Memes

It's amazing how many internet providers still won't enable IPv6, even though it is hugely beneficial to their own networks (more efficient routing = less router overhead = more bandwidth and less power usage = SAVE MONEY).

IPv6 was pernanently turned on for the Internet in 2011. That's THIRTEEN YEARS AGO.

All consumer and enterprise equipment made in the last 10+ years natively support IPv6. There is no excuse anymore. You can enable dual stack and setup / get your v6 block and go for it. The v6 routing tables are much simpler than the v4 routing tables, as it only has to point to the prefix network for any address, and prefixes are handed out so the ISP gets a contigious prefix block. The routers sort the rest out.

IPv6 has the 2000::/3 range for internet traffic. That's 2^125 ip addresses possible. We're not running out of those even if we have an internet on every planet in the solar system.

IPv6 Prefix Delegation works like DHCP but for IPv6. It's not indecipherable magic runes.

Router asks for a v6 range -> ISP router gives the range -> Router then either further subdivides into subnets, or uses DHCPv6 to give out v6 addresses. Simple.

But of course, nobody wants to do it the simple way... AT&T and your strange subnetting spec-breaking routers.

Odd that Comcast/Xfinity, the company that somehow manages to have even worse service than AT&T, implements IPv6 near perfectly. They give prefixes when your router asks. Their own gateways give prefixes to routers behind when requested. It works. If the arguably worst internet company can deploy IPv6 this well, any company can.

In addition, every device also has its own link-local ipv6 (fe80::/16) that is not routed, but can be called directly and it normally doesn't change, as it is based partly on the network card's MAC address. Need to connect your printer by ip address? Use the link local v6 and stop having to play the DHCP or static IP charade.