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Comment by verelo | Hacker News Reader

Crazy idea. Maybe people just don't understand IPV6?

Is there any single good source (i.e. the minimal bullet points on a single page) that helps people make the switch?

You can't just "make the switch". Most devices already support IPv6 anyway. The problem is that ISPs and hosting providers don't support IPv6.

Pretty much. I use an oldish laptop with some cheap TP-Link router at home, and suddenly I discovered I was connecting to my VPS over IPv6. All my components had been ready for years, waiting for ISP support (which finally came!).

Right, fair enough but things I can do as a consumer are choose a particular ISP, and ensure i'm using up to date OS / network drivers etc.

I feel like saying there is nothing we can do to speed up the process is giving in a little too early when I've personally seen very little shared with the public that is understandable and helps people push this forward.

If you live in an area where you have a choice of ISP then at least inquire about whether they support IPv6. Chances are if you have a choice the factors other than IPv6 will make more of a difference. I.e. I'd have a hard time recommending an IPv6 enabled 6Mbit DSL connection over a 100Mbit cable one without.

I've certainly kept ISP choices in mind when choosing which community or neighborhood to live in. Ironically I find myself looking for places with Comcast because they've had solid IPv6 support for years.

If you are involved in a decision making capacity with a company that offers services over the internet, try to pick equipment, ISPs, SaaS vendors that use IPv6 where possible. With a few notable exceptions (rrrrrrr AWS) its not particularly difficult anymore. If you are at trade shows, quiz vendors about their IPv6 support.

Lots of ISPs have gotten on board recently at the cores of their networks but CPE equipment is often old (DOCSIS 2 modems, WRT54G bases). This holiday when I was visiting family I took a few minutes to swap out their ancient router for one that supports IPv6. As a result they'll also get faster and more reliable Wifi now so its often an easy sell for other reasons.

Good point. I don't understand it very well, and haven't really spent a lot of time trying. When I need to get something going, I have the option of doing IPv4 only and being confident I've done it well. Or, also include a half-baked IPv6 solution that I don't fully understand and could have security holes and other problems. Since there's very little consequence for not implementing IPv6, it's hard to justify take that risk.

Unless you're working on a really strange OS, for normal client software, v6 doesn't work any differently than v4. It's IP with a larger address space.

It's only when you get down to the level where you're doing things like acquiring an address [0] that you need to worry about the differences.

[0] Or -I guess- doing multi/broadcast. IPv6 substantially simplified broadcast. Send your packet to ff02::1 [1] to get the same functionality as IPv4 broadcast.

[1] http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-multicast-addresses/ipv...

This is a great comment and the kind of content that i think should be put in a single "fact sheet". I might give it a try and see if people find it useful...i have a 13 hour plane ride coming up, sounds like fun :(

> This is ... the kind of content that i think should be put in a single "fact sheet".

Things like that have been done before. [0] It seems to be difficult to get good Google juice. Perhaps your writeup will be the one that cuts through all of the SEOed clickbait and is the go-to guide for good IPv6 info. :)

However, don't let me discourage you from taking on the task! It's sure to be edifying... or -at least- something productive to do to while away that obscenely long plane ride.

Best of luck!

[0] http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/userapi-ipv6.html

Wow this is a great resource you've linked to, thanks! It's pretty long and probably a touch more than most people want/need to read, but it is very complete.

Unrelated, yeah Sydney to Toronto Canada (via SFO) terrible flight.

If you're setting up a network that might one day be connected to another network, or used via a VPN by users working from home, it's well worth using publicly routable addresses for it. It just makes all the routing setup so much easier.

If you have enough publicly routed IPv4 addresses to do that with IPv4 then then knock yourself out, but IPv6 ones are much cheayer.

I haven't found such a resource yet.

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