Why IPv6 is the only way forward

by quaintdev on 4/7/2026, 7:22:58 PM

https://ankshilp.in/posts/for-the-love-of-internet/

Comments

by: jdwithit

IPv4 has been "in crisis" for the entire 20 years I've worked in tech and we seem to be managing alright. Not to say things can't be better or we shouldn't try to improve. But I'll be surprised if v4 isn't still the default for most use cases in another 20 years.

4/7/2026, 7:44:26 PM

by: rectang

If UTF-8 represents the triumph of a design prioritizing backwards compatibility with an existing standard (ASCII) to facilitate a transition, then IPv6 is the cautionary tale of a design which could have made the transition simpler but did not.

4/7/2026, 7:44:45 PM

by: ux266478

The way forward for what though? It remains to be seen if this level of infrastructure and complexity has any kind of resilience. I seriously doubt it does, looking back on history. I think it's far more likely that the post-industrial population contraction (which hasn't even really begun) as well as climate change (anthropogenic or not) will make it far more likely that this model of "everybody uses a computer" ends up in the junk bin of history. Can't say I'd be sad to see it go. Somebody who has no interest in computers shouldn't ever have to touch one.

4/7/2026, 8:09:31 PM

by: Bender

The only place I have utilized an IPv6 address publicly is on my authoritative name servers only because some DNS testing tools assume it is there. It's not really needed however. My home firewall does have one but I have never used it. I can't think of a use for it. I have multiple static IPv4 addresses and they have suited me just fine for decades. I suppose I could bind a Squid SSL Bump MitM proxy to it in case a site blocks me but I would probably leave it off most of the time.I never use them on my web, chat, voice, IRC and other servers as I personally find blocking shenanigans on IPv4 and not having to implement the same checks on IPv6 is just easier for a lazy person like me. IPv6 just feels like an after-thought bolt on to me. Clunky, not well thought out. Some privacy gotchas that can be disabled but some will not. That's just my take. I doubt anyone will have the same take.I think IPv4 will be fine for another 100 years even if we have to re-purpose some DoD/MoD ranges given they don't use them and maybe annex some /8's from a few greedy companies. But that's a problem for Gen Delta. Gen Foxtrot can deal with repurposing some multicast ranges.

4/7/2026, 8:52:22 PM

by: isodev

Someone should’ve thought about the UX of IPv6 before declaring it to be “the way”. It’s like having to learn Klingon just to setup your printer. IPvNext could sort that out… maybe it’s time to consider moving on.

4/7/2026, 7:52:21 PM

by: gmuslera

It is the only way forward, but the reason for that is not the correlation between population and IP addresses. After all, most of the use of internet today is not by people, but by bots, crawlers, AI agents, b2b and more, and that is far more than the human population, and then you have the virtual networks built over IP like VPNs, Tor and more. It is more related to privacy, bidirectional communication and protocols, security, identity and possibilities.

4/7/2026, 8:24:32 PM

by: oconnore

I don't understand why people are so negative about IPv6. I have done essentially zero home networking work and I just ran this successfully. It just works!``` > ping6 google.com PING6(56=40+8+8 bytes) 2605:59c0:236f:3a08:7883:9d04:c26d:5fa1 --> 2607:f8b0:4005:806::200e 16 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4005:806::200e, icmp_seq=0 hlim=117 time=22.262 ms 16 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4005:806::200e, icmp_seq=1 hlim=117 time=26.124 ms 16 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4005:806::200e, icmp_seq=2 hlim=117 time=26.807 ms ^C --- google.com ping6 statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 22.262/25.064/26.807/2.001 ms ```

4/7/2026, 8:04:10 PM

by: flumpcakes

One of the biggest, I would assume in the current year, blockers to an IPv6 only world would be the fact that the major "cloud" vendors do not support it.

4/7/2026, 9:02:19 PM

by: azalemeth

I am behind cgnat but have a native ipv6 /64 at home. I've got a great fibre connection (2G5) and everything "just works". I can host on ipv6 native machines and see them from anywhere in the world that has native ipv6 access.The trouble is that 1) my employers do not have native ipv6 access; 2) neither does my mobile connection; and 3) really nor do a lot of my friends. Moreover, 4) if you browse a website from a native world-reachable ipv6 address, you're fingerprinted by it and it's overwhelmingly unique to you. So, it doesn't really work for hosting, and I don't get any direct benefits from it.Instead I have a vps with a public ipv4 address and have a router that creates a wireguard tunnel to it. The reverse proxy works great over ipv6 and I am now in a position where I can forward ports and have direct connections -- albeit with hugely increased technical complexity. Ipv6 has many great ideas in it. If it's universally used it might just catch on...

4/7/2026, 7:53:40 PM

by: bombcar

I don’t know how you measure “metric tons of content” but I suspect in general there’s lots of US-available content on IPv4 that the countries like China and India want to access, and not much the other way around.But that should be a perfect playground for an IPv6-only network that has gateways to the IPv4 content; eventually the home-developed content will begin to drive demand elsewhere.

