Tell HN: Hacker News now supports IPv6

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39099065

by p1mrx • 2 years ago

555 321 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My browser just started connecting to Hacker News over IPv6 today:

  $ host news.ycombinator.com
  news.ycombinator.com has address 209.216.230.207
  news.ycombinator.com has IPv6 address 2606:7100:1:67::26

Both IP addresses share the same ASN (M5 Computer Security): https://bgp.he.net/ip/209.216.230.207 https://bgp.he.net/ip/2606:7100:1:67::26

The raw IP address correctly redirects to HN: http://[2606:7100:1:67::26]

Good job so far! Please don't pull a Reddit and turn it off again.

supriyo-biswas• 2 years ago

Technically the goal of enabling IPv6 can be done through Cloudflare as well, which they enabled a few days ago. I wonder why they turned it off and are back to directly serving traffic.

djbusby• 2 years ago

Yea. I noticed that too. Got one or two CF warnings when visiting last week.

JeremyNT• 2 years ago

They put it behind CF specifically in response to a DOS attack [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38939559

xyst2• 2 years ago

Next is TLS 1.3 support, hopefully :)

# openssl s_client -connect news.ycombinator .com:443 -tls1_3 CONNECTED(00000003) 4160736388:error:1409442E:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert protocol version:ssl/record/rec_layer_s3.c:1562:SSL alert number 70 --- no peer certificate available --- No client certificate CA names sent --- SSL handshake has read 7 bytes and written 244 bytes Verification: OK --- New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE) Secure Renegotiation IS NOT supported No ALPN negotiated Early data was not sent Verify return code: 0 (ok)

supertrope• 2 years ago

It was briefly turned on years ago and then turned off. I guess it broke the website for those behind corporate MITM boxes.

kiwijamo• 2 years ago

There's a lot of websites out there that does TLS 1.3. Surely not an issue for MITM boxes? Otherwise they wouldn't be able to access much...

xyst2• 2 years ago

Should be able to support both. Client can negotiate between either TLS v1.2 and TLS v1.3. Server has to support 1.3 though.

baby_souffle• 2 years ago

Ha! Beat me to it!

For anybody that's curious, the IP-Foo [0] browser extension puts a little 4/6 icon in the address bar to make it clear at a glance which dialect you're speaking for $currentWebPage

[0] https://github.com/pmarks-net/ipvfoo

notatoad2• 2 years ago

cool, but "read and change your data on all websites" is imho not worth the functionality. that seems ripe for takeover by some scammer.

p1mrx10• 2 years ago

IPvFoo author here. The problem is that there's no way to obtain the (hostname, ip) stream from Chrome/Firefox without requesting the "all websites" permission.

In theory, browser vendors could define a narrowly-scoped permission that only reports (hostname, ip), or roll this functionality into the browser UI, but neither seems likely to happen.

I made IPvFoo to promote IPv6 adoption, and wouldn't consider selling it for less than $10M USD. It probably won't ever be worth that much because it's an easily-cloned utility without a "moat", but it's more rational to set a price than refuse to sell under any circumstances.

cbracketdash• 2 years ago

Just download the repo as a zip file and manually upload it as an extension to your browser.

justsomehnguy3• 2 years ago

Just read the source code.

mg• 2 years ago

In Chromium, you can click on the request in the Network panel and it will show the IP.

I see:

    Remote Address: [2606:7100:1:67::26]:443

When I put that into the url bar:

    https://[2606:7100:1:67::26]/

I also see Hacker News.

ceroxylon• 2 years ago

As someone who grew up on IPv4, i will miss it, but the leap to 340 undecillion unique addresses is exciting in many ways so i think i can learn to live with this transition. If we ever need more than that, i can't even imagine what that future would look like.

p-e-w2• 2 years ago

The last time I looked into this (which was a few years ago), ISPs were allocating blocks containing billions of IPv6 addresses to anyone who paid a nominal sum.

So that vast address space might not last as long as it would seem...

internetter• 2 years ago

We never learn

greyface-7• 2 years ago

That sure sounds like a lot. But "billions" is less than a /64. Try "sextillions" (/56) or "septillions" (/48). Of course, when the denominator is "undecillions", it becomes clear that this is actually a non-issue.

pilif• 2 years ago

One of the features of IPv6 is address autoconfiguration, obviating the need for a central authority like DHCP on v4.

