The addresses are harder to type, harder to yell across an office while setting up equipment, and impossible to remember. I honestly think this is it’s major failing that has prevented wider adoption. Aesthetics make a big difference, like it or mot, and IPv6 is far less accessible than IPv4.
Beyond that, IPv4 is arguably generally simpler for someone not well versed in networking to get a baseline understanding of.
> Beyond that, IPv4 is arguably generally simpler for someone not well versed in networking to get a baseline understanding of.
And BASIC is easier to program in than Rust if you're not well versed in programming.
IPv6 addresses come in 3 flavors, unicast, anycast, multicast.
Unicast addresses are for a single host, like a unique telephone number
Anycast addresses go to the nearest receiver, like 911
Multicast addresses go to a group of hosts that are listening to the address for that group, like everyone streaming the same show on Netflix at the same time.
Unicast addresses are either local to an interface/LAN/site, or global.
Anycast addresses are global.
Multicast addresses can be very local or across a wider area like a company or can be global.
You can tell what sort of address it is by the start:
* Multicast addresses start with "ff".
* LAN addresses start with "fe".
* Site (multiple LAN) addresses start with "fd"
* Anything else other than "00" is global, but some have special meanings, like "2001" is used for documentation.
There's a protocol called NDP that all the hosts use to give themselves addresses and find out how to connect to other hosts.
That's a start. The fiddly bit twiddling details can come later.
And Visual Basic is #6 on the TIOBE rankings despite being officially retired whereas Rust is #25
Simplicity sells.
Look at XML vs JSON. XML is feature packed. Arguably the "better" format but JSON has taken over because it's way easier to use.
REST beat SOAP and XML-RPC because it was less complex and waaay easier to build.
When there is something that is easy and even potentially a little simpler than needed which does the same thing as something complex, the simple thing almost always wins - even if - or especially if - its worse. The whole "Worse is Better" mantra has always proven true.
I've said for like 20 years now that they should have just tacked a couple more octets onto IPv4 and rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Exhaustion was and still is the most important problem to fix. Get that out of the way, and then we could have fixed the other things wrong with IP one at a time.
We could have been on like IPv12 by now. Small iterative changes are easier to absorb. Adoption would have happened already. instead we threw the baby out with a bath water, classic second system syndrome.