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All it takes is one big company like Amazon changing their services to IPv6-only and most of the world would be converted over in a month or two... but now I guess we know the reason WHY Amazon doesn't push such a policy.
A massive swathe of current gen devices don't even support it.
It won't be a month.
Microsoft announce changes much smaller than that 4 years out and still have to give extensions.
Seriously? How can any device call themselves current gen and not support something as basic as this? That's just embarrassing.
Like what though?
The last thing I have that doesn't support ipv4 from the hardware level is my Nintendo DS.
Everything else has the hardware capability, it's just never used or enabled in the software by default.
it’s just never used or enabled in the software by default
...and most people who own those devices have never heard of IPv6 and don't know how to enable it. They just won't be able to access your website. If Amazon dropped support for IPv4, there wouldn't be anything i'd be able to do to deal with the fall out. I'm not going to send a technician to every single home of every customer I have. What I could (and would) do is move all my stuff off Amazon.
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My smart TV from two years ago does not support ipv6, and it was fairly high end.
I was really trying about 5 years ago but there were just so many devices that don’t. My ISP still doesn’t
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It would be a good start if AWS supported IPv6 on all their services in the first place. Everything enters through CloudFront so I don't need any IPv4. But AWS's own services don't have IPv6 in every region, so I still have to provision NAT gateways.
Yikes. I get free IPv6 for my servers through Hurricane Electric since my ISP doesn't provide it yet, I wonder if their service also works on AWS? I mean come on, if someone like Comcast can figure it out, why is it so hard for a major player like Amazon?
Lots of legacy networking I would assume.
Most services especially compute can get IPv6 so if all you have is EC2 instances you're good. S3 is usually fine, but I think when you get into Lambdas and especially the more niche services, those are IPv4 only, so you need some IPv4 addressing.
Ironically I've really been enjoying the massive IPv6 address space, makes numbering dozens of VPCs and subnets a whole lot easier. I don't get why it's not in huge demand especially larger customers.
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I remember doing an IT course over a decade ago and learning about IPv6 taking over, honestly surprised it hasn't yet. I just looked it up and apparently they came up with it in 1998. How is it taking so long? Is there some technical reason it's harder or something? Does the extra address size mean a not so great trade off in traffic or something?
note: I did study a bit of networking and IT but have forgotten everything mostly and work in a different field, thus my ignorance.
IPv6 is here, and has been for a long time. But if, for example, your web or email server can only be reached over IPv6 some people will not be able to load the site or send emails to you.
The entire internet is configured to work with IPv4. Some of the internet (less than a quarter) is also configured to also work with IPv6.
Imagine if your home had two driveways on different streets. Do you tell everyone both addresses, or do you pick one of them? Probably just one right? Now imagine if the second address can only be reached if someone has an off road capable vehicle. And you don't know what vehicle someone has - which address would you give them? Is it even worth having two driveways?
That's the situation we're in. IPv4 support is required and works perfectly. IPv6 is optional and doesn't always work.
IPv4 support is required and works perfectly.
Except it doesn't work perfectly, because it has a relatively small address space. That's why ipv6 exists.
The driveway works perfectly, but it doesn't have space for all the guests if they all want to use their own vehicles.
Thankfully, we have carpooling and rideshares.
Great analogy, thanks
“Luckily” we are reaching the point where IPv4 just isn’t going to be fiscally sustainable for the majority of companies, meaning the push to IPv6 will be hastened.
Though I don’t pretend it isn’t going to be a hell of a ride.
192.169.x.x will always be easier than fe80:x:x::x:x
I had a roommate once who need an IP for something, and because it was a device I had been working with recently, I just rattled off "192.168.0.7" or something.
He was in awe of the fact that I could remember it. However, it's not that difficult when you know the private prefix you use is always "192.168." and that gets burned into your brain. The next octet is often zero (maybe 1 if your home network gets crazy), and you really only need to remember the final octet for the device.
Point is, fe80::x will go the same way. You'll remember fe80, and the rest is however you handled your own network scheme.
(I can never remember the class B private address space, though. Only classes A and C. Never needed to bother with the class B space when you can subnet 10.x.x.x so much.)
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I definitely agree with automatically configured stuff, but I enjoy setting link-local static IP address with IPv6, like my home server is fe80::bad:c0de or 192.168.0.2, and my NAS is fe80::coo1:da1a or 192.168.0.3. I've definitely mistyped the IPv4 a few times (see your 169 typo), but the IPv6 always delivers hackerman vibes.
I have also set ::bad:c0de and have my IPv6 prefix on a keybind, but I understand that's a bit of a stretch.
I have never thought of writing things with static ipv6.
I have been missing out.
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There are huge gaps in ipv6 adoption which means most users and services must continue to support and use ipv4.
Since everyone has to continue ipv4 support, there's not much motivation to push general adoption of ipv6. Maintaining dual stack support has its own costs.
Even within AWS, many of their services still don't support ipv6. AWS fees for ipv4 addressing may end up being a comparatively big driver for adoption.
