Why does it feel like IPv6 has failed? There's a real need for bigger address space, but it looks like IPv6 is too much of a hassle.
40% market share isn't really failing, although it sure does feel like it could have been better. IPv4 is still a must, and IPv6 is optional in most circumstances.
Also, many don't seem eager to adopt it. If that is due to the protocol or just the lack of tooling, I don't know.
Mostly this is a DNS headache, especially if you're already segmented into a bunch of different split horizons due to organizational boundaries or vpns or what have you, and unlike software networking is almost necessarily done direct to production as staging is extraordinarily complex and expensive, and again unlike software development is not part of the daily iteration cycle but instead of once or twice in a decade type of thing.
anyone managing or responsible for managing that infrastructure is going to need an extremely compelling reason to pursue a switch thanks to the two systems obstacle.
Eyeball networks were waiting for the content networks to deploy and vice versa. Now that eyeball networks generally moved first the content networks say their anti-spam and anti-attack solutions don't have IPv6.
Many IT pros have become used to and even attached to Network Address Translation and specific IPv4 addresses. Some have beliefs like reducing security attack surface requires disabling IPv6, NAT is a firewall, or they reflexively blame any network issue on IPv6.
If the cryptocurrency bubble hadn't popped maybe there could have been a IPv6 coin that rewarded mining addresses. Mine the one correct address out of 2^128 that block and earn a IPv6coin (joke).
(and that was written in 2002)
A good example is NAT64/DNS64 which allows IPv6-only hosts to access IPv4 internet. The result is that makes sense to use IPv6-only or IPv6-first for new networks.
There are plenty of organizations that have transition mandates but those are self imposed and would easily be delayed for other monetary business objectives. The Internet as we know it was only created/available in 1993[1] and while some RIR's have exhausted their available IPv4 space it doesn't mean IPv4 addresses are not available.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/30/1172276538/world-wide-web-int...
[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/opsec/documents/ [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/v6ops/documents/
NAT64/DNS64 are at least a decade old. And being used successfully. Facebook is moving their datacenters to IPv6-only. I can't find articles but they may be moving whole internal network.
But there are a lot fewer public servers than there are hosts and private servers. It makes sense to give the load balancers IPv4 and then have all the internal servers and hosts IPv6. IPv6 leads to much simpler internal network. Still have to do NAT64 to talk to IPv4, but have to do NAT for IPv4.
Not being able to have v4 talk to v6 is why v6 will never be a first class citizen.
There is no need for IPv4 hosts to talk to IPv6 hosts. For one thing, many hosts are dual-homed. IPv4 can keep doing its thing while everybody switches to IPv6.
With interoperability it would mean that hosting a service on a v6 only network means you wouldn’t need a v4 address (which today is a must have and expensive unlike v6 which is optional).
Also, the real shortage with IPv4 is with devices where ISPs are using CGNAT. Server addresses are less important when can run an entire company with a handful.
You're making the same mistake djb made: you've identified a problem, but rather than provide a solution, all you're doing is insinuating that somebody else should have solved it -- while failing to realize that the problem is unsolvable.
If you have a solution, please share it with us. Otherwise, stop criticizing v6 for not having one. As far as I can see, nobody can do it because it's impossible, but you could easily prove me wrong by just telling us how it's done.
I actually asked you this before, and you refused to answer. It's time you either put up or shut up.
> Tunneling v6 packets to a known anycast that’d bridge the networks would mean that there’d be interoperability.
Just to be clear, v6 already has this (it's 192.88.99.1). If this is your solution then v6 can already do it.