IPv6 Pain Experiment

Thu Oct 3 15:20:50 UTC 2019

I don’t think the issue is the readability of the addresses (although hex does confuse some people), mainly it is the length and ability to deal with any string of numbers that long for a human, and I do realize that you can do static addressing in IPv6 (but I sure would not want to since the manual entry of the addresses is going to be error prone on both the host and into DNS).  It is just way harder for a human to deal with hex v6 address than to easily memorize four decimal numbers in v4.  Most system admins and engineers can rattle off the IPv4 address of a lot of their systems like gateways, DNS servers, domain controllers, etc.  Can you imagine keeping those v6 addresses in your head the same way?  Think about reading them over the phone, typing them into a support case, typing a configuration sheet to be entered by some remote hands etc.  I am not saying it is insurmountable, it is just something people need to get used to.  To me, that is the biggest reason not to do more manual assignments than we need to.
I do understand why they need to be the way they are but I can't see anyone thinking IPv6 addresses are easier to read and handle.  

It is not a misconception that most server guys are used to static addressing and not auto-assignment.  I also takes some time to get people to stop hardcoding static addressing into system configurations.  There are lots of applications that have dialog boxes asking for addresses instead of names.  That needs to stop in an auto-configured or DHCP environment (yeah, I know all about DHCP reservations but I hate them).

Your comment regarding small networks not needing IPv6 is exactly my point.  The original post was talking about MANDATING the use of IPv6 to the exclusion of (or taxation of) IPv4.  My point is that there is not really a need to do so in a lot of use cases.  

The basic issue is that many system administrators know how to set up and configure IPv4 and a lot less of them know how to do IPv6, over time that will change but for now it is an indisputable fact.   If I want to go to IPv6 across the board, I suppose I could do the education and drag them into it.  However as long as my public facing interfaces are mostly fronted by firewalls and load balancers I can just do IPv6 at the border and be done with it for now.  Will it hurt anyone the leave the existing v4 address assignments there as well?  No, not really.  Is there a huge advantage to stop using RFC1918 addressing within our network?  No, not really.  Would I build a completely new enterprise on IPv4...probably not.   Would I recommend that every global enterprise eradicate the use of IPv4 in the next couple of years....no.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

On 10/2/19 5:54 PM, Matt Hoppes wrote:
> I disagree on that. Ipv4 is very human readable. It is numbers.
> 
> Ipv6 is not human numbers. It’s hex, which is not how we normally county.
> 
> It is all water under the bridge now, but I really feel like ipv6 could have been made more human friendly and ipv4 interoperable.
> 
>> On Oct 2, 2019, at 8:49 PM, Doug Barton <dougb at dougbarton.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/2/19 3:03 PM, Naslund, Steve wrote:
>>> The next largest hurdle is trying to explain to your server guys that you are going to go with all dynamically assigned addressing now
>>
>> Completely false, but a very common misconception. There is nothing about IPv6 that prevents you from assigning static addresses.
>>
>>> and explaining to your system admin that can’t get a net mask in v4 figured out, how to configure their systems for IPv6.
>>
>> If they only need an outbound connection, they probably don't need any configuration. The instructions for assigning a static address for inbound connections vary by OS, but I've seen a lot of them, and none of them are more than 10 lines long.
>>
>> Regarding the previous comments about all the drama of adding DNS records, etc.; that is what IPAM systems are for. If you're small enough that you don't need an IPAM for IPv4, you almost certainly don't for IPv6.
>>
>> IPv6 is different, but it's not any more difficult to learn than IPv4. (You weren't born understanding IPv4 either.)
>>
>> Doug