this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 220 points 2 days ago (23 children)

I know it's a joke, but the idea that NAT has any business existing makes me angry. It's a hack that causes real headaches for network admins and protocol design. The effects are mostly hidden from end users because those two groups have twisted things in knots to make sure end users don't notice too much. The Internet is more centralized and controlled because of it.

No, it is not a security feature. That's a laughable claim that shows you shouldn't be allowed near a firewall.

Fortunately, Google reports that IPv6 adoption is close to cracking 50%.

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 103 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I think NAT is one reason why the internet is so centralized. If everyone had a static IP you could do all sorts of decentralized cool stuff.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 72 points 2 days ago

Right, not the only reason, but it's a sticking point.

You shouldn't need to connect to your smart thermostat by using the company's servers as an intermediary. That makes the whole thing slower, less reliable, and a point for the company to sell your personal data (that last one being the ultimate reason why it's done this way).

[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 41 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Everyone having a static IP is a privacy nightmare.

There's a reason the recommendation in the standard for ipv6 had to be amended (it whatever the mechanic was) so that generated local suffixes aren't static. Before that, we were essentially globally identifiable because just the second half of your v6 address was static.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 46 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Surely we can do better. Why not IPv10? That's 4 higher than 6!

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

not sure if you're aware thats a real thing https://www.ipv10.net/

[–] OozingPositron@feddit.cl 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

>Forbidden

>You don't have permission to access this resource.

Awesome.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Obviously. You can only access it in IPv10.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 25 points 2 days ago

Guess we have to crank it up to 11, then.

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[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 49 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The reason IPv6 was originally added to the DOCSIS specs, over 20 years ago, is because Comcast literally exhausted all RFC1918 addresses on their modem management networks.

My favourite feature of IPv6 is networks, and hosts therein, can have multiple prefixes and addresses as a core function. I use it to expose local functions on only ULA addresses, but provide locked down public access when and where needed. Access separation is handled at the IP stack, with IPv4 it’s expected to be handled by a firewall or equivalent.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My favorite feature of IPv6 is that there are so many addresses available. Every single IPv4 address right now could have its own entire IPv4 range of addresses in IPv6. It's mind-boggling huge.

[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

you could assign every square meter of the planet an ip and use it for location, and still have addresses left over

[–] Zink@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh it’s way more than that!

After looking up some numbers, I note we could give every single square MILLIMETER on the planet its own entire IPv4 address space.

…And then every one of those IPv4 addresses could have its own entire copy of the IPv4 address space!

…And that would just be a drop in the bucket compared with IPv6! One good comparison I’ve seen is that you could assign an address to every atom on the surface of the earth (but not inside it) and have enough left over for 100+ more earths.

Rough math for the square millimeters:

The surface area of the earth is roughly 510 trillion square millimeters. Let’s round that up to a quadrillion or 10^15^.

The number of IPv6 addresses is 2^128^ or 3.4x10^38^. To be conservative again, let’s just round that down to 10^38^.

10^38^ / 10^15^ = 10^23^ IPv6 addresses per square mm of earth.

IPv4 address space is 2^32^ or around 4 billion. let’s round up to 10 billion or 10^10^.

So then 10^23^ / 10^10^ = 10^13^ IPv6 addresses per IPv4 address per square mm of earth.

10^13^ / 10^10^ =

1,000 IPv6 addresses

per IPv4 address

per IPv4 address

per square mm of earth.

And that was with the conservative estimates along the way. I think it would actually be tens of thousands.

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[–] gens@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They kept talking it was because address exaustion, and IANA sold all the remaining blocks they had...

I tested it at the time. Ran nmap ping scan across a block all night with zero results. IANA sold the internet

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[–] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 61 points 2 days ago (7 children)

My favorite thing to use IPv6 for is to use the privacy extension to get around IP blocks on YouTube when using alternative front ends. Blocked by Google on my laptop? No problem, let me just get another one of my 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 IP addresses.

I have a separate subnet which is IPv6 only and rotates through IP addresses every hour or so just for Indivious, Freetube and PipePipe.

[–] needanke@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What is stoping Google from just blocking your entire IP-Block?

[–] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 8 points 1 day ago

Mostly, I'm not big enough to trigger anything there.

Also, since ISPs usually only get a single humongous IPv6 block, it's actually pretty hard to know what is okay to block. Somebody might be on a /48, /56 or /64 network but they might also just have a single IPv6 address. Since you're blocking quintillions of IP addresses with each /64 net, the risk of hitting innocent IPs is high.

Also also, I'm not sure if Google is actually prepared for such a case. Since all the requests coming from Invidious just seem like legit unauthenticated requests, it's hard to flag them on IPv6 when the IPs are fully randomized.

Still, Google is moving towards requiring a login for everything. So I assume that method won't work for much longer.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is exactly why ipv6 was never widely adopted. There's too much power in a limited IP pool.

[–] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Define "widely".

According to Google 46.09% of their traffic is IPv6 and most servers support it. It's mostly large ISPs dragging their feet.

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[–] eah@programming.dev 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Wolf@lemmy.today 6 points 1 day ago

That was beautiful

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 57 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Skill issue

IPv6 is easy to do.

2000::/3 is the internet range

fc00::/7 is the private network range (for non routing v6)

fe80::/64 is link local (like apipa but it never changes)

::1/128 is loopback

/64 is the smallest network allocation, and you still have 64 bits left for devices.

You don't need NAT when you can just do firewalling - default drop new connections on inbound wan and allow established, related on outbound wan like any IPv4 firewall does.

Use DHCPv6 and Prefix Delegation (DHCPv6-PD) to get your subnets and addresses (ask for a /60 on the wan to get 16 subnets).

Hook up to your printer using ipv6 link local address - that address never changes on its own, and now you don't have to play the static ip game to connect to it after changing your router or net config.

The real holdup is ISPs getting ultra cheap routers that use stupid network allocation systems (AT&T) that are incompat with the elegant simplicity of prefix delegation and dhcp.

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[–] socsa@piefed.social 36 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Meh, the idea of having every address be globally routable makes a lot of sense. NAT is a great bandaid but it's still a bandaid. It still limits how peer to peer and multicast applications function, especially on larger networks.

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 22 points 2 days ago

Fun fact: IP version 5 is actually reserved for the Internet Streaming Protocol.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 52 points 2 days ago (16 children)

In my personal life I will probably "never" intentionally use ipv6.

But it is a DAMNED good sniff test to figure out if an IT/NT team is too dumb to live BEFORE they break your entire infrastructure. If they insist that the single most important thing is to turn it off on every machine? They better have a real good reason other than "it's hard"

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[–] 2910000@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

I love the flat earther energy in this

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