However, that only works with a /64 prefix and given that larger sites might want to have multiple subnets, that’s why most assignments are /56 or /48.

But still. If all assignments were /48s, that would still leave room for 281 trillion networks which even I believe is enough for the foreseeable future.

If the number space is so big, it makes sense to take advantage of it if that allows for other additional features (like SLAAC)

Kab1r3• 2 years ago

Billions of addresses might seem like a lot, but every IPv6 network has at least 2^64 addresses and it doesn't make much sense (to me) to give any customer less than one network.

(Maybe you meant billions of /64 blocks? ISPs could be providing a /32 ≈ 4 billion /64 blocks, though there still are 2 billion of those in the entire IPv6 space)

porbelm• 2 years ago

ISPs are SUPPOSED to allocate a /64 for a single customer. Mine does, so I have 4.5 billion available addresses within my 2001:4653:nnnn:nnnn::/64 prefix...

throw0101d5• 2 years ago

So that vast address space might not last as long as it would seem...

Have you done the math?

* math property: x^y = x^(a+b) = (x^a )x(x^b )

* IPv4 addresses are 32 bits (2^32 )

* 2^32 ~ 4.3 billion

* So the IPv4 Internet has ~4.3B devices on it

* IPv6 subnets are 64 bits, /64 (2^64 )

So, a IPv6 2^64 subnet is the same as (2^32 )x(2^32 ), which means (4.3B)x(IPv4 Internet). I.e., a single IPv6 subnet can hold the equivalent of four billion (IPv4) Internets.

A second way of thinking about it:

* Stars in the Milky Way: 400 Billion

* Galaxies in the universe: 2 Trillion

So (4x10^11 )x(2x10^12 )=8x10^23 stars in the universe.

* Size of IPv6 address space: 3.4x10^38

Find the ratio between addresses and stars:

* 3.4x10^38 / 8x10^23

IPv6 offers about 430 trillion times more addresses than estimated stars in the universe.

A third way: On the surface of the Earth (land+water), there are 8.4 IPv4 addresses per km2. Not counting the oceans, that would be 28 IPv4 addresses per km2 of land.

IPv6 gives 10^17 addresses per mm2 (yes, square millimeter).

In terms of volume, 10^8 IPv6 addresses per mm3 throughout the Earth.

soneil4• 2 years ago

The space currently assigned to globally routable addresses is 1/8th of the v6 address space. Over 50% of the addressable space is currently reserved.

The numbers are frankly mind-bending. Even if we we make a complete pigs ear of assigning billions of IPs to billions of networks in the current /3, we have space for more than one do-over.

But I do believe there's a higher chance the next /3 will be assigned to Mars.

dheera• 2 years ago

I grew up with IPv4 (1.2.3.4) and I was expecting IPv6 to just be 1.2.3.4.5.6 with backward compatibility so that 1.2.3.4 would just be 0.0.1.2.3.4 and the 1.2.3.4 dude wouldn't need to change their address.

And the IPv8 would be 0.0.0.0.1.2.3.4 whenever we need it, but probably not for a long time

When I saw all the double-colons and slashes and monstrosities like f00f:00f:::ea//dead::beef/3 I just kept using IPv4.

I can't even remember Google's IPv6 DNS ffs. 8.8.8.8 was easy to remember. Now it's got some hex bullshit in it and a double colon thrown in somewhere.

Plasmoid• 2 years ago

Another person who does not understand IPv4.

IPv4 isn't a text based protocol where IP addresses are parsed like DNS. It's a binary protocol where addresses are recorded in binary and adding more address space WOULD BE A BREAKING CHANGE.

