Every HackerNews post about IPv6 has some of the worst, most privileged, idiotic, vibe-coded, proprietary, ignorant, 16bit, capital-guzzling, unicorn takes I've ever known on the subject:

- IPv6 addresses are
too hard to remember.
So? You're not meant to remember addresses, that's why we have DNS, write it down, literally a non-issue.

- IPv6 is confusing and I don't want to learn something new.
That's a personal issue buddy, either start reading or get left behind, that's what you said about AI right? More things than you depend on this transition.

- NATing has solved the IP limit problem so there's no point.
NATing is a plaster slapped onto brain bleed, easy and cheap, but ineffective, it causes a wide range of usability problems, such as blanket IP bans, restrictions on self-hosting, connectivity issue for VPNs both private and corporate.
To make matters worse, the effects are significantly worse in poorer countries, while Europe, China and the USA have a bounty of IPv4s to use (though China's still aren't enough), India has been on critically short supply for a while now with reports of
multiple NATed network layers being issued. Imagine if you got banned from Valo because your neighbour 4 districts away got caught cheating.

- We've been trying for 40 years and it hasn't worked so let's give up.
OK, we're going to give up on solving world hunger too then because that's clearly not getting anywhere, and the energy crisis too while we're at it, just shut it all down.
Just because you personally haven't seen the progress or felt its effects doesn't mean its not happening, people smarter than you have been working on this before you were born, and at this rate might continue to work on it after you switch careers to Goose Farming.

- IPv6 hasn't worked so let's just make IPv7.
Insane take, despite how it looks, IPv6 support is extremely widespread and ready to go, the reluctance of big tech and ISPs is purely due to the cost implication and lack of enforcement, creating a brand new spec now would enforce another 40 year delay just to assuage your own personal opinion.

- IPv6 is a security risk because the router isn't NATing.
Misunderstanding of what NATing does. Even with a public-facing IP on every device, ports are still protected by the router's firewall.

- IPv6 is a privacy issue because now you can easily identify every device in a home by its public IP.
A valid concern,
if it hadn't been identified and resolved with the Privacy Extensions to SLAAC that randomises your IP address after a set time period, mitigating the problem to that of your NATed IPv4 Public IP, if not making it more private by muddying the telemetry waters.

#ipv6 #networking
Privacy Extensions for IPv6 SLAAC - Internet Society

Whereas IPv4 had two basic methods for obtaining an IP address, IPv6 has three. Static configuration is basically the same in both protocols, although less relevant for IPv6 given the length of the address. DHCP is also there for both protocols, and IPv6 DHCPv6 is described in RFC 3315. Introducing SLAAC The new method that […]

Internet Society
@Baa I kinda wonder if it's an issue with how networking is taught to people. If I recall correctly in school, I think we may have briefly touched on IPv6 stuff at most (granted I only took one course in that stuff but still)
@[email protected] To be honest, I think HackerNews has a particularly high number of junior vibe-coding devs that don't understand networking very well, but get paid a big salary and now their ego's inflated past their actual experience.
Suddenly they think their opinion on every technical subject is valuable and important, even though their actual knowledge is near zero.
Which is frustrating because they are likely also leading the charge in technological development for a lot of areas...
@Baa @mikoto hackernews is a comedy site and only exists for laughing at ppl who have zero clue what theyre doing
@snow @mikoto @Baa Y Comedy Hacker News
@Baa as much as I agree with all of this, these arguments are all worthless if you can't make a compelling business case to management.

@silhouette @Baa

🤦
Ok,

A further nonsense point:

IPv6 has no killer app.

@tschaefer @Baa I literally manage a /29 prefix so you can go facepalm someone else.

@tschaefer

> IPv6 has no killer app.

DirectAccess could have been.
However companies could not deploy it while their employees' ISP (or the public Wi-Fi they connected to) were not IPv6-enabled.

Unfortunately, there can't be a killer-app while the lower layers are not ready.

@Baa

@ledeuns @tschaefer We use DirectAccess.
Sometimes people's Windows copy downgrades from Enterprise to Pro and Direct Access gets disabled.
We then can't access the machine to fix it and they have to bring it into the office.

So when it works it's decent but MS have sabotaged it

@Baa While all your responses are valid, they are all Service Provider issues to solve. As a user, I don't really care much.

From my point, services I (want to) use do not work with IPv6 (Okta, Escape from Tarkov) but everything works with IPv4.

Edit: Wait, I think Okta does have v6 now. Need to verify at work tomorrow.

@Baa And last time I checked, about half of Internet traffic is IPv6 now. So IPv4 is soon becoming a minority protocol.
@Baa we need ipv6 because computers simply being properly reachable on the public internet by default is magic and would allow for so many cool things to happen so much more casually
@zaire @Baa Its funny because that’s how it used to be. :)
@darthnull @Baa yep, exactly, and it’s how it should’ve remained
Many true words spoken in that post. When discussing privacy questions related to IP versions you might find some of the risks associated with IP-ID to be interesting. I once made a tool that makes use of one of the lesser known properties of that field to find out if two IPv4 addresses are both pointing to the same host: https://v6tools.kasperd.dk/same-host/
Same host detection through IP-ID

@Baa
Now, I have to admit I have to check it, perhaps Magenta has changed it, but traditionally when you turned their router into bridge mode it turned into IP v4 only. Static address and all. But IPv4. So for the past decade and a couple of years my home network has been IPv4. Because I will not run with an ISP provided WiFi router, that is literally awful.
@Baa One of my first blog posts ever was precisely to address some of these points.
https://blog.antsu.net/ipv6-for-people-who-hate-ipv6/
IPv6 For People Who Hate IPv6

My current ISP offers IPv6 connectivity, but it is opt-in. I suppose due to it being a relatively small business, they lacked the expertise to make things Just Work®, and it took them several weeks to get IPv6 running smoothly on my account. During these weeks of troubleshooting and back-and-forth

antsu's blag
@Baa hackernews is stupid, and i found them idiotic since the day i saw someone make a "uv sterilizer" for a n95 mask.

@Baa

16biti might be stealing that as an insult >:3

@Baa

I suspect ISPs and data centers view "restrictions on self-hosting" as an important "feature" of continued NAT+IPv4.