Yet IPv6 is very complex with tons of moving parts compared to IPv4, and a lot of it works very differently so I can't rely on my existing IPv4 knowledge. In fact it frequently a hinderance.
Which IPv6 does pretty well even if you aren't a network engineer. More than 40% of all requests to google are from IPv6 and the vast majority of those connections are from people that never heard of IPv6.
I'm not just talking about connected to Google, I mean to each other. So ULA, DNS, DHCPv6 vs SLAAC etc is in play.
Outside of smartphones (in the US, apparently), moving from IPv4 to IPv6 is genuinely painful and often requires deeper knowledge of networking to accomplish.
Yes, if you're using a smartphone or your needs are otherwise trivial (for instance, you don't have a real network at home but just have one or two devices connected to your modem), then none of this is a big deal. But outside of that, things can be very different.
Right. Those are the "trivial" cases I mentioned.
That was the only point I was making.
That's not an endorsement on my part at all, just a recognition of what has happened.
I confess that I'm doing the same thing in my home network -- I won't move to IPv6 until I have no other choice, because that move will take a ton of time, sweat, and tears.
Just to stave off misguided attacks on me: I am not saying IPv6 sucks and we shouldn't move to it. Not at all. But moving to it is a very expensive proposition.
Now I'm interested on what kind of "home network" you have that makes v6 that hard.
I'll start by acknowledging that it's larger and more complex than a whole lot of networks. I have three subnets (not counting a second WiFi AP for guest use that just routes directly to the internet and bypasses my network entirely).
I have a subnet for my 4 internet-facing servers, a subnet for devices that for one reason or another aren't capable of working through my VPN, and a subnet for my general use. This is entirely encrypted using a VPN server I also run.
I have a total of around 70 different computers and devices on the network.
When I played with moving to IPv6, two things became immediately obvious to me. The first is that it will break most of what I have going on, so I'll have to go through and debug most of the systems to make them work right again. The second is that I'll need to rethink the entire network topology (except for my "lame devices" subnet -- those devices also can't use IPv6, so I'll have to maintain an IPv4 network just for them).
Rethinking the topology is probably the part that I'm least excited about, because it seems that I'll have to essentially become an IPv6 expert to design and implement that sort of change.
In any case, I anticipate at least a week of having a broken network ("broken" meaning just basic internet connectivity) while I figure all that stuff out.
> I can't rely on my existing IPv4 knowledge.
So you are a network engineer, but you just don’t want to move with the times?
In my experience, that depends highly on what you want to accomplish. For example, tell me how much less complex it is to inform a device on the network of what the address of the NTP server is in IPv6 compared to the IPv4 address. Assume you rely entirely on SLAAC, because that's the preferred way, or so they said.
> So you are a network engineer, but you just don’t want to move with the times?
I don't call myself a baker just because I can make a loaf of bread, but I then I've never been one to over-inflate my CV...
It's not like I don't want to move with the times, but I find IPv6 quite complex and rough around the edges in practice, especially for a homelab network.
Who's "they"?
I think RA for addressing/DNS and stateless DHCPv6 for everything else is the way to go these days.
But SLAAC makes me equally nervous. If/when I shift my home network to IPv6, I'll probably just go with static routing to avoid both of them.
If you're that paranoid then you also need to worry about IPv4 ARP and IPv6 ND attacks. Again, managed switches are required to drop unauthorized ARP and ND replies.
Yes, thank you. I'm aware of these features.
I never claimed that my nervousness is rational. But it's very real. This is complex stuff, and since I haven't been working with IPv6 for decades, I can't shake the fear that I've made a configuration error and am not aware that I've made a configuration error.
It is? It sure seems more complex to me in most ways. There are a couple of things that are simpler, but not many.
Of course, neither is true.