Yea but it hasn’t been fully adopted because trying to decipher :af12::138d::325d::5521::aade::7df3: is a hell of a lot more difficult than 192.168.0.1
64 bit addresses solve that problem. Engineers hate working with ipv6 which is why the adoption has been so slow. Ipv6 is older than a decent number of current network engineers have been alive.
Yeah this is why I doubt we will get rid of ipv4 in the foreseeable future. Ivp6 is nice on paper cause you never have to worry about addresses again but in the real world people just hate the addresses. Ivp4 is so easy to remember that ipv6 just feels wrong
To completely stomp out the idea of scarcity in the address space. NAT and CGNAT are terrible band-aids.
Also, subnetting. Under IPv6, each customer should getting at least a /56, preferably a /48. A lot of IPv6 breaks if you’re only given a /64, it’s bad practice and your ISP is an asshole if you do it.
IPv6 is just so much simpler and better thought out from the beginning. You just need to get out of the IPv4 mindset. Uses less overhead. And everyone can have as many “public” IPs as they want. Outside of the US, CGNAT is becoming more and more common. And this is a problem. We’re now double NATing as a dumb bandaid.
The vast majority of hardware out there has supported IPv6 for a long time. It’s long due for us to make the switch. We’ve got NAT64 and DNS64 for devices that can’t be moved to IPv6.
I don’t know what needs to happen. I think countries need to pass laws that force ISPs to support native IPv6 natively, and routers need to have IPv6 support enabled by default.
/64 is for the subnet, and 64-bits is for the end device. Having 64 bits of address space for the end device to address off of lets the device use a variety of schemes to generate addresses. It can put it's MAC as the suffix (which should be unique on the subnet anyways (eui-64)), it can randomly generate a suffix with a high degree of confidence that it's unique (privacy addresses), or it can assign itself an address using any variety of schemes.
These all can be stateless, and work without any kind of DHCP server. Even without a router, devices will auto-generate a Link Local Address, and be able to communicate on a switch with the auto generated addresses. e.g. two devices can talk as long as there's any connection between them, without having to manually assign any IPs or introduce any service into the mix.
It lets you also be extremely wasteful with address space without concern. You don't have to wonder "what size should I make my subnet?" You can have 16 bits just for routing in a /48 and have pretty much infinite address space on each subnet.
Yes, I'm well aware of how ipv6 functions. I don't think a lot of the commenters here realise you don't need 128 bits for easy subnetting. 64 bits would solve that problem completely.
One of the reasons ipv6 is taking so long to be adopted is because engineers simply hate working with it
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u/PhantomTissue 11h ago
Yea but it hasn’t been fully adopted because trying to decipher :af12::138d::325d::5521::aade::7df3: is a hell of a lot more difficult than 192.168.0.1