If you would like to write IPv6 addresses in the same style as IPv4, they would look something like

  208.255.238.250.0.16.239.109.89.54.222.189.74.21.22.9

And that's the problem! Who can memorize all that?

> With IPv6 hell knows what their hex-colon monstrosities would be.

You would know exactly, because every IPv6-enabled interface has a link-local predictable IPv6 address derived from its MAC address.

And so now I have to stick stickers on every light bulb with a huge address on it and then get up on a chair several times per bulb while I transfer chunks of its address from the sticker to my terminal?

The reality is with IPv4 I can memorize all of the IPv4 addresses of every light bulb, every robot, every thermostat, every plant watering device in my residence, and I can hammer out CURL commands to control everything almost from muscle memory in the event of a DNS hijacking.

Why do you need stickers? You can just log into your router/switch and inspect the arp/nd table. You could just just use DNS records the first time you set a widget up and never have to remember an address again. Your router likely already does this automatically for you in IPv4 land via the DHCP server's database. The reality is that remembering IP addresses to access things has always been a band-aid fix. When's the last time you typed the IP address of hacker news into your browser's url bar? Using link-local addresses is usually a last-resort kind of scenario where you're glad it exists to save you some headache.

> router likely already does this automatically

Yes but my phone hijacked all the LAN DNS when I plugged it into a USB port for tethering when Comcrap went down for a few hours

Also separately, when Comcrap is working, my phone on Wi-Fi refuses to ever use the router DNS, http://xyz.local addresses are only available on desktops/laptops and not phones, therefore IPv4 addresses it is when trying to visit a LAN site on a phone.

"Yes you would know exactly, because every hex-colon monstrosity has a predictable hex-colon monstrosity derived from its hex-colon monstrosity."

If the problem wasn't obvious, the problem is that IPv6 addresses (and also MAC addresses) are not human readable. IPv4 addresses, on the other hand, are.

IPv6 adoption might be farther along if the addresses were human readable instead of eye-rolling machinations of a small subset of people who speak strictly in hexes.

Adding A-F to the 0-9 existing digits in ip addresses makes them non-human readable? Give me a break. We've had something human-readable since the dawn of the internet: it's called DNS and works with both IP families.

Tell me Google DNS's IPv6 addresses without looking them up. I won't wait.

Sometimes we need to deal with raw IP addresses instead of abstraction layers, and IPv6 fails hilariously because it clearly goes beyond the realm of direct human consumption.

You saying a non-human readable thing is human readable if it's passed through an abstraction layer to make something human readable only reinforces the argument IPv6 is not human readable.

The way you see legacy IP addresses is also an abstraction layer, their actual form is as a 32bit integer.

.... ?

Windows and many Linux distros by default enable the privacy extensions on the link local address; it's randomized for a period of time. This is right off a Windows 10 VM:

ipconfig:

  Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::9aaf:a280:d593:db1%2

Notice that there's no ff:fe in the middle of the address?

RHEL 9:

  [user@localhost ~]# ip addr | grep fe80
    inet6 fe80::3544:fe14:5cf:5ad9/64 scope link noprefixroute

Fedora Core 35:

  [user@fedora ~]$ ip addr | grep fe80
    inet6 fe80::7752:d2c6:82c3:482c/64 scope link noprefixroute

Ubuntu 22.04:

  user@ubuntu:~# ip addr | grep fe80
    inet6 fe80::5ffe:c565:9de2:58f8/64 scope link noprefixroute

I don't have a Debian right on hand but IIRC they do the same thing. Alpine uses EUI64 I think though.

Well, that is unfortunate because it invalidates a lot of the benefit of the link-local address while providing "pivacy" over the local link scope... I have not encountered any equipment in the wild that does this, thankfully. The only distros I use (NixOS and VyOS) do not have this behaviour by default so this was news to me.

The link-local address is generated when you first enable the interface (ie when you load the drivers for your NIC), it won't change unless you manually force it to.

Linux will use EUI-64 if left to its own devices, or privacy extensions if you're using something like networkmanager. This makes sense because a desktop oriented distro will typically use networkmanager while a server oriented distro will not, and having a predictable eui-64 address is usually beneficial for a server.

Seems like a complicated solution to a problem that does not exist. You cannot turn on lights at all without a working network? If your router crashes your whole house is stuck? Seems like there is a bigger issue than the IPv6 protocol

I agree with the complaint about IPv6, but in this situation couldn't you just use nmap?

ipv6: don't worry about the long addresses, you won't need them because DNS

dns: maniacal laughter

No, it'd usually look like v4, except in cases where you're actually using the entire address space and need to add more dots. NAT is here to stay, and a LAN doesn't need 128 bits of address space.

