IPv6-only subnets and EC2 instances(aws.amazon.com)
aws.amazon.com
IPv6-only subnets and EC2 instances
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/introducing-ipv6-only-subnets-and-ec2-instances/
150 comments
I really hate that the metadata service is reachable via IP at all, and not just via a file based unix socket or a similar endpoint. Or even similar to procfs, instead of http based at all.
You'd rather mount a socket or file to a container that hit the endpoint directly over HTTP?
I prefer the latter as it's far simpler.
I prefer the latter as it's far simpler.
The problem is the metadata endpoint gives any process on your VM that can make API calls to that address full AWS credentials for that instance’s role. That can turn out to be too simple to use.
...unless you use identity-aware firewall, such as iptables:
iptables -A OUTPUT \
-d 169.254.0.0/16 \
-m owner -j REJECT \
'!' --uid-owner 0Sure, but what percentage of EC2 instances do you think have a firewall rule like that? Defaults are important. Not to mention the fact that the rule you listed breaks down if you’re running docker containers.
There’s no good defaults here. From AWS’s perspective the whole VM is in the same security context. It’s all untrusted customer code from the kernel on up. That’s the granularity on which policy can be applied. Either the whole VM can do something or it can’t. How you define your own security boundaries inside is your business. You can help AWS by doing your own access keys but most people would rather just also make their security boundary the VM and not have to think about it. Treat a compromised processes and a compromised host the same.
That's the "give up on container and process security" approach. It's a fine approach from any given user's standpoint. From an infra/tool provider standpoint, it ignores the intense demand that exists for establishing least privilege and defense-in-depth for containerized workloads. Fargate might be a good solution too.
This is backwards, you don't have to give up on container/process security just because AWS's own trust boundary is the VM. But to do that you can't assign VM-level privs. Something something eating cake.
Put yourself in AWS's position. Your customer is running a VM which you have only hypervisor level control over. Could be Linux, could be AIX, could be an appliance. How could you possibly implement user/process level security from the outside? How could you know what processes inside the opaque black box are the privileged ones?
Put yourself in AWS's position. Your customer is running a VM which you have only hypervisor level control over. Could be Linux, could be AIX, could be an appliance. How could you possibly implement user/process level security from the outside? How could you know what processes inside the opaque black box are the privileged ones?
[deleted]
Sorry, I don't think what you're saying makes sense. A key strength of AWS is that they don't use a "black box" approach when thinking about customer needs, and provide documentation and good defaults to help customers achieve their goals.
> From AWS’s perspective the whole VM is in the same security context.
Right, then you run that code in a VM that has no ambient privs. If you still need to do AWS access stuff then you just stick your access keys in files somewhere your untrusted process can't touch like if you weren't on AWS.
ECS and EKS have configurable functionality to blackhole IMDS. You can also configure IMDSv2 to have a hop limit of 1, preventing any bridged networks (such as containers) from accessing IMDS.
Hmm, so root processes within the container can still access it?
No, recent docker uses UID namespaces, where "root" inside a container translates to a high real UID as seen from the host OS (100000 or some such). iptables' "owner" extension would use that real UID to match.
Which could be a problem if intention was to allow it, as your sibling comment points out.
Which could be a problem if intention was to allow it, as your sibling comment points out.
Yes - this is not really a Docker thing but a Linux kernel thing, although client-side support is of course needed from Docker and any other system that uses cgroups/namespaces. Also, one other thing to know is from the kernel's point of view "root" is not a thing. It has been unbundled into a set of capabilities (https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html). When you launch a container, you specify which capabilities you want to drop (so even root in the container can't have them), and which UID mapping you want to use.
Yeah, if you're running containers with root access or processes with root running inside of them, there are a number of other things that will need to change about your security posture, least of which is probably how you provide or restrict access to IAM roles within the tenant boundary.
IMDSv2 is supposed to solve that
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/configur...
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/configur...
That's the point of the endpoint, IMHO. It's a well known location where anything in the VM can locate the credentials.
There are solutions for this:
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-01-27-Announcing-imds-f...
Unauthenticated HTTP is harder to secure against SSRF
When you use the AWS SDK, it abstracts it away anyway
When you use the AWS SDK, it abstracts it away anyway
A file based unix socket or procfs node is an operating system implementation-specific concept. It requires a substantial amount of logic to be bundled with the guest OS.
Maybe a serial device or something like that would be more appropriate.
Maybe a serial device or something like that would be more appropriate.
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These addresses technically violate https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4193#section-3.2, unless "0x000ec20000" was an incredibly lucky RNG output.
But 254 in hexadecimal is 0xfe :/ 0x0254 is 596, or .2.84 in IPv4 notation.
You could write it as fd00:ec2::0.0.0.254...
The point is that the hex looks the same as the decimal. The actual address doesn't matter. They’re not doing for decimal 254. They’re going for “the last part of the address is familiar and typed the same on a keyboard”.
Sure. I was just pointing out that if you really wanted to use 254, you could use fd00:ec2::fe and write it as fd00:ec2::0.0.0.254 -- though mainly because I wanted people to know that doing so was possible, not because it was in any way a good idea in this case.
(At least, I was trying to point that out, but re-reading my post it's obvious that I didn't do a very good job.)