Even within AWS, many of their services still don't support ipv6. AWS fees for ipv4 addressing may end up being a comparatively big driver for adoption.
You just outlined a reason for AWS not to fully support IPv6 as well.
In addition to what the other commented said, a lot of sys and net admins really don't like the idea of every lan device being globally addressable, while there's ways around it, a standard ipv4 Nat is a safety blanket to a lot of admins... Not that it should be like that, just my observation.
a lot of sys and net admins really don’t like the idea of every lan device being globally addressable
Those admins don't know what they're talking about. IPv6 has a region of the address space that can only be reached locally - similar to the 192.168.x.x space in IPv4. The only difference is it's really big (way bigger than the entire IPv4 space).
As for NAT... there's nothing stopping you from using it with IPv6. It's often unnecessary, but if you disagree you can use it. And in practice NAT is often part of the transition process to IPv6 - my cell network carrier for example gives my phone an IPv6 address on their internal network but routes all my traffic to the regular internet via IPv4. They are using NAT to do that. If you try to ping my phone's IPv6 address, it won't reach my phone.
Honestly my biggest issue with ipv6, aside from not understanding it, which I don't, at all, I've realized while setting up my own opnsense firewall, is that they decided on FUVKING COLONS. AND LETTERS. Okay, cool, hexadecimal exists, that's swell, but typing them is such a fucking pain in the ass.
There's no way to put your fingers on a keyboard to make it feel natural.
While I agree that it is godawful to type and worse to read, let alone remember, you wouldn’t want these addresses in full decimal notation…
They need to stop that nonsense. NAT is not for security, and was not designed for security purposes. In fact, there are a few ways it subverts security, such as SNI in TLS making the connection less private than it could be.
If they want to block external connections, a border firewall can do the job just fine without NAT. It's arguably better, because NAT complicates existing firewall rules and their implementation in code. Complications are the enemy of security.
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How is it taking so long?
It's more complicated and v4 is already there. That was the reasoning and it hasn't changed even though by now it should have.
To add to what others have said, I've heard that wide adoption of NATing as a standard practice basically ensured IPv4 longevity well beyond its logical end. This along with the cost to fully upgrade a network to IPv6 meant there was no financial incentive for companies to adopt it.
With Amazon starting to charge for IPv4 addresses, it won't be long before Google and Microsoft do the same with GCP and Azure. This may be the financial kick in the ass to get large enterprise environments to finally commit to IPv6.
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Even tough IPv6 is technically superior to IPv4 for the network operator it doesn't have clear benefits for home users.
Having global addresses instead of NAT means less control over your LAN and these unique public addresses can track users more accurately.
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I'm still trying to figure out good nftables rules for ipv6 prefix delegation...
From the article, 79 million IPv4 addresses, 0.005/hour($3.60/month), and an estimated 30% utilisation. $85m per month, $1bn/y.
It kinda also sets a new standard price for IPV4 addresses. I'm looking forward to the day that IPV6 (or translation) is commonplace enough that things can be run V6 only.
I've given up on the IPv6 transition happening in my lifetime.
From the article, 79 million IPv4 addresses
So that's how many IPv4 addresses Amazon has? For comparison, if I ask my server provider nicely they will give me a huge block of IPv6 addresses. For free. The largest block they will give a single customer (again, for free) is a /56 block which is 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 IP addresses.
To give you an idea how big that is... if I had ten billion customers, I could allocate several hundred billion unique IP addresses to each customer. And that's just with a section of the IPv6 address space that networks will hand out for free.
Many, many years ago, long before AWS was ever a thing, I posted on Slashdot about how there are problems with the IPv6 rollout. Basically that it should have been aggressively done in the 90s as a simple increase in address length and not try to fix every goddamn thing wrong with IPv4. Not doing that meant being stuck in a decades long rut with adaptation.
Someone accused me of being a shill for the telecom industry who wanted to profit off the shortage of IPv4 address space. I mentioned this to someone who I consider the smartest networking guy I know, and he thought that was dumb as hell. IPv4 causes more headaches than it's worth for those telecom companies to try to astroturf Slashdot or anywhere else.
And yet, now we're here with Amazon actually making good on the premise, if not the actual astroturfing (yet).
customers will pay $0.005 per public IPv4 address per hour
That works out to $43.80 per year ($43.92 if it’s a leap year).
today's average IPv4 price tag [is] $35
Seems like AWS’s IPv4 pricing is a bit of a rip-off. Not that there’s much of an alternative for anyone who isn’t able to buy an entire block, though.
The scary part about this, outside of amazon, is the fact that I actually understand some of the technical stuff being said in the comments.
One of us!
For instance, this old blog post from Meta (Facebook back then) claimed IPv6 optimizations accelerated their site by 10-15%
How the hell does the addressing system improve a sites performance by 10-15%??? That's crazy!
Also - Maybe I Should read that blog post lol
IPv6 fixed quite a lot of shite from IPv4
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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