> As such it is not better enough than IPv4
That's the crux of it.
Sometimes I think we'd be better off forgetting about IPv6, and starting afresh with an IPv7 - something that provides a meaningful incentive to upgrade.
That's the crux of it.
Sometimes I think we'd be better off forgetting about IPv6, and starting afresh with an IPv7 - something that provides a meaningful incentive to upgrade.
The next available version is IPv10
Which is fine, because it is IPv2 in human readable form after all.
I think smarter people than me can handle all the technical underlayment, but when it gets to the point of where the techs and sysadmins are using it, it should have an 8 digit hex key at the start and then an IPv4 "alike" address at the end, and 0000:0000:-whatever should encapsulate the current network schema for backwards compatibility.
Then new systems would get 0000:0001:- and on. That would add 4 billion entire internets to the system and still work at the fundamental level like the current one. Your IPv11 layer would only be used at the edges where the systems leave your wlan, and they could send your mac address as the swapover key or use it as part of the key when sharing security data, and the best part is that end users and clients would not need to know anything more about the network to make it work than that 8 digit string, and most of them, especially home and mobile users, wouldn't even need to know that. It would stop at your modem and be handled by the cell carriers and your home internet providers.
So 0000:0000 local network, 0000:0001 legacy internet.
Even for tech support purposes, people shouldn't have the ability to directly test my appliances firewall capabilities.
Actually, now that I've done the math, why not just extend IPv4 into hexadecimal?
Once again, none of the current addresses would change with this change, but it would turn 60 billion possible addresses (12^10 = 61,917,364,224) into 184 quadrillion addresses (12^16 = 184,884,258,895,036,416).
I feel like that would give us plenty of wiggle room. Sure, it's not on par with ipv6's ability to assign a unique address to every atom on the planet 100 times, but I think it would be enough for the next 40 years or so, right?
And it's inherently backwards compatible, what's not to love about it?
hexadecimal, unironically. the url of
http://[2002:914b1:::1]
is one of my major sticking points for IPv6. i'd rather just have it be 16 octets or even 8 decimal quartets where each thing is required.
http://0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.192.168.1.1:14246
would've at least looked a bit better than it is. would've been super easy too. imagine the convo:
"what's google's DNS IP in IPvX?"
"oh it's just 8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8"
I think what you are saying is that it should be turned into a jingle so everyone can dial it fast. [1]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m6qutSER9Q [video][11s]
But then so would AE1.224.78.BC2
Sure, a little harder to remember maybe, but adding nearly a billion times as many IP addresses would alleviate the strain on the internet, be backwards compatible with IPv4 (but not forwards compatible, so most interior/home networks would use either a NAT or have a software ipv4-4.1 bridge software)
It would also be much more similar to IPv6 which would ease transition to full IPv6 if the human race survives long enough to ever make the jump. IPv6 is just more hexadecimal after all.
I don't know why you think this is "inherently backwards compatible" yet think v6 isn't. It's just as backwards-compatible as v6 is.
$ ping 64:ff9b::8.8.8.8
PING 64:ff9b::8.8.8.8(64:ff9b::808:808) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64:ff9b::808:808: icmp_seq=1 ttl=113 time=8.75 ms
https://www.akamai.com/internet-station/cyber-attacks/state-...
Making a new system that will automatically go live, work transparently to the current system and is on by default as hardware is updated and replaced is a strong pathway forward to unsnarl the internet when you're stuck in this predicament.
Pedantics won't solve the problem and just ensure that nothing ever gets better.
Computers are the worst pedants in existence, so if it's not possible, you're not going to be able to do it... which means that not only is it not a useful suggestion, but it drains time and energy away from doing things which will work.
Note: This post is a joke and not expected to be a normative RFC and not under any sort of conformance with Internet Drafts under the IETF.
Totally. I only suggested as a means to avoid conflating a real RFC with a joke RFC. And I only did that because half of the things I have joked about resulted in having to say "No, wait, I was kidding, what are you doing?!?" and thus I learned to minimize joking about things.
You know what? That sounds like the RFC isn't being followed, but if it's a large enough pattern, then the RFC doesn't matter. It is the standard.
I would say:
1) gather all the engineers from the major switches and networking companies, the Linux network stack, and apple and microsoft, and sure the mobiles. And ask them the easiest way to change the code to support a vast expansion of addresses in the general format of the IPV4 header: options section? Magic IPV4 address that triggers a IPV4r2 packet?
2) as a carrot, maybe you make some way that NATs / VPNs / bridging / whatever works BETTER in the IPV4r2 packet? If the packets had more information in them about the mapping/bridging so external polling was easier and numerous other use cases, then that would spur the vendors to change.
3) accept that NATs, Bridges, etc exist and will continue to. They are now established as a way to think about networking, and there are likely millions of people that think about networking in these ways, even if they are superfluous / unnecessary in the utopia of IPv6 universal adoption. So put them in the protocol. If universal addressing with firewalls eliminates everything, then they will wither on the vine over the course of a couple decades.
So, what's wrong with this? It's obviously naive.
Also, NO SLASHES NO COLONS in the notation. And ... can we increase the number of ports to 32 bits or more?
If there is that magic IPV4 and an unupgraded router encounters that packet, it ROUTES IT TO THAT MAGIC IP.
... that magic IP isn't a ghost IP. It's a service that takes the packet and routes it using IPV4v2, and NAT translates it back to the legacy router on the return path.
... that might not work ... or maybe it will?
My only experience with IPv6 was converting an IPV4 distributed database to IPV6. It wasn't... fun. Looking up separate flags and settings, weird errors (thank the gods for stack overflow), frustration.
Nowhere was it suggested, demonstrated, or detailed such a backwards compatibility / migration strategy.
> My only experience with IPv6 was converting an IPV4 distributed database to IPV6
I assume you mean patching the software to handle it... there are basically two socket APIs, the old one which was v4-only and the new one which works with any generic IP family. v6 had to add the second one because the first one was v4-only, but any replacement protocol for v4 would have had to do the same.
CIDR notation I think is fine, but hard agree on the colons holy crap. Also not being clever with the things, remove the "empty dot" thing.
> And ... can we increase the number of ports to 32 bits or more?
That requires a TCPv2 or UDPv2 or whatever, it happens at a higher layer than the IP layer.