(At least, I was trying to point that out, but re-reading my post it's obvious that I didn't do a very good job.)
No I get it. It’s a fun fact.
This is great news. We really AWS IPv6 at a prior company I worked for that had about 25 million IPv6 nodes that needed to be addressable, and we had a super ugly back end - 26+ 64GB/8CPU servers (which was a lot back in 2008). We really could have used the flexibility of AWS back then - but, were completely blocked by Amazon's inability and absolute unwillingness to even consider supporting IPv6 on their internal network. Took them almost 8 years (around 2016sh) before they supported IPv6 on their internal networks.
Other cloud providers like GCP only just recently started to adopt IPv6. Today, you can only use IPv6 in asia-east1, asia-south1, europe-west1, and us-west2[0].
The cynic in me believes Google only did this due to the US Government's IPv6 only memorandum issued last year[1] requiring networks operate as IPv6-only.
[0] https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/vpc#ipv6-regions
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/M-21-0...
The cynic in me believes Google only did this due to the US Government's IPv6 only memorandum issued last year[1] requiring networks operate as IPv6-only.
[0] https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/vpc#ipv6-regions
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/M-21-0...
Just out of curiosity, what was your use case for so many IPv6 addresses at once?
Mesh Networking - Utility Devices. (Think electrical meters in homes) - Also bunch of streetlights.
I wonder if Amazon could make a significant impact on ipv6 uptake if they offered a very generous ipv6 only tier.
If Amazon will make an impact, I think it'll be because IPv6 addresses follow the standard rates and IPv4 addresses will get more expensive.
Cannibalising reserved address space like 127.0.0.0/8 will only get the IPv4 internet so far. Eventually, the scarcity of IP addresses will make IPv6 the more business-conscious choice for many applications (like API endpoints and other services that you call from your own infrastructure where you can ensure IPv6 availability). Maybe the free tier will eventually stop coming with an IPv4 address, that might also push them over the edge.
Cannibalising reserved address space like 127.0.0.0/8 will only get the IPv4 internet so far. Eventually, the scarcity of IP addresses will make IPv6 the more business-conscious choice for many applications (like API endpoints and other services that you call from your own infrastructure where you can ensure IPv6 availability). Maybe the free tier will eventually stop coming with an IPv4 address, that might also push them over the edge.
> Cannibalising reserved address space like 127.0.0.0/8 will only get the IPv4 internet so far. Eventually, the scarcity of IP addresses will make IPv6 the more business-conscious choice for many applications
The decision to consume loopback address space has made me even more cynical about IPv6 ever becoming mainstream within my lifetime. Using IPv4 is like using fossil fuels — we know that they are going to run out/cause us harm and yet we keep using them. I don't know of a single ISP in my country which offers functional IPv6. All they do is offer CGNAT IPv4 addresses, which offers a crippled experience of the Internet.
The decision to consume loopback address space has made me even more cynical about IPv6 ever becoming mainstream within my lifetime. Using IPv4 is like using fossil fuels — we know that they are going to run out/cause us harm and yet we keep using them. I don't know of a single ISP in my country which offers functional IPv6. All they do is offer CGNAT IPv4 addresses, which offers a crippled experience of the Internet.
This will be controversial, but: I think the EU should set a deadline for IPv6 adoption to ISPs and impose fines afterwards. They seem to be legislating all kinds of crazy things (like type C connectors), so it's quite within the realm of possibility, and unlike some other things, there really isn't a way they can screw this up.
Rationale: It's in the custoners' best interest to have unique publically routable addresses and without IPv6 we'll be stuck with CGNAT. The providers don't care, because rollout is expensive. So, for the good of the customer, legislation with fines is needed to better align the financial incentives.
Rationale: It's in the custoners' best interest to have unique publically routable addresses and without IPv6 we'll be stuck with CGNAT. The providers don't care, because rollout is expensive. So, for the good of the customer, legislation with fines is needed to better align the financial incentives.
Standards adoption is definitely an area where government incentives work.
Standards adoption shouldn't even be controversial, really. Fixing weights and measures has been government policy since time immemorial, as have street addresses, snail mail, and telephone. The idea that the internet should not involve the state is, honestly, pretty weird when you try comparing it to other stuff.
> The idea that the internet should not involve the state is, honestly, pretty weird when you try comparing it to other stuff.
Although I agree in principal that enforcing standards has been (and arguably should be) in the domain of government functions, I feel the principal of keeping the "inter" in "internet" is more important. I'd love to see an incentivized conversion to IPv6, but there are many other incentivized conversions that I would wholly oppose. Thus I would prefer not to see government intervention in internet protocols.
The metric system is also international. Doesn't stop governments from mandating its use, or defining their own standards in terms of metric.
Good point, thank you.
If it is good for a customer then the provider will care. The customer will switch ISPs to those that support IPv6. Then the IPv4-only providers will get less money.
Sure, if you ask an economist. But here in the real world, switching ISPs is hard (fees, lack of competition, replacing gear...) and the benefit of IPv6 isn't apparent yet to most people. By the time it becomes, it'll be too late and nobody will have it yet, so there won't be anywhere to switch anyways.
There's a reason we have consumer protection regulation and much of it came as a result of situations where evryone thought, as you do, that the market/competition would solve the problem, but of course it didn't. That only happens in ideal markets where switching providers is trivial, the consumer is equally informed about all of them and the providers (and perhaps customers too) have equal economic power.
