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.
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).
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.
publicly addressable does not mean publicly routable… your router would still not arbitrarily connect untrusted external devices to internal hosts
NAT has the property of a firewall only as an implementation detail. replacing NAT with an IPv6 firewall in the router is an upgrade in every conceivable way
I worked with one of the inventors of IPv6 for a bit of time, and I think knowing Carl really gave me an insight into who IPv6 was invented for, and that’s the big, big, big networks — peering groups that connect large swaths of the Internet with other nations’ municipal or public infrastructure.
These groups are pushing petabytes of data every hour, and as a result, I think it makes their strategists think VERY big picture. From what I’ve seen, IPv6 addresses very real logistical problems you only see with IPv4 when you’re already dealing with it on a galactic scale. So, I personally have no doubt that IPv6 is necessary and that the theory is sound.
However, this fuckin’ half-in/half-out state has become the engine of a manifold of security issues, primarily bc nobody but nerds or industry specialists knows that much about it yet. That has led to rushed, busy, or just plain lazy devs and engineers to either keep IPv6 sockets listening, unguarded, or to just block them outright and redirect traffic to IPv4 anyway.
Imo there’s not much to be done besides go forward with IPv6. It’s there, it’s tested, it’s basically ready for primetime in terms of NIC chip support… I just wish it weren’t so obtuse to learn. :/
There is something there, but mostly I think existing net admins try to map their existing IPv4 knowledge onto IPv6. That doesn’t work very well. It needs to be treated as its own thing.
I couldn’t figure it until I turned my brain off and just read the documentation. I was thinking in IPv4 logic, because everyone had told me it was just “bigger IPv4” - it’s not. It’s so much more, and better.
Funny how I never once criticized, or even mentioned, IPv6s complexity, yet that is the aspect you chose to so valiantly defend. Quite telling, isn’t it?
We use NAT all the time in industrial settings. Makes it so you can have select devices communicate with the plant level network, while keeping everything else common so that downtime is reduced when equipment inevitably fails.
This is equipment that uses all statically addressed devices. And ignoring the fact that IPv6 is simply unsupported on most of them, there are duplicate machines that share programs. Regardless of IP version you need NAT anyway if you want to be able to reach each of the duplicates from the plant network.
yes… that’s why every machine has its own IP address… so that they can both use the same port and you don’t have to connect to crazy bullshit like https://myhomerouter.example.com:8443/
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%.
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.
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).
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.
IPv4 centralization creates far more privacy issues than everyone having a static IP. The solutions are still things like VPNs and onion routing.
publicly addressable does not mean publicly routable… your router would still not arbitrarily connect untrusted external devices to internal hosts
NAT has the property of a firewall only as an implementation detail. replacing NAT with an IPv6 firewall in the router is an upgrade in every conceivable way
Fine, I won’t invite you to our bi-annual TURN server appreciation event.
You are right, but I wish ipv6 was less shitty of a replacement.
I worked with one of the inventors of IPv6 for a bit of time, and I think knowing Carl really gave me an insight into who IPv6 was invented for, and that’s the big, big, big networks — peering groups that connect large swaths of the Internet with other nations’ municipal or public infrastructure.
These groups are pushing petabytes of data every hour, and as a result, I think it makes their strategists think VERY big picture. From what I’ve seen, IPv6 addresses very real logistical problems you only see with IPv4 when you’re already dealing with it on a galactic scale. So, I personally have no doubt that IPv6 is necessary and that the theory is sound.
However, this fuckin’ half-in/half-out state has become the engine of a manifold of security issues, primarily bc nobody but nerds or industry specialists knows that much about it yet. That has led to rushed, busy, or just plain lazy devs and engineers to either keep IPv6 sockets listening, unguarded, or to just block them outright and redirect traffic to IPv4 anyway.
Imo there’s not much to be done besides go forward with IPv6. It’s there, it’s tested, it’s basically ready for primetime in terms of NIC chip support… I just wish it weren’t so obtuse to learn. :/
There is something there, but mostly I think existing net admins try to map their existing IPv4 knowledge onto IPv6. That doesn’t work very well. It needs to be treated as its own thing.
I couldn’t figure it until I turned my brain off and just read the documentation. I was thinking in IPv4 logic, because everyone had told me it was just “bigger IPv4” - it’s not. It’s so much more, and better.
deleted by creator
Funny how I never once criticized, or even mentioned, IPv6s complexity, yet that is the aspect you chose to so valiantly defend. Quite telling, isn’t it?
My isp and router both claim to have IPv6 but every test site has failed.
There is likely a filter you need to turn off.
Ipv6 took awhile for me to understand. One of the biggest hurdles was how is it secure without NAT.
We use NAT all the time in industrial settings. Makes it so you can have select devices communicate with the plant level network, while keeping everything else common so that downtime is reduced when equipment inevitably fails.
That’s nothing that can’t be done with a good set of firewalls on IPv6.
This is equipment that uses all statically addressed devices. And ignoring the fact that IPv6 is simply unsupported on most of them, there are duplicate machines that share programs. Regardless of IP version you need NAT anyway if you want to be able to reach each of the duplicates from the plant network.
yes… that’s why every machine has its own IP address… so that they can both use the same port and you don’t have to connect to crazy bullshit like https://myhomerouter.example.com:8443/
The one thing you can’t do with IPv6 is yell the address across the room to the technician plugged into the switch trying to ping the node.
Good luck trying to find industrial stuff that supports IPv6, hell most of it is still serial.
I have legit heard that serial is security mechanism because it cannot communicate long distance like ethernet.
Of course you can do IPv6 magic that hides IPv6 from the end device, but nobody understands how that magic works.
it’s not magic… it’s a firewall, and it works pretty much exactly the same as a NAT: a whitelist of IP and port combinations