In effect, it's not much different than how IPv4 works with unstable WAN DHCP addresses from your provider, and I don't have the headaches that NAT brings with it.
It's a different way to think about the problem, but I've actually found it to be pretty nice.
In scenarios where network configuration information related to IPv6
prefixes becomes invalid without any explicit and reliable signaling
of that condition (such as when a Customer Edge router crashes and
reboots without knowledge of the previously employed prefixes), hosts
on the local network may continue using stale prefixes for an
unacceptably long time (on the order of several days), thus resulting
in connectivity problems. This document describes this issue and
discusses operational workarounds that may help to improve network
robustness. Additionally, it highlights areas where further work may
be needed.
This is pretty horrific. You could investigate ULA which is a bit like RFC1918 addresses for IPv6. You could attach ULA addresses to a few devices such as a local DNS server, printers and the like.
NPT would enable you to route your ULA addressed gear to the internets if they don't have a globally routable address.
One convenient thing about ULA+NPTv6 is that, unlike IPv4 NAT, is that an external IPv6 address is basically 1:1 'equivalent' to an internal IPv6 address. The NPTv6 is stateless so that, firewall rules allowing, a connection can come right in without all sorts of contortions for port mapping.
Most (residential) gateways by default block incoming requests unless they're a reply to a previous outgoing connection. I know I can ping6 the iMac I'm typing this on, but attempts to (e.g.) SSH in are blocked by default.
When you do a IPv4 "pinhole" port map you get precisely one mapping and it will timeout eventually, which can lead to all sorts of exciting debugging opportunities.
IPv4 does have 1:1 NAT but there are so few IPs so whilst I have a /24, 2 x /28 and 2 x /29 to play with and others, I doubt most do.
NPTv6 maps an entire address space from A->B and is actually not designed to deal with NATv4 anyway. It is for outbound connections.
This is implementation specific: on my Asus I can specify to allow in all ports from in via a NPTv6-ULA hole, a port range, or even a single port.
If I want to only allow tcp/25 in to a particular IP I can do that, if I want 5900-5910 I can do that too, as well as 1-65535.
A router moves packets from A->B and a firewall defines what is allowed from A->B.
ULA to NPT is router stuff: NPT literally means "Network Prefix Translation" it turns all your IPv6 addresses into a normalised one and shifts them.
We are not talking about ports or protocols yet, just (IP) addresses.
Why? This is exactly how I want it to work: pass through only the ports (or all the ports) I want/need for the service in question.
If Xfinity changes the /60 they're giving me it doesn't change anything internally - because my internal names all use the ULA - and the GUA just gets used to get to the Internet.
"yoohoo - where am I?"
"You are on 2001:1001:1001:f0d::/64. My name is [ipv6] and I am a router and for some odd reason, I won't tell you where DNS comes from because ... stupid design"
"Cool, I'll fiddle in my drawers and play with my MAC address and create a really long number that starts 2001:etc. I'll also create a few other addresses randomly to hide my private parts (which is a waste of time but looks good - lol)"
No idea what you are on about wrt EUI-64 being tied to SLAAC. Why not have a go at it instead of pontificating?
Having used IPv6 in anger for several years now, it is a bit different but it is actually quite beautiful at times. It does enforce decent DNS and who here has not said "its DNS"?
Like I said, I don't touch v6 much and I'm pretty surprised at how far we've made it past v4 allocations drying up and everything still seems to work.
It does work pretty well already but I put it rather below the significance of say global warming as a thing to really worry about.
Give it a go if you get a prefix from your ISP. It's worth a play.
This sort of thing takes 50+ years to work. You have to think like an Engineer with a lot of time to play with. The internet is everywhere, it doesn't change overnight.