There's a reason we have consumer protection regulation and much of it came as a result of situations where evryone thought, as you do, that the market/competition would solve the problem, but of course it didn't. That only happens in ideal markets where switching providers is trivial, the consumer is equally informed about all of them and the providers (and perhaps customers too) have equal economic power.
> But here in the real world...
Your starting point was that any ISP who doesn't implement your preferred technical standard should be fined. With a disregard for whether IPv6 makes sense for them or their customers. You might detect a little pushback here on the idea that your ideas are real world. Laissez faire is a very practical approach.
> By the time it becomes, it'll be too late and nobody will have it yet, so there won't be anywhere to switch anyways.
A crisis so terrible I can't even imagine it. Nobody outside some fairly obscure tech circles would even notice.
Imagine if they'd taken this approach rolling out IPv4 and weren't fast enough to change the legislation. The rollout of IPv6 would look really hard if IPv4 was a legislated requirement. The EU just isn't a competent technical standards body, and it has no business trying to be one because a couple of tech types like IPv6.
> That only happens in ideal markets where switching providers is trivial...
I switched providers to get IPv6 support. It was pretty trivial.
Your starting point was that any ISP who doesn't implement your preferred technical standard should be fined. With a disregard for whether IPv6 makes sense for them or their customers. You might detect a little pushback here on the idea that your ideas are real world. Laissez faire is a very practical approach.
> By the time it becomes, it'll be too late and nobody will have it yet, so there won't be anywhere to switch anyways.
A crisis so terrible I can't even imagine it. Nobody outside some fairly obscure tech circles would even notice.
Imagine if they'd taken this approach rolling out IPv4 and weren't fast enough to change the legislation. The rollout of IPv6 would look really hard if IPv4 was a legislated requirement. The EU just isn't a competent technical standards body, and it has no business trying to be one because a couple of tech types like IPv6.
> That only happens in ideal markets where switching providers is trivial...
I switched providers to get IPv6 support. It was pretty trivial.
> Your starting point was that any ISP who doesn't implement your preferred technical standard should be fined.
"my preferred standard" == the only alternative to the current collapsing standard that has been agreed upon by industry leaders for some 20 years now.
> With a disregard for whether IPv6 makes sense for them or their customers.
IPv6 can't "not make sense", it can only "not be necessary yet".
> A crisis so terrible I can't even imagine it. Nobody outside some fairly obscure tech circles would even notice.
What, service costs going through the roof because the ISP now has to buy IPv4 addresses? Getting IP blocked from sites because the address you share with half the town got reported for spam? Not being able to access IPv6-only sites from smaller providers who can't afford to lease IPv4 addresses? And only then the ISPs start investing in it, which will take a few years to finish, all the while your service is shit? Pretty obscure, yeah.
> I switched providers to get IPv6 support. It was pretty trivial.
I've been trying to for several years and have not been able to for a multitude of reasons.
"my preferred standard" == the only alternative to the current collapsing standard that has been agreed upon by industry leaders for some 20 years now.
> With a disregard for whether IPv6 makes sense for them or their customers.
IPv6 can't "not make sense", it can only "not be necessary yet".
> A crisis so terrible I can't even imagine it. Nobody outside some fairly obscure tech circles would even notice.
What, service costs going through the roof because the ISP now has to buy IPv4 addresses? Getting IP blocked from sites because the address you share with half the town got reported for spam? Not being able to access IPv6-only sites from smaller providers who can't afford to lease IPv4 addresses? And only then the ISPs start investing in it, which will take a few years to finish, all the while your service is shit? Pretty obscure, yeah.
> I switched providers to get IPv6 support. It was pretty trivial.
I've been trying to for several years and have not been able to for a multitude of reasons.
>What, service costs going through the roof because the ISP now has to buy IPv4 addresses?
If it was profitable, the ISP would do it and pocket the now unnecessary service costs.
>Getting IP blocked from sites because the address you share with half the town got reported for spam?
99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
>Not being able to access IPv6-only sites from smaller providers who can't afford to lease IPv4 addresses?
There aren't any.
Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation.
If it was profitable, the ISP would do it and pocket the now unnecessary service costs.
>Getting IP blocked from sites because the address you share with half the town got reported for spam?
99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
>Not being able to access IPv6-only sites from smaller providers who can't afford to lease IPv4 addresses?
There aren't any.
Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation.
> If it was profitable, the ISP would do it and pocket the now unnecessary service costs.
This is another "if you ask an economist" situation. In the real world, people will happily spend more effort justifying not doing v6 and working around problems caused by being v4-only than would be needed to just do v6.
> 99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
This misses the point. It only takes one person behind CGNAT to get the CGNAT source IPs on a spam list, at which point it affects everyone. Plus spam exists on the web too, it's not an SMTP-only thing.
> There aren't any.
Which is exactly why it's so important to be deploying v6: so there can be v6-only sites. Or rather, more than there are at the moment, because they do exist.
> Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation.
I've seen an argument that it's already covered by existing legislation: the refusal of large/old providers to support v6, which forces the use of v4 which small/new providers can't get enough of, is beginning to look rather a lot like an abuse of market position. That would make it an anti-trust issue, which definitely falls within the remit of government.
