The sad part to me is that the original IP header included variable-length addresses up to 128 bits, using two 4-bit fields called Source Address Length (SAL), and Destination Address Length (DAL). [1]

Early hardware implementations could have settled on 32-bit, but 48-bit would make more sense to be in line with EUI-48/MAC-48 (ethernet frame). The world could then gradually upgrade hardware over the decade to handle a larger address.

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien28.pdf

I've always posited that web services didn't become widespread because of the church of REST, or even that the HTTP protocol is that amazing.

It's because you could get through the firewall without a four month review with the firewall team.

Well, and you could reuse web tools and software. Ok, that's probably it, but the firewall convenience is DEFINITELY a thing.

If home router manufacturers would get their shit together, IPv6 would not be hard to deploy. I get it, it's chicken and egg, but nothing about IPv6 is inherently more difficult than IPv4 other than the length of the address.

The reason IPv6 on a home network is still difficult is because the routers everyone buys at Best Buy still blow at supporting IPv6. Ubiquiti blows at supporting IPv6. It is laziness and/or incompetence of device manufacturers, primarily, holding us back. (and incompetence around IPv6 in general - I talked to a network guy at a large company recently and they were deploying /58s. WHY?!)

The benefits of IPv6 may not be just for you - it's for the planet, it's for the developing nations, it's for the future where IPv4 does not cut it. It's bigger than your home network.

Pushing all your traffic through a third party cloud server causes a lot of problems.

It costs that third party real money to run that server...

What happens when they decide to shut if off because they no longer want to bear the costs? Your applications are a ticking timebomb...

What about privacy? What if the operator of that server decides to fund it through selling your data?

Sending your traffic through a third party server adds latency, sometimes a LOT of latency if that server is far away. This is very bad for certain latency sensitive things (gaming, calls etc).

If you're dependent on a third party server then you're screwed if it goes down, even if your own connection is fine.

Doing away with that and going back to peer to peer is MUCH better in most cases.

To "avoid domination by huge centralized services", of course. What if you want to run something like a website from your own IP, but you can't because you're behind CGNAT?

Another reason is that NAT is making IPv4 live longer than it should, making IPv4 addresses more expensive. Maybe you don't want to host cloud services from your home, but if IPv4 addresses start costing millions of dollars (I know blocks of them can go for that much--if we're already there do you want to go further?), that drives up the cost for anyone using the Internet even if you are super okay with CG-NAT (which you shouldn't be).

IPv6 will fix that.