_zoltan_• 2 years ago

and people are wondering why v6 never took off...

zokier• 2 years ago

There are endless protocols and methods which embed ipv4 addresses to ipv6 ones. RFC 4291 specifies exactly what you want, all-zero prefix+ipv4 address: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4291.html#section-2.5.5

See also the text representation section: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4291.html#section-2.2

   3. An alternative form that is sometimes more convenient when dealing
      with a mixed environment of IPv4 and IPv6 nodes is
      x:x:x:x:x:x:d.d.d.d, where the 'x's are the hexadecimal values of
      the six high-order 16-bit pieces of the address, and the 'd's are

      the decimal values of the four low-order 8-bit pieces of the
      address (standard IPv4 representation).  Examples:

         0:0:0:0:0:0:13.1.68.3

         0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:129.144.52.38

      or in compressed form:

         ::13.1.68.3

         ::FFFF:129.144.52.38

So in addition to having the addresses embedded on binary level, you even have that text notation that uses traditional ipv4 dot-notation!

You might ask why they are not more prevalent, but then you will find the practical issues that various transition mechanisms are attempting to solve.

Uehreka• 2 years ago

Huh? IPv6 does have backwards-compatible-ish notation for writing IPv4 addresses. To take your example: 1.2.3.4 would be ::ffff:1.2.3.4, the 96-bit prefix indicated by ::ffff: is where all of the IPv4 addresses live in the larger IPv6 space.

If your issue is with the use of colons at all, they were a deliberate choice so that computers doing string processing could never confuse the two types of addresses.

conradfr• 2 years ago

It comes down to user experience.

How many people managing networks who knew their ip addresses by heart and typed it regularly for all kind of tasks were put off by the new format and decided, consciously or not, to wait until "I really have to deal with it"?

Some people get really angry when you point that out ;)

Good thing for IPv6 it didn't really have any competitor (except IPv4).

p1mrx10• 2 years ago

2a09:: 2a11:: and 2409:: are even shorter than 8.8.8.8, though not quite as memorable.

I'm not recommending those DNS servers, just highlighting that "vanity" IPv6 addresses exist now. It's possible that 2222:: or 3333:: could be allocated someday.

Sami_Lehtinen• 2 years ago

Technically it's just 128 bits, it doesn't matter how you represent it. I've written this IPv4ES solution, which allows you to use 128 bit addresses using IPv4 format.

https://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/ipv4es-the-perfect-soluti...

stephen_g• 2 years ago

Exactly this misconception comes up (often multiple times) every time there’s a discussion about IPv6 on HN.

No, it’s not possible without running into the exact same problems that we had with IPv6 (which actually has various compatibility mechanisms, to the point where now some mobile networks are IPv6 only but still work to let people access IPv4).

The problem with your proposal is the same issue we have now - something that only talks the old protocol can’t possibly talk to something in the new protocol (without the same kind of hacks we use with IPv6 like NAT64/464XLAT), since IP addresses in headers are fixed sized. Which also means that any router in the middle can’t possibly route packets to networks with the expanded addresses. So we have the exact same issue - everything needs to be upgraded to deal with your new scheme, but unless that all happens on the one same day, you need to be able to deal with the old addresses. So you need dual stack, just like with IPv6 until everything is transitioned.

So basically all you’d have with this kind of proposal is exactly the same problems, but it would be more confusing why older devices can’t talk to the newer devices since the addresses would look very similar!

globular-toast• 2 years ago

I grew up with IPv4 too but after learning and configuring my network for IPv6 I won't miss v4 at all. It's just so nice having each device with its real IP address rather than some private NAT thing. Then it's just firewall config if you want to run servers etc rather than messing with NAT configs.

gary_02• 2 years ago

Doesn't that mean if you move, or if your ISP changes your IP, all your local devices will end up with different addresses?

I have an internal DNS server and it would be annoying if it could randomly break and require me to update all the IPs.

ninkendo2• 2 years ago

Agreed. My favorite part is that you don’t need any special consideration for local/WAN splits in DNS. Your DNS address for your homelab server is the same address on your LAN as it is on the WAN, so your DNS can just be the same. Thus “ssh hostname.fqdn” works whether you’re on the local network or remote, and your packets just automatically stay on your LAN when you’re local (they don’t even have to hit your router… they can directly unicast if you’re on the same switch. No “hairpin NAT” or anything like that needed.)

bhaney• 2 years ago

My concern is that this is an accidental part of an unrelated migration and will quickly be disabled because of some internal IP filtering/banning tool that was only ever written to work with IPv4.

whatshisface• 2 years ago

Hey, my account works again... >:)

p-e-w2• 2 years ago

My browser just started connecting to Hacker News over IPv6 today

If you don't mind me asking, how did you notice that?

p1mrx10• 2 years ago

IPvFoo turned green.

rumdz3• 2 years ago

Does ipv6 result in higher latencies? I could see larger addresses increasing latency, but then again I could also see a more efficient protocol resulting in lower net latency. I should probably read a book describing the differences.

imoverclocked• 2 years ago

The address space has very little effect in the real world. Other latencies far outweigh anything measurable by having slightly more bits in the address.