This is another "if you ask an economist" situation. In the real world, people will happily spend more effort justifying not doing v6 and working around problems caused by being v4-only than would be needed to just do v6.
> 99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
This misses the point. It only takes one person behind CGNAT to get the CGNAT source IPs on a spam list, at which point it affects everyone. Plus spam exists on the web too, it's not an SMTP-only thing.
> There aren't any.
Which is exactly why it's so important to be deploying v6: so there can be v6-only sites. Or rather, more than there are at the moment, because they do exist.
> Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation.
I've seen an argument that it's already covered by existing legislation: the refusal of large/old providers to support v6, which forces the use of v4 which small/new providers can't get enough of, is beginning to look rather a lot like an abuse of market position. That would make it an anti-trust issue, which definitely falls within the remit of government.
>This is another "if you ask an economist" situation. In the real world, people will happily spend more effort justifying not doing v6 and working around problems caused by being v4-only than would be needed to just do v6.
Yea, I don't like silly economism too, and I know half the jokes too. However, right now IPv4 addresses aren't so expensive. Sure, way more expensive than the 0 bucks they should cost, but not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Here's a very rough calculation: The cost of IPv4 will start to bite when getting the needed addresses costs more than a single engineer salary where one lives. If a one time address buy costs less, it's not something business would care much for, and anti-trust won't touch it.
I'm not smart enough to be able to forecast pricing, right now it's not there yet. Eventually the price will force every public network to IPv6, while many private networks will remain IPv4 forever.
Yea, I don't like silly economism too, and I know half the jokes too. However, right now IPv4 addresses aren't so expensive. Sure, way more expensive than the 0 bucks they should cost, but not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Here's a very rough calculation: The cost of IPv4 will start to bite when getting the needed addresses costs more than a single engineer salary where one lives. If a one time address buy costs less, it's not something business would care much for, and anti-trust won't touch it.
I'm not smart enough to be able to forecast pricing, right now it's not there yet. Eventually the price will force every public network to IPv6, while many private networks will remain IPv4 forever.
> 99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
It's not SMTP. It's StopForumSpam and CloudFlare that you need to worry about.
It's not SMTP. It's StopForumSpam and CloudFlare that you need to worry about.
There are some services and sites that run IPv6-only. Some are for testing, sure, like this one: https://www.nebezi.cz/ some are because they are cheaper to run/ easier to setup e.g. some FreeBSD mirrors.
> 99.9% people don't want to run their own SMTP server. It's an ultra-niche use case ISP don't care about.
99.9% of services you can get banned from aren't SMTP. There are many other services which you can be IP banned from.
> Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation. "Just an internet addressing protocol" kinda puts the entire internet to shame doesn't it? It's important that people can communicate on the internet, with IPv4 we decrease reliability and increase cost (in the long run) for everyone except those who sucked up as many addresses as possible early on.
But if we are to follow your reasoning:
A common charging port is just a port, doesn't require legislation
A standard protocol for troubleshooting your car is just a protocol, doesn't require legislation
* which brings benefits to billions of people but you don't agree with, doesn't require legislation
That one thing you agree with that probably isn't important for a lot of people, requires legislation.
Let's raise the standard and discuss why IPv6 is necessary or not and what implications it has for consumers.
IPv6 decreases privacy because you're not sharing an IP with half of town, which is bad. Even if you're randomizing v6 on the local subnet you're still in the same /64 so it's still relatively easy to track you.
P2P protocols actually work properly with IPv6 since machines can commmunicate directly with each other.
IPv6 is more complex to understand the addressing scheme in.
IPv6 isn't IPv4, so there's a learning curve.
IPv6 encourages decentralization.
IPv4 enourages centralization, because you can't get addresses anymore you can't start up new ISP's and we could call that anti-competetive. It also encourages proprietary solutions like cloudflared, or just hosting your stuff on AWS rather than in a colocated datacenter, because you can't get access to IP addresses.
We can't stack unlimited people on top of IPv4 either, there are only so many port numbers available. And NAT is just such a major PITA to work with.
> Look, it's just an internet addressing protocol, not something that justifies legislation. "Just an internet addressing protocol" kinda puts the entire internet to shame doesn't it? It's important that people can communicate on the internet, with IPv4 we decrease reliability and increase cost (in the long run) for everyone except those who sucked up as many addresses as possible early on.
But if we are to follow your reasoning:
A common charging port is just a port, doesn't require legislation
A standard protocol for troubleshooting your car is just a protocol, doesn't require legislation
* which brings benefits to billions of people but you don't agree with, doesn't require legislation
That one thing you agree with that probably isn't important for a lot of people, requires legislation.
Let's raise the standard and discuss why IPv6 is necessary or not and what implications it has for consumers.
IPv6 decreases privacy because you're not sharing an IP with half of town, which is bad. Even if you're randomizing v6 on the local subnet you're still in the same /64 so it's still relatively easy to track you.
P2P protocols actually work properly with IPv6 since machines can commmunicate directly with each other.
IPv6 is more complex to understand the addressing scheme in.
IPv6 isn't IPv4, so there's a learning curve.
IPv6 encourages decentralization.