Like fd::1? Valid ipv6 that is shorter than an ipv4 address

Nah, "1.1" is a valid IPv4 address (Cloudflare DNS) and it's shorter

Touché, I guess I should’ve said a typical v4 address. Short hand v4 addresses aren’t as common knowledge though

fd::1 is a reserved address. Did you mean fd00::1?

fd::1 == 00fd::1. The :: expands to fill the available bits with 0

fd::1 == 00fd::0001, which is reserved by IETF.

The :: only expands to fill all-zero hextets.

Good catch, that is correct. Thank you

This thread shows that the ipv6 notation is more complicated. It's good to at least use a smaller address space on a LAN like this, but I want the basic decimal notation.

Decimal is actually a nightmare for dealing with common CIDR prefixes. Would you rather write '1111111111110000' as fff0 or 65520?

Yes, which is why they shouldn't use those huge prefixes. There's an existing 32-bit address space represented nicely like 8.8.8.8 or 192.168.1.2 for local. Now that we want to extend the address space for more users, the newer ones can be like 8.8.8.8.6 without messing with the existing ones.

Oh and I'd actually prefer the 65520.

You'd still need to upgrade and change every device. There have been transitional software that used ipv6 but allowed for ipv4 address notation. [1] Example: ::ffff:0:8.8.8.8

The huge prefixes allow for a simple hierarchical network structure and gives us room to redo the address scheme if we end up wanting to (only a portion of addresses space is currently allocated right now) without having to go through this entire upgrade the internet again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanism

Right, I've seen the padded v4-like v6 address spec, but that's not how they attempted to transition everything. ISPs gave everyone new v6 addresses, and the whole home/office router/NAT/PC ecosystem put v6 on a totally separate plane with ::: style addresses presented to users. I understand that the clean slate of reallocated addresses would solve some problems, but they could have focused on just getting all that hardware and software onto the ipv6 protocol with minimal changes before attempting to basically redo the entire Internet along with every LAN.

As an end user who has a choice, they have to give me something that's not harder to use than before. I think they could have managed that if it were a priority.

Not sure I understand. Right now you should have dual stack, which should be easier than merging the v4 onto the v6 network. You didn't have to change anything to keep working with v4 and if you want to work with v6 then that's an option for you but you can disable if you really want.

I'd like to use v6 in the dual-stack setup, just with all the v4 addresses copied over so the only change is that I'm using a different protocol under the hood.

Lazy people like you (opinion based entirely on your comment) are why the world is not moving forward (fast enough). You should not be responsible for administering IT networks/servers/services if you're not willing to adapt to changes.

> are why the world is not moving forward

I'm not an IT admin, but I disagree the world is not moving forward.

If I need to use IPv6, I would switch. But the reality is people are able to still build rocket ships, electric cars, and large language models with IPv4. The world is moving forward just fine.

I hope you're on the new version of everything then, not just in your area of expertise. You're expecting people to want something that's worse for them if anything, and calling them lazy isn't going to help. What would've helped is making IPv6 more user-friendly.

Not new version, but reliable version. I'm not a bleeding-edge fanatic, but I was testing IPv6 during the 6bone[1] phase while networking was not in my scope. It simply made sense to get to know the future.

The person who's comment I was responding to, is in denial 20 years later because they feel comfortable with IP addresses they can remember.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6bone

20 years later, a lot of things still don't support IPv6, and "IP" commonly means v4 unless otherwise specified. v6 isn't the stable thing yet. Less involved users aren't concerned with much about IP other than the addresses, and v6 changes those when it didn't really have to, so this is what happens.

The biggest miss of ipv6 was on usability. is a large contributor for the slow adoption.

: separates groups of 4 while optionally :: abbreviates a bunch of 0's and leading 0's in groups are optional. The address can be longer, sure, but it's really near identical to dotted decimal beyond the lengths.

I wouldn't mind a simpler DNS server IP though seeing as it's one of the few locations you need to treat as an address regularly. Sprint/T-Mobile has 2600::, which is not only short but seemingly a phreaking reference, active so why can't something similar be active for DNS. I get not wanting 8888 or whatnot, those blocks aren't assigned and advertising random bits for vanity can be annoying, but there are plenty of short IPv6 addresses that could be in use for the most common DNS servers on the planet. Even I have my personal DNS server running on an XXXX:XXXX:: public IPv6 address!

> separates groups of 4 while optionally :: abbreviates a bunch of 0's and leading 0's in groups are optional. The address can be longer, sure, but it's really near identical to dotted decimal beyond the lengths.

Consecutive colons aren't readable or easy to remember.

Do you think we should write addresses like 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001, or what else would you propose?

192.168.1.2.

