Subj : FidoNews submission
To : Gerrit Kuehn
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Mon Jun 02 2025 01:49 pm
Hello Gerrit,
On Sunday June 01 2025 18:35, you wrote to me:
GK>>> ISDN offered benefits: higher bandwidth (i.e., lower transfer
GK>>> costs), channel bundling,
MvdV>> The lower transfer cost was not all that spectacular. 64k vs 56k or
MvdV>> 28k6. 1.5 dB at best and 3 dB worst case. Against considerable cost
MvdV>> for the equipment and an almost doubled montly feee.
GK> That depended heavily on the country you lived in (and the phone
GK> companies offering the service).
True. That applies to IPv6 as well. Here in The Netherlands there is competition between ISPs. One can easely find an IASP that supports IPv6. In the US, there often is just ONE ISP in an area and if that one does not support IPv6m tough luck.
MvdV>> So I skipped ISDN. why spend time and money on ISDN when POTS just
MvdV>> worked fine?
GK> Yeah, why go for IPv6 if IPv4 works just fine?
I was just parafrasing you. But in the case of IPv6 isn't it obvious by now? You have expereinced by yourself that "IPv4 does not work fine" any more. Your new fiberglass provider does not offer you a glabally routable IPv4 address.
GK> You ignored the drawbacks of POTS,
At the time, POTS had no drawbacks for me. It worked fine for me until VOIP became available.
MvdV>> IPv6 offers advantages for sysops. For starters there is the
MvdV>> obvious "IPv4 will not just keep working well" forever as you
MvdV>> yourself have just found out with your DS-light glasfiber
MvdV>> connection.
GK> Being an "early adopter" for anything is something you should decide
GK> on carefully. I have done so in the past, sometimes it turned out to
GK> be a good idea, but often enough you just say "I should have waited
GK> with that" in hindsight.
Yes, early adoption does not always work out well. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
In Fidonet the early IPv6 adapoters can be found in the top five of the list I publish weekly in Fidonet. i doubt they will regret their choice.
MvdV>> IPv6 solves that problem. And more than that. You do not just
MvdV>> get ONE IPv6 address, you get enough to let every device in
MvdV>> your network have its own unique globally routable IPv6
MvdV>> address. You can have an unlimited amount of serves running
MvdV>> without having to mess with non standard port numbers. And
MvdV>> more...
GK> Yeah, horrible from a security point of view.I do not want all
GK> devices in my network to have routable addresses, heck no! Even more
GK> so when thinking about the address being permanent. IPv6 requires much
GK> more thought on network security.
Sigh....
That point had been debunked over a decade ago! While in he very early days of IPv6 that may have been an issue, now every IPv6 capable IPv6 router has a firewll that blocks all unsollicted income by default. That you devices have a globally routable address does not mean that they are exposed to the ugly internet. In fact it is more secure that IPv4 hiding behaind NAT. NAT is mode complex and has loopholes...
GK>>> why bother with IPv6?
MvdV>> Because IPv4 will not "just keep working"
GK> It will do so for a very long time, at least in private networks.
You now have DS-Lite where IPv4 does NOT "just keep working".
MvdV>> You have been dealing with IPv4 for decades. You were not
MvdV>> prepaired for the situation that it would not "just keep
MvdV>> working"
GK> Actually, I think I was well prepared, but never mind...
MvdV>> Of course IPv6 looks more complex to you. Had you started a decade
MvdV>> ago with familarizing it slowly one bit at the time you would
MvdV>> percive it what it is: less complex.
GK> How is a network interface having one 32bit address supposed to be
GK> less complex than a network interface having (at least) three
GK> different 128bit addresses on top of that?
If you had adopted IPv6 earlier and worked with it for some time you would you would know the answer. ;-)
GK> IPv6 is practically unusable without working DNS,
The whole internet is practically unususable without DNS. IPv6 works fine with IPv6. What is the problem?
GK>>> I do not see any device or OS being sold as "IPv6 only" in the
GK>>> medium-term future. There are way to many installations that
GK>>> require IPv4 compatibility. There is no market for an "IPv6
GK>>> only" device or software.
MvdV>> And yet Microsoft, Google and some other Big tech ones are
MvdV>> running their server parks IPv6 only internally. They only do
MvdV>> IPv4 to IPv6 translation ad the edge of their networks.
Apple demands that apps in the IPhone appstore have demonstrated that they can work in an IPv6 only environment.
GK> Sure, as these are large companies.
They would not invest in IPv6 only if they did not think that is the future.
Yes, IPv4 will be with us for quite some time. I may not live to see it switched off. But IPv6 is the future. It is not a gag that will blow over. To keep ignoring it is a dead end.
GK> However, the smaller your private network is and the more legacy
GK> devices you have there, the less real benefit there is in migration.
"Smaller private network" and "more legacy devices" is a contradiction. Anyway, these legacy devices can keep running along in a dual stack network until they are no longer supported by the manufacturer or the infrastucture. It does not have to stop anyone from adopting Ipv6. he who does not prepare for that will run into a dead end street some day.
Cheers, Michiel
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