IPv4 enourages centralization, because you can't get addresses anymore you can't start up new ISP's and we could call that anti-competetive. It also encourages proprietary solutions like cloudflared, or just hosting your stuff on AWS rather than in a colocated datacenter, because you can't get access to IP addresses.
We can't stack unlimited people on top of IPv4 either, there are only so many port numbers available. And NAT is just such a major PITA to work with.
> It also encourages proprietary solutions like cloudflared, or just hosting your stuff on AWS rather than in a colocated datacenter, because you can't get access to IP addresses.
Obtaining an IPv4 address is not an issue I ever had with hosting. People are using Cloudflare, Akamai or ELB because they are sick of script-kiddies buying a DDoS for 10$ an hour and extorting businesses for 1000$ and/or because they have customers from other continents complaining about load times.
Obtaining an IPv4 address is not an issue I ever had with hosting. People are using Cloudflare, Akamai or ELB because they are sick of script-kiddies buying a DDoS for 10$ an hour and extorting businesses for 1000$ and/or because they have customers from other continents complaining about load times.
And where are you hosting those services? A "megacorp" or a really old provider which sucked up enough v4 when it was easy?
What if I have a great software stack in the pipe ready to be colocation deployed somewhere and I want to run my own network with multiple transit providers to be sure I don't go down with either of them.
When that possibility is dead, as mentioned in other parts of the thread we're getting awfully close to an anticompetetive market.
Why should existing on the internet be a privilege for the richest of the rich? (Those who can afford to buy IP's/ISP's to fulfill their needs).
But yes, Cloudflare is a great way to protect your site from skiddie "booting". with ELB I'm not sure about pricing, might just prefer it to die for the "booter" duration if it's a personal site, if business.. Well there's hopefully $$$ to foot the AWS bill.
What if I have a great software stack in the pipe ready to be colocation deployed somewhere and I want to run my own network with multiple transit providers to be sure I don't go down with either of them.
When that possibility is dead, as mentioned in other parts of the thread we're getting awfully close to an anticompetetive market.
Why should existing on the internet be a privilege for the richest of the rich? (Those who can afford to buy IP's/ISP's to fulfill their needs).
But yes, Cloudflare is a great way to protect your site from skiddie "booting". with ELB I'm not sure about pricing, might just prefer it to die for the "booter" duration if it's a personal site, if business.. Well there's hopefully $$$ to foot the AWS bill.
Good luck switching providers to get IPv6 support. Unless you have true gigabit fiber, the only providers that don't have shit speeds without exorbitant expense (aka - Virgin Media) refuse to support IPv6.
>I switched providers to get IPv6 support. It was pretty trivial.
Your use case is not everyone's.
I was forced to change ISPs recently and didn't have a choice as to which one (which is another, unrelated, issue).
I did some research and the ISP in question does provide IPv6 support for some customers. However, the sales drones I spoke with claimed to not even know what IPv6 was, let alone whether or not it was available in my area.
I'd say that has more to do with the exorbitant fees they charge for static IPv4 addresses than anything else.
As such, it's not always "pretty trivial" to get IPv6 on your ISP link. I sure wish it was.
Edit: Clarified my prose.
Your use case is not everyone's.
I was forced to change ISPs recently and didn't have a choice as to which one (which is another, unrelated, issue).
I did some research and the ISP in question does provide IPv6 support for some customers. However, the sales drones I spoke with claimed to not even know what IPv6 was, let alone whether or not it was available in my area.
I'd say that has more to do with the exorbitant fees they charge for static IPv4 addresses than anything else.
As such, it's not always "pretty trivial" to get IPv6 on your ISP link. I sure wish it was.
Edit: Clarified my prose.
> The customer will switch ISPs to those that support IPv6.
That assumes it's possible to switch ISPs. Where I live, within the city bounds of the capital of my country, there's only two ISPs that can deliver broadband service and neither do IPv6 properly.
That assumes it's possible to switch ISPs. Where I live, within the city bounds of the capital of my country, there's only two ISPs that can deliver broadband service and neither do IPv6 properly.
Only for spherical customers in a vacuum. IPv6 is one of those things you can't expect the average customer to care about, even though it's ultimately important for them.
At least in the US, residential ISPs are not a real market, many places just have one option.
> It's in the custoners' best interest to have unique publically routable addresses and without IPv6 we'll be stuck with CGNAT.
This is absolutely not a given. IoT has drastically changed the equation on how good it is to have devices exposed to unsolicited ingress connections from the internet by default.
This is speaking from experience of enabling ipv6 at an ISP. We were rewarded with: - happy geeks
- anemic ipv6 usage
- a bunch of abuse reports and customer support hours wasted on people with poorly configured IoT (or just old computers with no recent patches).
This is absolutely not a given. IoT has drastically changed the equation on how good it is to have devices exposed to unsolicited ingress connections from the internet by default.
This is speaking from experience of enabling ipv6 at an ISP. We were rewarded with: - happy geeks
- anemic ipv6 usage
- a bunch of abuse reports and customer support hours wasted on people with poorly configured IoT (or just old computers with no recent patches).
We can either bury our heads in the sand, have a false sense of security behind CGNAT connections and keeping devices running without a firewall, commercialize IPv4 as much as possible to point of consuming loopback address spaces and make everything worse than it already is.