Error: fewer addresses than humans

There are only a few people on my LAN. For the Internet, use more groups when people need more addresses (like 8.8.8.8.3), and leave the existing addresses like 8.8.8.8 alone. This didn't have to be complicated.

I've been saying this too. Don't tell me that going from 8.8.8.8 to whatever::the::heck:::: is an upgrade.

First step of dual-stack networks should've been, every device's IPv6 address is the same as the IPv4 address, just padded. And represented textually the same. A little hacky but addresses both technical and marketing problems. You could even use a v4 DHCP server and DNS but speak IPv6.

Yep I’m in your camp. I have zero problems using IPv4 (and NAT when necessary), unless and until that stops working I’m staying with it.

Newspapers still work.. Why are you here at all instead of writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper with good old pen and paper?

New technology has benefits, if you don't know what they are then you need to learn about them properly. Sticking with old technology because you fear the new is not a good plan.

Because electronic is more convenient.

IPv6, however, is not more convenient than IPv4, so the analogy breaks.

You're thinking small..

In an organisation of any significant size, remembering legacy IP is much worse than v6.

Chances are you will have lots of disparate legacy blocks, some starting 1.x, some starting 80.x etc. Then you have all the RFC1918 space, and the possibility of overlapping address space in different areas of the business. Then you have to keep track of translations, so an internal address 10.1.1.1 could have an external address of 80.1.1.1 but only on port 25, if you're talking over port 443 then actually the traffic is forwarded to 192.168.1.1 instead.

IPv6 is simpler. You have a single prefix for your company, eg 2001:db8:: Then you split it out in a sensible hierarchical way, for instance 2001:db8:1:: is your facility in the US, 2001:db8:2:: is your facility in Canada etc. Beyond that you go down to VLANs and hosts as needed.

So 2001:db8:2:25::1 is a device in your toronto data center... 80.1.1.1 is where?!?!? 192.168.1.1 is where?!? and which one did you mean?!?!

Then there's no NAT, no address overlap, much simpler. 2001:db8:2:25::1 is the same device wether you're talking to it on port 1 or port 65535. Your firewall rules are simpler and more secure as a result.

Microsoft had a presentation about this, and they are a bigger organisation than most.

If you're only small then you don't care, technologies like SLAAC and MDNS exist for exactly this reason.

Yeah I get it. At an organization your size, you want IPv6.

I was illustrating why there is zero incentive for 99.99% of people to not care, which is the reason why it isn't getting adopted.

If moving my home network to IPv6 came along with some incentives -- e.g. significant tax breaks, free symmetric gigabit for a year for IPv6 traffic, discounts on rent, tax-free early IRA distributions to buy networking equipment, free electric car charging for 5 years, I'd move to IPv6 in a heartbeat.

The point is until everyone moves to IPv6, the rest of us are stuck having to support dual stack - which is expensive (see the recent story about an ISP supporting a tribal reservation who had to spend an extra $300k and wait 11 months to support legacy IP) and introduces complexity/risk.

For a small network it makes no difference, everything is auto configured, mdns is used to lookup names, you can makes your hosts ::1 ::2 etc if you want to. Many ISPs around the world provide IPv6 by default, and users are using it without even realising, so it is being adopted just not fast enough. Global usage is around 42% based on published stats, and is well over 50% in many countries, as high as 80% in some.

IPv6 does provide benefits to end users, it reduces cost for the ISP and makes end to end connectivity viable which opens up a whole new set of opportunities. End to end is immensely beneficial for gaming, voip etc. Having everything centralised because users are encumbered by NAT is a big problem - increased latency, high costs (recouped from the users somehow - eg selling their data), single point of failure, applications which become useless once the central servers are shut down etc.

Do you have a link to the tribal reservation ISP story? I can't find anything about it.

Found it myself. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35047624

Maybe the addresses wouldn't look so scary if you formatted them correctly.

For example: d0ff:eefa:10::faff:92:0 (though there are currently no addresses in use that start with d.)

Vanity IPv4 addresses like 8.8.8.8 exist because most addresses have been allocated, so companies with money can go hunting for nice ones. There aren't many IPv6 addresses like 2600:: because internet registries don't allocate them on purpose, and I'm not sure if anyone's cared enough to bribe them.

> d0ff:eefa:10::faff:92:0

OK I challenge you to rewrite the IP address you wrote without looking in 5 hours.

Then go try it again with something like 10.10.53.24.

See which is easier.

That's difficult to memorize, just like it would be difficult to memorize the mailing address for a random hut in Africa. The world is a big place, so unique addresses are necessarily long.

If I wanted a memorable local address like 10.10.53.24, I'd pick fd53::24 or something.