Eg: Sometimes IPv6 is faster due to routing differences.

rumdz3• 2 years ago

That makes sense. I'm very curious about real-world studies. As a gamer, I'm especially interested in the affect ipv6 has on UDP for real time gaming applications. That's an area where even 5ms can have an enormous affect on the experience.

acdha• 2 years ago

It could but there have been some reports of lower latency, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An7s25FSK0U

This is an area you want to measure carefully because some of the older reports about IPv6 being slower were artifacts of old hardware limitations or under-optimized software which are no longer relevant.

meindnoch• 2 years ago

I could see larger addresses increasing latency

???

rumdz3• 2 years ago

Several additional bytes over millions of packets where the data frame is ~10bytes seems potentially significant. I'm less interested in HTTP

bqmjjx0kac2• 2 years ago

Verizon Fios recently rolled out IPv6 last year and I swear IPv6 traffic is deprioritized. Sometimes it just cuts out entirely.

ale429• 2 years ago

Sounds like a technical problem. I don't see any reason they should de-prioritize IPv6 traffic...

patmorgan2310• 2 years ago

IIRC they disabled it again because the ONTs they have deployed have a firmware bug.

lmm5• 2 years ago

In theory, any impact from longer addresses would be outweighed by the benefit of the shorter non-CIDR routing table (and in turn that should be outweighed by avoiding NAT, and that should be outweighed by avoiding CGNAT). (Plus with most systems being natively 64-bit these days, that impact should be 0 - the routable part of an IPv6 address is 64 bits, and comparing a 64-bit value is no harder than comparing a 32-bit value).

In practice IPv6 is newer, which has good and bad sides; IPv6 routing paths are more likely to be using newer (and therefore faster) equipment, but there's also a bigger risk of someone making a mistake that messes up your routing/latency, particularly if your ISP hasn't been doing IPv6 for very long.

kalleboo• 2 years ago

Real-world latency is impacted by configuration and hardware (e.g. your ISP may have different routes for IPv6 that can be either better or worse, it can be handled by different routers with different performance, IPv4 traffic may be going through CGNAT, PPPoE concentrators, etc) that dwarf any theoretical differences.

Google's IPv6 stats also measure latency compared to IPv4 and in most countries IPv6 has lower latency (e.g. in the US on average you get 10ms lower latency with IPv6). When this chart was new it was mostly the other way around, with early IPv6 implementations being poor https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...

toast02• 2 years ago

Real world performance differences between v4 and v6 are more likely to be influenced by different routing and network manipulation for v4 vs v6 than the larger address size.

If your v4 goes through NAT and v6 doesn't, that's a big thing.

If you have different peering and transit providers in v4 and v6, that's a big thing.

If overhead from address sizes was really a big deal, we'd see work to push larger MTUs and working MTU discovery, but that kind of stalled a while ago. 1500 works for a lot of people, and many major sites drop effective MTU by 20 or so and that makes more things work, and then it gets swept under the rug. (OTOH, I think Android may have finally gotten MTU probing enabled after many years of shipping it disabled; Apple has had very effective probing, at least on iOS for a long time)

viraptor3• 2 years ago

Possibly due to routing differences on the path to your service, but not due to the protocol itself. Definitely not due to the address size. Beyond your local equipment, that switching normally happens in hardware.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

It shouldn't. There is no checksum in header so that is one thing that doesn't need to be calculated, even if it can be done in hardware. And more efficient routing should mean smaller tables to lookup things from so being faster.

ivlad3• 2 years ago

Facebook tested it and IPv6 resulted lower latencies: https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2015/04/facebook-news-f...

patmorgan2310• 2 years ago

NAT44 has a much larger effect on latency than 16 byte addresses.

nikita14• 2 years ago

Finally.

apapapa5• 2 years ago

IPv6 is still pretty useless to most people... Actually for me it complicates my firewall rules and don't bring any benefits (yeah down-vote me and don't reply ...)

johnklos2• 2 years ago

I'll downvote you AND I'll reply. It complicates firewall rules? How about pass everything out, keeping state, and block everything in, for all of your fragile devices that can't help but run services you can't turn off? There. Your IPv6 firewalling is done. Is that complicated?