Or, we can move to IPv6. Yes, it might be painful for some people when they get their IoT devices hacked but at least it should spur change and make people realize that they can't just buy a toaster and connect it to the Internet.
Or, we can move to IPv6. Yes, it might be painful for some people when they get their IoT devices hacked but at least it should spur change and make people realize that they can't just buy a toaster and connect it to the Internet.
Any decent router with IPv6 support sets up stateful v6 firewall rules blocking incoming connections and only allowing outgoing from your v6 subnet. Same as always like you say and most consumers won’t even notice a difference other than increased throughout.
There's a function in my ISP-provided internet router/gateway that allows me to disallow incoming connection on ipv6 address.
I guess you should implement this too?
If my understanding is correct, it's equivalent to using -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT in linux/iptables where -P DROP is the default input policy.
Basically you allow ipv6 tcp traffic only for tcp connections initiated from within.
I guess you should implement this too?
If my understanding is correct, it's equivalent to using -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT in linux/iptables where -P DROP is the default input policy.
Basically you allow ipv6 tcp traffic only for tcp connections initiated from within.
There is a key difference between having IPv6 (good) and not having a firewall as default (bad). I guess if you have many customers that don't use provided-by-you CPE that can be an issue.
NAT is not a security feature, not now, not ever. It stumbled into looking like one by accident and that is holding the industry back because people think it’s good for the internet can’t imagine life without one. Honestly it shouldn't even be part of the firewall—it’s just too easy to abuse there. NAT is really bad and we should want nothing to do with it in an IPv6 world. Stateful firewall rules work 100% fine in IPv6. There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there…
> This is absolutely not a given. IoT has drastically changed the equation on how good it is to have devices exposed to unsolicited ingress connections from the internet by default.
That's why firewalls exist. And they work with IPv6.
My ISP gives out an IPv6 address to my Asus, which also picks up some prefixes for allocation via DHCP-PD. This causes my printer pick up an IPv6 address, but it is not accessible to the outside world.
Statefull firewalls still exist with IPv6, so by default connections from the general Internal cannot connect to your 'internal' systems. Hole punching still needs to be done with UPNP/PCP:
* http://upnp.org/specs/arch/UPnP-arch-AnnexAIPv6-v1.pdf
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Control_Protocol
The advantage of IPv6 is that you no longer have to have things like STUN, TURN, etc. (Remember Skype super-nodes?) Your client knows its own IP(v6) address, gets the IP address of the other end, and then tells your firewall to allow connections between just those two addresses. Once your session is done the ACL is deleted and you're completely default-blocked from the outside again.
Copy-pasting from a previous discussion a little while ago:
---
An IP connection is started from the 'inside' to the 'outside', and the source-destination tuple is recorded. When an 'outside' packet arrives the firewall checks its parameters to see if it corresponds with an existing connection, and if it does it passes it through. If the parameters do not correspond with anything in the firewall's table(s) it assumes that someone is trying to create a new connection, which is generally not allowed by default, and therefore drops it.
The main difference is that with IPv4 and NAT the original (RFC 1918?) source address and port are changed to something corresponding to the 'outside' interface of the firewall. With IPv6 the address/port rewriting is not done.† Only state tables are updated and checked.
New connections are not allowed past the firewall towards the inside with either protocol, and only replies to connections opened from the inside are passed through.‡
There's no magical security behind NAT: tuples and packet flags are read, looked up in a state table, allowed or not depending on either firewall rule or state presence. The security comes from the state checking.
† It is possible to have private IPv6 addresses using ULA, and then the router/firewall uses NPTv6 to rewrite the prefix (leaving the /64 interface component alone).
‡ Just like with IPv4 (NAT), to allow unsolicited 'new' connections in you have to do do firewall hole punching with (e.g.) UPNP. But by default things are blocked.
---
That's why firewalls exist. And they work with IPv6.
My ISP gives out an IPv6 address to my Asus, which also picks up some prefixes for allocation via DHCP-PD. This causes my printer pick up an IPv6 address, but it is not accessible to the outside world.
Statefull firewalls still exist with IPv6, so by default connections from the general Internal cannot connect to your 'internal' systems. Hole punching still needs to be done with UPNP/PCP:
* http://upnp.org/specs/arch/UPnP-arch-AnnexAIPv6-v1.pdf
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Control_Protocol
The advantage of IPv6 is that you no longer have to have things like STUN, TURN, etc. (Remember Skype super-nodes?) Your client knows its own IP(v6) address, gets the IP address of the other end, and then tells your firewall to allow connections between just those two addresses. Once your session is done the ACL is deleted and you're completely default-blocked from the outside again.
Copy-pasting from a previous discussion a little while ago:
---
An IP connection is started from the 'inside' to the 'outside', and the source-destination tuple is recorded. When an 'outside' packet arrives the firewall checks its parameters to see if it corresponds with an existing connection, and if it does it passes it through. If the parameters do not correspond with anything in the firewall's table(s) it assumes that someone is trying to create a new connection, which is generally not allowed by default, and therefore drops it.
The main difference is that with IPv4 and NAT the original (RFC 1918?) source address and port are changed to something corresponding to the 'outside' interface of the firewall. With IPv6 the address/port rewriting is not done.† Only state tables are updated and checked.
