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0 pointsspinax4y ago0 comments

> because while you can remember v4 addresses and v4 address assignments, this is impossible for v6 addresses

A thousand times this (and your other points, great reply thank you) - the ergonomics of using IPv6 at a local scale are atrocious for mere mortals. And you didn't touch on "should I use Stable Privacy or EUI64 for my laptop IP?" and other small cuts and bruises which technologists think everyone should "just know".

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lowercased4y ago

Good word ergonomics.

All the "but ipv6 is better because... xyz" just don't ring true to me, but I'm not a full time admin.

I still see "Quit remembering addresses - we have DNS!". My consumer equipment all have "192.168.0.1" and "192.168.2.1" type addresses. Relying on my browsers to be able to discover 'cable_modem.dyn' on a local network doesn't work - instructions will just say "go to 192.168.0.1" and put in a password. Good luck trying to get people to go to "[ff00]:0:0" or... whatever the heck you'd have to put in. Having foreign CSRs trying to explain what a square bracket is to people at home trying to set up a new cable modem... way too much headache.

And... there are millions of people that have to do this. There's perhaps tens of thousands of high-level network admins working to route everything through major global networks, but there's hundreds of millions of people that have to deal with and use all the stuff at the end points, and millions of us who serve as defacto "tech support" people for families/friends/neighbors.

phicoh4y ago

When the web was young, millions of people have learned how to type www.example.com. People would often spell out the 'http://' on the radio.

No doubt, browsers could let people type fe80::1 and make it work.

It will take a while before people are used to the double colon, etc. But it also took a while before people where comfortable typing IPv4 addresses.

lazide4y ago

People did that because they had no choice - here people are just not opting in to v6 because they can still use v4, which is easier. Very different situation.

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p_l4y ago

You shouldn't remember numeric addresses anyway, and we had reasonable ways to deal with that for decades now. It's really just human unwillingness (ok, and maybe a bit of BSD Sockets shitshow, but as much as I hate them for keeping networking broken it's not their fault this time).

pilif4y ago

>And you didn't touch on "should I use Stable Privacy or EUI64 for my laptop IP?"

yes. because this has by now been solved by using a non-outdated OS. The defaults have become good enough for this not to be an issue any more, at least in my experience.

spinaxOP4y ago

I'm literally on Arch using NetworKManager, when creating a new connection it defaults to Stable Privacy in the dropdown, but EUI64 is listed first in the dropdown itself. So, since you didn't actually state which one to use, now what? Point being: don't be condescending claiming "outdated OS", IPv6 is a minefield of footguns and there are many of them just like this choice.

neilalexander4y ago

The sane default is Stable Privacy. It's a good thing that NetworkManager agrees if it has offered that to you as the default. Ultimately though any confusion that arises from how that option is presented to the user is really a bug in NetworkManager and not in IPv6. The footgun here is that NetworkManager allows you to change it so easily without offering any explanation as to what changing it will do.

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