You're about a decade (2007) behind the times:
Nodes use IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration to generate
addresses using a combination of locally available information and
information advertised by routers. Addresses are formed by combining
network prefixes with an interface identifier. On an interface that
contains an embedded IEEE Identifier, the interface identifier is
typically derived from it. On other interface types, the interface
identifier is generated through other means, for example, via random
number generation. This document describes an extension to IPv6
stateless address autoconfiguration for interfaces whose interface
identifier is derived from an IEEE identifier. Use of the extension
causes nodes to generate global scope addresses from interface
identifiers that change over time, even in cases where the interface
contains an embedded IEEE identifier. Changing the interface
identifier (and the global scope addresses generated from it) over
time makes it more difficult for eavesdroppers and other information
collectors to identify when different addresses used in different
transactions actually correspond to the same node.
This document describes an extension to IPv6 Stateless Address
Autoconfiguration that causes hosts to generate temporary addresses
with randomized interface identifiers for each prefix advertised with
autoconfiguration enabled. Changing addresses over time limits the
window of time during which eavesdroppers and other information
collectors may trivially perform address-based network-activity
correlation when the same address is employed for multiple
transactions by the same host. Additionally, it reduces the window
of exposure of a host as being accessible via an address that becomes
revealed as a result of active communication. This document
obsoletes RFC 4941.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_address#Stateless_address...
For local lan services I make a dns entry in my router pointing to the ULA. I have had no issues but it took awhile to figure everything out. I host matrix chat and many other services using ipv6 without issues. YMMV.
Wouldn't this be like static bluetooth IDs, where you could be tracked wherever you go? I imagine that's a rare desire, amongst the internet population.
I could see requesting static IPs for particular devices, like you used to be able to do.
Talking about IPv4 with NAT, a "consumer" with zero server-hosting needs could get away with a changing public IP. Someone with any kind of server needs, like hosting their own Internet-accessible IoT portal, personal VPN, website, game server, etc. would want a stable public IP address.
Yeah, that may lead to tracking, but it's the status quo, I suppose is the point.
In case it isn't known, IPv6 has so many addresses and is designed in such a way, that it is expected each "network" (think home network) would be given a network prefix of 56 or 60 bits. The "host" portion of an IPv6 address is the final 64 bits of the address. Therefore, each network an ISP issues to a client should have room for something between 16 and 256 subnetworks, each with effectively unlimited client address space.
If you only see one /128 as the IP of your router's WAN interface and nothing else, then that is the /128 assigned to your router by DHCP and nothing to do with prefix delegation.
Ideally there would be a way to request a new one programmatically, akin to getting a new IPv4 address via DHCP if you change the MAC address.
It is rather sad that the internet that we have, what 50-70 odd years post invention is so stifled with nonsense about addressing schemes and that.
You seem to use the term "static IP" as a talisman. I have zillions (possibly gazillions) of them on IPv6 and roughly a few 100 or 1000 on IPv4 (I own an IT company).
Dynamic DNS is a thing, so is ULA for IPv6 which looks quite like IPv4 RFC1918.
We have the tools but you do have to use them.
Compared to a PPP session with an ISP, dynamic DNS is a walk in the park and you can have multiple ones if it is that important. You could even have a mobile phone SMS an IP out.
DNS is seriously resilient to outages. Yes CF, Goog n co have all had outages but the beauty of DNS (and a pain at times if mismanaged) is TTL. Don't set all your records with a TTL of 300. I run quite a few DNS servers - Windows, BIND, PowerDNS and others, not to mention rather a lot of unbound and dnsmasq resolver/forwarder thingies.
Evaluate your requirements, evaluate the resiliency and functionality of the available technologies, evaluate your own skills and take appropriate action ... for you. That works at home just as well as at work.
You may find that you are running your own DNS server (or three) ...
This doesn't matter with IPv4, because all my internal IPv4 addresses are NATed. But with IPv6, although each device on the network can receive a globally routable IPv6 address, the prefix keeps changing, and so the address keeps changing. This makes internal networking a nightmare, since the address of my devices is not under my control.
I don't use NPT, but it would fix the problem, so people are going to continue using it until dynamic prefixes go away. Which will probably be never.