New connections are not allowed past the firewall towards the inside with either protocol, and only replies to connections opened from the inside are passed through.‡
There's no magical security behind NAT: tuples and packet flags are read, looked up in a state table, allowed or not depending on either firewall rule or state presence. The security comes from the state checking.
† It is possible to have private IPv6 addresses using ULA, and then the router/firewall uses NPTv6 to rewrite the prefix (leaving the /64 interface component alone).
‡ Just like with IPv4 (NAT), to allow unsolicited 'new' connections in you have to do do firewall hole punching with (e.g.) UPNP. But by default things are blocked.
---
I don't know what you mean by "mainstream", but what I understand by it ipv6 is mainstream since quite a while. It has an adoption rate of around 50% in the western world and signifiant places outside of it (SA,India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Brazil)
I don't know of a single ISP in India which offers functional IPv6 in broadband connections. I won't consider 4G because it's almost useless (at least in India) for doing anything serious.
Jio Fibre does. ACT used to in some places but it's inconsistent.
> in the western world and signifiant places outside of it (SA,India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Brazil)
Brazil is western
Brazil is western
> The decision to consume loopback address space has made me even more cynical about IPv6 ever becoming mainstream within my lifetime.
Wait what? Are you saying that they’re going to allocate the loopback range as v4 addresses?
Wait what? Are you saying that they’re going to allocate the loopback range as v4 addresses?
The proposal is about shrinking the reserved loopback range from 127.0.0.0/8 to 127.0.0.0/16. Everything from 127.1 to 127.255 would then become ordinary IPv4 addresses.
This is just a proposal. It will likely never happen. The proposal to open 240/4 (former class-E / reserved IPv4 space) is more feasible.
Can't see this being useful. There are so many devices and so much software with 127.0.0.0/8 baked in that I suspect an address in the proposed range would be less routable (overall) than an IPv6-only endpoint, and remain so for years, even if it became official.
> Are you saying that they’re going to allocate the loopback range as v4 addresses?
Yes, there's a proposal to do so, which was discussed here last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29246420 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29245466).
Yes, there's a proposal to do so, which was discussed here last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29246420 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29245466).
IPv6 is already mainstream in many countries, including the United States.
Amazon buys lots of IPv4 addresses. That's like land: they're not produced anymore. They have all the incentives to keep IPv4 alive to protect their investments.
IPv4 isn't an "investment" for Amazon. They didn't buy them up with the hope that the price will increase and they'll make a profit. They buy more IPv4 addresses because they need those addresses to continue serving customers. They will likely never, ever sell those IPv4 addresses.
And what's more, they will need to continue to buy more IPv4 addresses as they grow and their customers needs for address space grow. Amazon actually has an incentive for IPv4 to become less expensive so that further purchases of addresses are less costly to their business. And the best two ways to do that are: 1) encourage adoption to IPv6 so that IPv4 becomes less expensive and 2) encourage adoption of IPv6 so that Amazon needs to buy less IPv4 addresses.
And what's more, they will need to continue to buy more IPv4 addresses as they grow and their customers needs for address space grow. Amazon actually has an incentive for IPv4 to become less expensive so that further purchases of addresses are less costly to their business. And the best two ways to do that are: 1) encourage adoption to IPv6 so that IPv4 becomes less expensive and 2) encourage adoption of IPv6 so that Amazon needs to buy less IPv4 addresses.
It's like real estates, they rent services build upon IPv4 addresses.
They don’t need to do any work to keep IPv4 alive, the rest of the world will happily do that for them. Amazon couldn’t kill IPv4 if they tried.
I think for a long time the only thing that will push IPv6 uptake will be legislation.
ISPs don't want to implement it because their customers aren't pushing them to, because websites aren't typically IPv6-only, because that's a terrible business model.
So unless we force or incentivize ISPs to implement IPv6 access through law, it's going to be a long time before we hit the breaking point where something HAS to be done by ISPs
ISPs don't want to implement it because their customers aren't pushing them to, because websites aren't typically IPv6-only, because that's a terrible business model.
So unless we force or incentivize ISPs to implement IPv6 access through law, it's going to be a long time before we hit the breaking point where something HAS to be done by ISPs
So curious, what is wrong with just letting people switch over as they need to? What does it matter if the switch is sped up by a few years? Some are happy with their current ipv4 addresses, and then maybe if they need to buy new ones only ipv6 will be available at which point they can decide for themselves to switch over. As long as browsers and DNS services can work with both, it shouldn't matter, right?
Here I'm assuming that infra teams already have a lot to do and would experience some harm having the government give them more user stories. Maybe not tons of harm, but what is the other side of the equation that justifies the harm?
Here I'm assuming that infra teams already have a lot to do and would experience some harm having the government give them more user stories. Maybe not tons of harm, but what is the other side of the equation that justifies the harm?
> So curious, what is wrong with just letting people switch over as they need to?
It's a principal-agent problem. There are lots of people who want IPv6, but can't get it because their local ISP doesn't care.
It's a principal-agent problem. There are lots of people who want IPv6, but can't get it because their local ISP doesn't care.
India has mandated IPv6 for all existing or new internet connection by Dec 2022.
> I think for a long time the only thing that will push IPv6 uptake will be legislation.
Is it really such a great idea to force every single device on the internet to be globally uniquely identifiable?