You can't see any benefits? Ok. So what does that have to do with HN being available over IPv6?

apapapa5• 2 years ago

Because you can access a website on both ipv4 and IPv6 doesn't really make IPv6 all that useful because you could disable it and still be able to access the same resource using ipv4...

tsimionescu5• 2 years ago

I don't understand what you mean by complicating firewall rules,except maybe that you now need to use IPv6 addresses instead of IPv4 addresses in some of the rules. It's not like NAT without a firewall gave any security in 2024.

geraldhh2• 2 years ago

there is no nat w/o a "firewall" and yes, it will be more secure

apapapa5• 2 years ago

More rules equals more complexity....

rnhmjoj• 2 years ago

Yeah, sure: managing both IPv4 and IPv6 on the same network is painful. Thankfully you can disable IPv4 locally and set up NAT64 on the router: most people won't even notice the change.

mkl2• 2 years ago

"Pretty useless" is nonsense; Google works on IPv6, and 41% of Google's users access it via IPv6 [1]. "Most people" is also not true: most internet users use Google [2] (those not accessing it via IPv6 probably can't).

[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-...

apapapa5• 2 years ago

Because you can access a website on both ipv4 and IPv6 doesn't really make IPv6 all that useful because you could disable it and still be able to access the same resource using ipv4...

johnklos2• 2 years ago

Welcome to 2001, HN!

mogeko• 2 years ago

I'm surprised it just got implemented! Since IPv6 is so popular and common nowadays.

mobilemidget• 2 years ago

My previous provider, I think largest in The Netherlands, ziggo rolled it out quite okay. Now I moved and switched providers, to much faster 1 Gbit (can go up to 8gbit but I dont know what to do with that yet until I have a 32K tv maybe) symmetric, but no idea when they will plan to roll out IPv6 on this network. I cannot say I really miss it, but have to admit my internet feels a bit incomplete :)

so I wish it was even more popular than you state. :D

kuon• 2 years ago

I am so surprised by the hate for IPv6 in this thread.

I have been deploying IPv6 for more than ten years and it really improve many situations (beside larger addresses).

I have to admit, there is a learning curve. But I want to encourage everybody involved in configuring computers to learn.

Also I want to rent about Cisco not using /64 for link local by default, thus being incompatible with BSD systems. Link local must be /64.

orangeboats6• 2 years ago

I am so surprised by the hate for IPv6 in this thread.

I find that HN views IPv6 noticeably more harshly than many other communities I have been a part of (e.g. networking subreddits and gaming communities). I am curious of the reason behind this.

iknowstuff3• 2 years ago

Developers who don’t care to learn how/why things work, have gone by without it, and are upset that they gotta learn more now because it works differently.

commandersaki8• 2 years ago

My reason: IPv6 failed to fulfill its original objective.

Macha• 2 years ago

Networking communities understand the way it works and the improvements it's making.

Gamers understand the consequences of not having it when they want to play with their friend but both are behind CGNAT and they can only play games with a server run by someone else and not any that use P2P multiplayer.

HN users can afford the $2/month/server that AWS or whoever charges today and besides your standard SPA + REST API doesn't really care how many layers of NAT and proxies it's behind.

nottorp• 2 years ago

Because a lot of us have non simple networks that are also not complex enough to warrant whatever the enterprise design commitee designed for ipv6.

sylware4• 2 years ago

IPv6 will rid us from the abomination of domestic NAT.

IPv6 will, finally, enabled the real internet: all p2p protocols will start to work seamlessly. I am thinking a super simple no-dns IP (audio|video) phone protocol listening only on tcp 1 port, new bittorrent like protocol for live streaming, etc.

