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Comment by X-Istence | Hacker News Reader

When kube-proxy for IPVS tried to use 127/8 for network traffic it went all kinds of bad. I realize that this doesn't make as wide ranging of a change, but 127/8 is hardcoded in a lot of different places. It is going to take a LONG time before all those devices are updated.

It seems kind of silly to undergo this endeavor, instead of adopting IPv6. We are simply staving off the inevitable with these extensions people keep proposing.

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Nobody said "instead of". Until end users all have IPv6 at home and work, every provider of any kind of service (be it a website or whatever else) needs IPv4 addresses. Due to the shortage, that has become incredibly expensive, creating a huge inequality/barrier to entry. This is simply an attempt to provide enough supply to level the playing field while ISPs get their shit together and provide IPv6 to their users.

I guess the best thing to do would be to somehow limit ISPs in how many IPv4s they can purchase while letting everyone else use the newly-abundant addresses, but I don't think the legal structure for that even exists.

We've already gone to an absolutely massive amount of effort to provide enough supply for a transition. What did we do with it? We squandered it.

ISPs don't need more v4 addresses. If anything, they need fewer of them.

Yes, exactly, ISPs need fewer, but the rest of us need more while they roll it out. Hosting things on IPv6 only is simply not an option yet if you need to reach customers.

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