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
MvdV> cost for the equipment and an almost doubled montly feee.
That depended heavily on the country you lived in (and the phone companies offering the service).
MvdV> So I skipped ISDN. why spend time and
MvdV> money on ISDN when POTS just worked fine?
Yeah, why go for IPv6 if IPv4 works just fine? You ignored the drawbacks of POTS, other ignore those of IPv4.
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.
Being an "early adopter" for anything is something you should decide on carefully. I have done so in the past, sometimes it turned out to be a good idea, but often enough you just say "I should have waited with that" in hindsight.
MvdV> IPv6 solves that problem. And more than that. You do not just get
MvdV> ONE IPv6 address, you get enough to let every device in your
MvdV> network have its own unique globally routable IPv6 address. You can
MvdV> have an unlimited amount of serves running without having to mess
MvdV> with non standard port numbers. And more...
Yeah, horrible from a security point of view. I do not want all devices in my network to have routable addresses, heck no! Even more so when thinking about the address being permanent. IPv6 requires much more thought on network security.
GK>> why bother with IPv6?
MvdV> Because IPv4 will not "just keep working"
It will do so for a very long time, at least in private networks.
MvdV> You have been dealing with IPv4 for decades. You were not prepaired
MvdV> for the situation that it would not "just keep working"
Actually, I think I was well prepared, but never mind...
MvdV> Of course
MvdV> IPv6 looks more complex to you. Had you started a decade ago with
MvdV> familarizing it slowly one bit at the time you would percive it
MvdV> what it is: less complex.
How is a network interface having one 32bit address supposed to be less complex than a network interface having (at least) three different 128bit addresses on top of that?
IPv6 is practically unusable without working DNS, but exactly that in combination with auto-configuration has been neglected for a long time.
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 require
GK>> IPv4 compatibility. There is no market for an "IPv6 only" device or
GK>> software.
MvdV> And yet Microsoft, Google and some other Big tech ones are running
MvdV> their server parks IPv6 only internally. They only do IPv4 to IPv6
MvdV> translation ad the edge of their networks.
Sure, as these are large companies. However, the smaller your private network is and the more legacy devices you have there, the less real benefit there is in migration.
