This again? Just use v6, it’s not that hard.
I cannot tell you how many devices or software have had a notice of "just disable IPV6, that will fix X" and it's worked perfectly.
If V6 was working everywhere and it was a simple toggle I'd say sure. But it's not.
I’ve heard this advice dozens of times, but it hasn’t worked once, to the point where I firmly believe that everyone giving out such advice either completely doesn’t care or know anything about networking, or, is suffering from some sort of a mental difficulty.
I support all kinds of devices and turning off IPv6 was sometimes a thing I did. No so much now. Maybe once in the last 5 years.
Here IPv6 works perfectly and doesn't cause any problems. Many sites are much faster over v6 than legacy IP. Google stats show 45% of users access google over IPv6 so clearly it's working for all those millions of users too.
If IPv6 is not working you need to fix it, not turn it off.
Also no consumer can be at limit pf rfc1918 even if throwing /24 right and left.
People get issues with v4. But “just switch off v4” is never suggested as a solution cos it’s either all people have or they need it for the sites that only have it. So people fix problems they get with v4. If they get a problem with v6? Switch it off, v4 is working.
Granted v6 has had many teething problems and still isn’t as hassle-free as v4. But in recent years things have improved an awful lot.
And the prefix I get is dynamic. It changes each time the router power cycles or has a brownout or if the upstream network restarts for whatever reason (which is something I saw happening with regularlity on a different ISP about 1am to 2am, presumably them performing maintenance). So that means my firewall rules have to be constantly monitored and changed if they're any more complicated then reject all incoming connections. Only way I can see that working right now is to write a daemon that can hook into the PD process for that.
Plus how do I get my servers that are supposed to be internet facing to update their IPv6 prefix every time it changes? Does that mean that I have to put in additional code in every server to update their IPv6 addresses every single time the prefix is changed?
Oh and I can request a /54 no problem for now. There's no guarantee for instance if ISP decides to restrict residential users to only a /64, and require a business account to request more subnets. How do I plan a set of internet accessible networks that have to be segregated from each other if I have no idea if tomorrow I'm going to lose those subnets?
The only solution of right now is to use ULA and NAT6. Which is just IPv4's problem all over again except worse.
So yeah it is 'easy' if all your need is just only /64 and are using the ISP's router to setup a single network that you don't care about. But it spirals very quickly into madness when you try to step just a little beyond a simple setup.
They need to change to static assignments for users and be done with it.
I now run my own ASN, rent a server with a BGP session that’s pretty close to my home (~50km/2ms), and tunnel v6 over that.
I have a /32 of v6. That’s 2^96 individual addresses. Or 65k /48s.
It was a great learning experience actually and is within the reach of anyone. You can get a BGP enabled VPS for $5/month, and ASN and a /40 for $50/lifetime.
When I looked into this I only found relatively expensive options.
RIPE does have a requirement that you use your ASN, and that it’s multihomed.
Multihoming rule isn’t enforced (meaning a single upstream is fine), but they do require you to actually use it.
I know a guy with 15x /29s.
I actually find this scary too, but I mean, it’s /29s, not /8s.
The /32 I’m renting however.
All you need is proof of network presence within RIPE region (and yes, a $5/mo BGP VPS from Vultr satisfies that requirement). Then you can announce your RIPE v6 wherever you want.
https://ifog.ch/en/ip/lir-services
CHF 60/lifetime for natural persons , which is about $60.
The guy that did my ASNs still does IP space - https://my.cloudie.sh/index.php?rp=/store/lir-services
$10/y for a /40.
A bit more expensive than the $50/lifetime that I promised, but that was the deal I got from Cloudie.
Announced one /48 over AWS and tunneled to it to browse the internet via my own IPv6. It works fine.
Honestly, where do I get that ?
Like, what if TikTok was IPv6 only? We would have 100% IPv6 by now.
It's for network operators (and equipment vendors). Telling network operators "Let's just switch to V6" is not in anyway problematic. If every network operator decided to make it a priority we could have 90% of internet customers on v6 enable networks within 2 years. Easily.
Of course SaaS/Content providers need to run dual stack for a while. But ISPs need to stop dragging their damn feet and deploy v6.
But, why would they if dragging their feet makes them a lot of money? Why would they bother unless there's massive demand from the public for full IPv6 adoption?
I mean even ISPs with IPv6 support don't care about the IPv6 experience of their customers. AT&T, for example, doesn't give more than a /64 address space to home users, which only supports one subnet. If you have, say, a guest network and a trusted network, you can't have separate inbound routing/firewall rules as both would have the same prefix.
So, I disagree that convincing network operators is the right way to go about it. We need to convince the public about the benefits of IPv6.