Since IPv6 has been almost everywhere in my country for years: enjoying ssh session everywhere (ipv6 mobile internet), without any domestic NAT to configure.

But, still... steam... github... and some "rogue" (:P) smtp servers.

That said for HN, where is the champagne?

Y_Y• 2 years ago

Is it possible for me, or worse, a normal person, to claim or request an ipv6 address that they can keep and use like a phone number? I'm used to dynamic allocation for residential ipv4 addresses and never bothered to beg ARIN for some or rent since from an ISP. Having an address you could keep and bring with you would be great and avoid a lot of the difficulties of DNS.

boredhedgehog• 2 years ago

IPv6 will rid us from the abomination of domestic NAT.

But won't that also have disadvantages? NAT obscures which natural person is responsible for any given household traffic, which makes user tracking and surveillance harder.

wharvle2• 2 years ago

Those of us who were supporting Windows machines in the ‘00s remember when 100% of Windows machines not behind NAT were pwned in minutes, while those with NAT were fine indefinitely. Should a firewall have been doing that job? Yes. Were firewalls doing that job, in practice? No, NAT did, and it was very, very effective.

I have… concerns about removing NAT from everyone’s house now that IOT is a thing. Could it be done safely? Yes. Will it? Signs point to no.

uuddlrlrbaba2• 2 years ago

I have to admit, there is a learning curve. But I want to encourage everybody involved in configuring computers to learn.

This is probably most of it.

My gripe is that there is essentially no realistic end to ipv4 in sight. So we as an industry carry the debt of securing, managing and troubleshooting parallel v4 and v6 networks for decades.

If ipv4 had an EOL it'd make the transition so much better

ianburrell3• 2 years ago

We have reached the point where it is feasible to run all new networks on IPv6 and treat IPv4 as legacy protocol on the edges and special devices. NAT64 works well enough for most IPv4 access. IPv6 network greatly simplifies networking.

IPv4 will never go away, but will be smaller part of the Internet.

Dagger216• 2 years ago

Nobody is in a position to EOL v4. We'd need a planetary government for that, and we don't have one. It would be nice, but we have to work with what we've got and not what we wish we had.

I run my desktop with no v4, so it's clearly possible to push handling for v4 out of your network. You could outsource it to somebody else even, for example by using one of the DNS servers listed on https://nat64.net/.

patmorgan2310• 2 years ago

IPv4 will have a slow lingering death. We'll reach a steady state where everyone's running dual stack or IPv6 behind a v4 proxy/CG-NAT. Then as V4-only traffic drops content networks/application providers will start to drop support.

That will drop the quality of the v4 internet, things will break and be slow to be fixed because who cares about the <10% v4 only traffic?

ijhuygft776• 2 years ago

I have been deploying IPv6 for more than ten years and it really improve many situations (beside larger addresses).

for most people, it is transparent and doesn't improve anything... ipv6 could be disabled on their router and everything would be the same (I actually used to disable ipv6 at router level to avoid inadvertently leaking data on ipv6)

Dagger216• 2 years ago

We spent a significant amount of effort designing v6's deployment strategy to make sure this would be the case -- that it could be deployed without disrupting existing network setups. It's supposed to work like this.

Don't twist that effort into a reason to not deploy v6.

patmorgan2310• 2 years ago

IPv6 is after than v4. If you're running v4, you're probably running NAT44, that adds latency as the NAT box has to do a table lookup and rewrite the header. V6 it just passes the packet through.

wharvle2• 2 years ago

Stuff on the Internet breaks if I enable IPv6 on my Google Fiber router (been that way since I first got Fiber years ago—though I think Amazon works with it enabled now, which it didn’t before).

My T-Mobile connection issues an IPv6 address but fails online “is my IPv6 working?” tests.

I enjoy it on my private networks but simply can’t rely on it on the Internet yet.

JohnFen5• 2 years ago

I don't hate IPv6, but I am putting off switching my network to it for as long as I can get away with.

