I tried living on IPv6 for a day

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Real‑world IPv6 experience (works great / total mess)

  • Some users report years of flawless dual‑stack IPv6 from big ISPs (Spectrum, Comcast, AT&T, German providers), to the point that “normal people don’t think about it.”
  • Others see IPv6 as brittle: broken routing, missing DNS servers, misconfigured mirrors, weird MTU issues, or flaky ISP implementations causing them to disable IPv6.
  • Happy Eyeballs often hides broken IPv6 by falling back to IPv4, so problems are under‑reported until someone forces IPv6‑only.
  • Mobile operators and some hotspots already ship IPv6‑only experiences; corporate networks at large companies reportedly run IPv6‑only with NAT64/464XLAT internally.

NAT, security, and IPv4 scarcity

  • One camp views IPv4 scarcity and NAT as accidental security: fewer routable hosts, simple default‑deny behavior, fewer bots.
  • Others argue NAT itself is not security; it’s the (stateful) firewall, and equivalent protection is possible with IPv6 plus a firewall.
  • There’s debate over whether IPv4 address exhaustion is “real” vs partly enforced by policy (e.g., not freeing ranges like 240/4), but even proponents concede that would only buy months.
  • Concerns exist that vastly more routable IPv6 endpoints will amplify attack surfaces and zero‑day exploitation.

Home networking & dynamic prefixes

  • A big practical blocker: residential ISPs often give dynamic IPv6 prefixes, sometimes only a /64. This breaks static addressing, self‑hosting, and firewall rules whenever the prefix changes.
  • Workarounds discussed: ULAs for stable internal addresses, NPTv6, aggressive RA timers, internal DNS that tracks prefixes, or buying your own IPv6 block and tunneling. All add complexity and feel like “NAT‑like nonsense” to some.
  • Android’s lack of DHCPv6 forces SLAAC, complicating uniform setups.

Transition mechanisms, tunnels, and blocking

  • Hurricane Electric tunnels are widely referenced but: some users hit streaming blocks, Cloudflare routing issues, and extra fraud checks, making them unattractive for daily use.
  • NAT64/DNS64 and 464XLAT are cited as ways to run IPv6‑only networks while still reaching IPv4‑only sites.

Adoption, incentives, and dual stack

  • Many argue dual stack is inevitable for the foreseeable future, doubling operational surface (firewalls, ACLs, tests).
  • Others say dual stack isn’t literally “double work” if configs are designed well.
  • GitHub and some cloud vendors’ weak IPv6 support are seen as major drags on adoption; consumer interest may shift only when gaming consoles and big services are IPv6‑first.

Design and usability debates

  • Some dislike 128‑bit addresses as overkill and human‑unfriendly, wishing for a 64‑bit, “more backward‑compatible” scheme.
  • Others counter that:
    • Backward compatibility is fundamentally limited by IPv4 hardware/middleboxes.
    • Over‑provisioning space massively simplifies routing and subnetting.
    • Humans should rely on DNS, not raw IPs.