4/7/2026, 7:47:15 PM

by: thomasdziedzic

IPv6 feels like we just can't admit to ourselves that it has been a failed transition. What would it take to come up with IPv7 which takes in the lessons of IPv6 and produces something better that we can all agree is worth transitioning to over IPv4.

4/7/2026, 8:06:45 PM

by: mono442

The main problem with IPv6 is that it is different from IPv4. There's SLAAC, there's no ARP and there're also some other differences. In the end, it's simpler to just not bother.

4/7/2026, 7:40:30 PM

by: bluGill

The US doesn't have excessive IPv4 Addresses. We have a real shortage and big pain because we don't have anywhere near enough. Sure we have 40% of them all - but that has no indication of what enough is.

4/7/2026, 7:56:18 PM

by: Yizahi

I honestly don't understand why IPv6 is not actively deployed in 2026. Every piece of networking hardware over past decade supports IPv6 and often dual stack too. And to switch between both often takes a few clicks if DHCPv6 server is up and reachable. Absolutely transparent, free, zero performance hit. But no, so many persist at doing v4.PS: I'm talking about MSO hardware. But client hardware should be at the same level of compatibility for years too.

4/7/2026, 8:18:54 PM

by: wmf

No mention of Indian ISPs just buying IPv4 addresses. Prices are even declining.

4/7/2026, 7:51:32 PM

by: leosanchez

Author if you are reading comments, rss feed entries point to example.com

4/7/2026, 7:44:50 PM

by: lgunsch

If IPv6 was going to be successful, it would have been successful years ago. It seems, people are just more comfortable with layers of NAT than native IPv6 everywhere. I'd guess that it should have been more backwards compatible. Similar to UTF-8 and ASCII.

4/7/2026, 7:42:54 PM

by: globular-toast

IPv6 is totally an equality issue. If a sizeable proportion of this forum had to share an IP address we would've had IPv6 done years ago.

4/7/2026, 8:08:06 PM

by: jmyeet

I find it fascinating how these key technologies handle upgrades and breaking changes. For example, Python eschewed breaking changes through 2.7.x but the dam has burst since 3.0 and every point release (it seems?) makes breaking changes, sometimes reversing itself (eg the whole s/u string prefix thing).Many here will be familiar with the second system effect [1]. Usually people want to avoid making breaking changes but once they do, they can go a little nuts. My personal opinion is only major versions should make breaking changes and a lot of thought should go into making them as painless as possible.IPv6 is fascinating for these reasons but also that it's a product of its time in two main ways:1. It doesn't do anything about roaming because that wasn't an issue in the 1990s but it certainly is now;2. A 64 bit address space would've basically been infinite addresses but instead they went with 128 bit addresses (rolling in ports) but then giving individual users a /64 address range. For some reason people deny it now or simply weren't aware but that too is a historical artifact because it was intended to put a 48 bit MAC address into that space but later we realized that's a huge PII and tracking issue; and3. History has shown that upgrading network backbone hardware (in particular) is incredibly difficult through a process that's been described as "ossification", which is a nice description. Basically, network relays and routers wanted to avoid security issues and decided to discard things they didn't understand.That's interesting because it violates Postel's Law [2], which basically says be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send.But this shows up in all sorts of interesting ways, like it's practically impossible to reliably use MTUs larger than about 1536. When IPv4 was designed, that wasn't an issue. With 1-100G+ networks it is. There are RFCs about using large MTUs but you're dependent on backbone hardware you have no control over.Even Linux struggles with this, to the point where you need to do some configuration for high-bandwidth networks (eg RPS [3]). Just handling all those interrupts presents a bunch of problems beyond the original scope. And again, it's hard to fix through no fault of Linux's.I'm old enough to remember the talk about us running out of IPv4 addresses back in the 1990s. It's been interesting to watch how this has consistently been kicked down the street (eg cgNAT).What is funny though is large companies (eg Facebook) actualy ran out of internal addresses on a 10/8 network and there's no good solution for that (with IPv4 at least).[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect</a>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle</a>[3]: <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/362339/" rel="nofollow">https://lwn.net/Articles/362339/</a>

4/7/2026, 8:17:08 PM

by: tonymet

> There are countless threads online on forums like Hacker News, Reddit where people who never really got comfortable with idea of IPv6It’s clumsier than ipv4. It’s unnecessary since NAT was invented. In practice IPv6 requires dual stack, which means twice as many firewalls, names and routes to manage — so 4x the debugging because you have 2 dimensions that can either be working or failing. Addresses are too long to remember, too clumsy to write, and after 30 years still don’t have consistent representation (how many colons and brackets?).Look, IPv6 has some benefits, but until the usability is fixed, it will be another 30 years before it’s close to 95% adoption.

4/7/2026, 7:58:05 PM

by: diath

[flagged]

4/7/2026, 7:46:45 PM

Hacker News Viewer

Top 20