There's nothing I do that IPv6 makes better, and switching to it is a very large and painful task, so delaying that switch until it's required doesn't seem unreasonable.

ianburrell3• 2 years ago

You don’t have to switch your network to it, you just have to enable it. The system to decide between IPv4 and IPv6 works pretty well. I can’t tell if accessing HN over IPv6 cause doesn’t matter.

billpg• 2 years ago

That's great news, but I'd only say that IPv6 has actually made it when HN switches off their IPv4 address.

miyuru2• 2 years ago

Does anyone know why the TTL is set to 1 on both A and AAAA?

mike_hearn• 2 years ago

The usual reason for that is DNS load balancing.

miyuru2• 2 years ago

HN seem to be served from a single IPv4 and IPv6, so it might not be the case.

psz• 2 years ago

Maybe they like paying AWS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fredgrott• 2 years ago

Surprising hate about IPv6 here despite most of us using commercial internet services where the last leg to our routers is in fact IPv6 including comcast wifi routers....

It's about like a back end geek not knowing how to do loopbacks with their router....sheesh!

zamadatix2• 2 years ago

What a fun bit of news, thanks to whoever manages the site infrastructure!

m3kw9• 2 years ago

How does website support ipv6 without an isp and routers supporting it? You mean hacker news allows IPV6?

dtaht2• 2 years ago

I often wish that there had been a way to politically make 240/4 and 0/8 commonly available. But in part I drove those projects to annoy the IPv6 crowd into action.

zamadatix2• 2 years ago

I think the IPv6 crowd is already decently in action, hence vast swaths of the internet and mobile network already migrated (some on the mobile even without dual stack). What's needed for more IPv6 adoption is continued annoyance felt by the IPv4 crowd to want to bother migrating to any other long term solution. That's required a lot more time than most probably expected but it has been happening, IPv4 has become more and more difficult to use. Throwing in things like "Look IPv4 crowd, there are ways to extend IPv4 for some more years again without the pain of going to multi-layered NAT" is about the exact opposite of the kind of call to action needed.

Either way though, the inherent value in the technology is what has to drive the adoption and the value is already there it's just a matter of IPv4's value still holding well enough for now. As such I don't inherently mind 0/8 being available on Linux these days and wouldn't inherently mind 240/4 either but a completely separate set of "yes, you can configure that address but the problem is with getting between there and here not accepting it" is a bit disappointing for just another short term response to the problem.

Unrelated but kickass work on packet scheduling btw.

p1mrx10• 2 years ago

I'm still a bit miffed about the Linux kernel change that broke my unit test expecting connect(0.0.0.1) to fail fast.

sitzkrieg2• 2 years ago

browsers cant even open ipv6 ips in the address bar. this makes debugging local services annoying sometimes

tristan9573• 2 years ago

Firefox will open this. http://[2606:7100:1:67::26]/

sitzkrieg2• 2 years ago

i stand corrected, this is good news thank you

wvh• 2 years ago

I think I created my first IPv6 tunnel in 1998 or 1999. Not holding my breath. For as fast as everything technology seems to move, the basic building blocks of TCP and DNS evolve very, very slowly, if at all. I wonder if there's a genuine lack of interest all around or if there are business interests at stake to prevent people from having their own routable IP addresses and facilitate peer-to-peer networking.

NoZebra120vClip2• 2 years ago

Well, this exactly explains why HN's site has become so unreliable for me.

As soon as this post appeared, I began receiving timeouts. 90% of the time, the front page won't load, the host won't respond.

I have no troubles with any other IPv4 or IPv6 sites. My home network has been running IPv6 for about 8 years, since my ISP enabled it and I worked out some good router settings.

I routinely verify that all 3 of my devices are preferring IPv6. These timeouts are not occurring on my Android 11 phone, only on my Chromebook for now. Windows 10 Pro, not tested.

NoZebra120vClip2• 2 years ago

Okay, I'm looking into this, and my router was stuck in a "6to4 tunnel" configuration with local address assignment 2002:*

This is undesirable for several reasons, but that's what it picked up with "Auto Detect" and "Auto Config". I toggled settings a few times and regained a 2600:* "real IPv6" delegation.

janvdberg• 2 years ago

Almost ten years after I asked! :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847368

Awesome!

Tell HN: Hacker News now supports IPv6

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