized. One just has to get familiar with IPv6 just like with IPv4.

Won't fix (Infeasible)

Most IPv4 home networks use address like 10.x.y.z or 192.168.x.y on the LAN side, which are not routable over the internet. Even if you go IPv6 only on the WAN side, and let your home network devices have IPv6 addresses, you should still be able to also give them nonroutable IPv4 addresses for use locally and memorize those.

I have never memorized my IPv4 (admittedly, it's dynamic...). The only IPv4 I memorized is our /24 prefix at the university. But I use it often enough that it wouldn't have made a difference had it been IPv6 instead. This mythological drawback might get away if IPv6 gets used more.

I know my v6 prefix by heart actually, but almost never get to use it.

Think of it as memorizing 4 IPv4 addresses.

In many cases big parts of the address are zeros, so it might be only one "IPv4" address one has to remember.

And common prefixes like 2a00:: or 2001::, not that many are in use (yet). And I prefer typing ::1 over 127.0.0.1 any day (though most software accepts 127.1 as well).

I find my personal /64 quite easy to remember (2605:2700:1:1040::).

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