alt Hacker NewsI have it switched off on most networks and servers including my home network. I just don't need it here and I have zero to do with asia.
I wish they had just made an IPv5 though. With e.g. 6 bytes instead of 4. 65535 times the current internet should be plenty. I feel like IPv6 is overengineered and I'm glad it didn't take off yet. I like being able to memorise IP addresses, it really helps testing.
If I ever do switch it on on my home network I'll probably use NAT on the router so I can still keep it exclusively IPv4 internally on the network.
I first learned about IPv6 when I was studying (1993) and I already felt like it was an overengineered monstrosity back then. They were campaigning like it would be the internet next year. Well that aged well, lol. That's now 33 years ago.
I truly think that if they had made it simpler and more IPv4 compatible we would have been moved over in 2-3 years. But no they had to keep supporting this thing. Well, at this point I'm going to avoid playing ball as long as I can.
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> I like being able to memorise IP addresses, it really helps testing.
This is even easier with IPv6. At work we have a bunch of test devices, and you calculate the IPv6 from the device's serial number. Simple as that, no memorization at all.
> I feel like IPv6 is overengineered
In what metrics? IPv6 is more simple to implement than IPv4. In Linux 7.1.1 IPv4 is 84kLOC, IPv6 is 59kLOC.
If they're going to make ipv5, might as well make it 8 bytes instead of 4
An IPv5 would have all the same issues switching over to it. Its been proposed so many times over the years.
I dont think its that over engineered for what its capable of.
A changeover to your IPv5 would be just as agonizing as the changeover to IPv6. A system with a larger address space is fundamentally uninteroperable with one with a smaller address space as there is nowhere to put the extra bits in the old protocol. The lack of motivation to move to the new protocol would also be just the same.
And as for memorization: do you actually memorize MAC addresses for your interfaces? The answer is no, you don't, becase ARP handles all that for you. Well, for IPv6, DNS, mDNS and so on handles all that for both your IPv4 and your IPv6 addresses - or should, if you know what you are doing, as memorizing IPs doesn't really scale beyond a few dozen machines.
Yes, IPv6 is overengineered, but it gets the pain of having larger addresses in the packet done once and for all - the odds of needing more than 128 bits in the rest of human history are very small indeed. And if something radically new needs to replace the current IPv6 architecture, which is much more likely, the extra address bits are already there; only 2000::/3 is assigned for public use so far, and the new addresses would fit in the current IPv6 packet format already.