Is it really such a great idea to force every single device on the internet to be globally uniquely identifiable?
Yes it is.
We have run out of ipv4 addresses, CGNATs cause problems with self-hosting, ipv4 allocations are not fair and are driving up the cost of infrastructure/access. Particularly problematic in developing Countries.
Security is not an argument, ipv6 firewalls have existed for a long period now.
If we want to make the internet to scale then we need to encourage the use of ipv6.
We have run out of ipv4 addresses, CGNATs cause problems with self-hosting, ipv4 allocations are not fair and are driving up the cost of infrastructure/access. Particularly problematic in developing Countries.
Security is not an argument, ipv6 firewalls have existed for a long period now.
If we want to make the internet to scale then we need to encourage the use of ipv6.
Is that really what's happening? It gives each device an address which is unique at the time but those devices get new addresses periodically when the network configuration changes, they roam networks, etc. and there's no global registry linking addresses to people or even the same device.
From another angle, most people are walking around with a globally-unique identifier (IMEI) in their pocket with all kinds of sensors. Does using IPv6 materially change the situation for any attacker?
From another angle, most people are walking around with a globally-unique identifier (IMEI) in their pocket with all kinds of sensors. Does using IPv6 materially change the situation for any attacker?
In IPv4, dynamically leasing different IP address by connecting is a mitigation of lack of address stock (at least dialup from PC era, I don't know how much effective in router era). In IPv6, ISPs don't need to do that so they can just lease dedicated IP block to customer. Then they don't need logging IP-to-customer-by-time for investigation.
If you really care, almost everyone's IPv6 implementation includes prefix delegation. Jump around your prefix instead. A lot of countries already require ISPs that do CGNAT to keep a connection log so your individual connection can still be traced back to you
LOL. IPv6 usage has been mandated by legislation for years for the Federal Govt. in the US. And yet....mostly no adoption.
Does it really matter for the adoption if at the end you are using an ELB with an IPv4 anyways?
Right now you have a choice in how you configure your network:
1. IPv4 private with NAT gateway and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
2. IPv4 private with 1:1 ephemeral IP (avoids the NAT gateway tax, but now every VM gets a public IPv4 address) and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
3. IPv6 globally unique with no IPv4 and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
With option 1 you end up paying money for the NAT gateway for any outbound traffic instantiated from the instance (not return traffic through the ELB), this costs you 2 IPv4 addresses (1 for NAT gateway, one for the ELB, ignore AZ's and HA for now)
With option 2 you end up not paying for the NAT gateway, but get a free IPv4 address per VM, so N VM's + 1 ELB IPv4 address is N + 1 IPv4 addresses. (NAT Gateways are expensive, even if you have one sitting mostly idle, and don't forget cross AZ traffic if you have only one NAT gateway but instances in multiple AZ's, or you need to spin up multiple NAT gateways).
With option 3 you end up not paying for the NAT gateway, nor do you use a public IPv4 address. This might not work if your instance needs to reach IPv4 parts of the internet, but if its just API servers that communicate internally, they likely don't need to and can use IPv6 for the remaining traffic. Now you have just 1 IPv4 address on the ELB.
If AWS were able to incentivize its customers to deploy their systems in an IPv6 only configuration this would put pressure on the publishers of software to make sure their systems are IPv6 enabled so that their customers could download it, and it would reduce the amount of public IPv4 addresses that are required across AWS as a whole.
Running an IPv6 only core is entirely possible, and makes sense. No more worrying about overlapping IP space (having worked at two companies where they ran out of RFC1918 space and you had to deal with multiple hops to get into various networks, which is no fun), thus simplifying network management.
1. IPv4 private with NAT gateway and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
2. IPv4 private with 1:1 ephemeral IP (avoids the NAT gateway tax, but now every VM gets a public IPv4 address) and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
3. IPv6 globally unique with no IPv4 and ELB dual stack providing IPv4/IPv6 for clients
With option 1 you end up paying money for the NAT gateway for any outbound traffic instantiated from the instance (not return traffic through the ELB), this costs you 2 IPv4 addresses (1 for NAT gateway, one for the ELB, ignore AZ's and HA for now)
With option 2 you end up not paying for the NAT gateway, but get a free IPv4 address per VM, so N VM's + 1 ELB IPv4 address is N + 1 IPv4 addresses. (NAT Gateways are expensive, even if you have one sitting mostly idle, and don't forget cross AZ traffic if you have only one NAT gateway but instances in multiple AZ's, or you need to spin up multiple NAT gateways).
With option 3 you end up not paying for the NAT gateway, nor do you use a public IPv4 address. This might not work if your instance needs to reach IPv4 parts of the internet, but if its just API servers that communicate internally, they likely don't need to and can use IPv6 for the remaining traffic. Now you have just 1 IPv4 address on the ELB.
If AWS were able to incentivize its customers to deploy their systems in an IPv6 only configuration this would put pressure on the publishers of software to make sure their systems are IPv6 enabled so that their customers could download it, and it would reduce the amount of public IPv4 addresses that are required across AWS as a whole.
Running an IPv6 only core is entirely possible, and makes sense. No more worrying about overlapping IP space (having worked at two companies where they ran out of RFC1918 space and you had to deal with multiple hops to get into various networks, which is no fun), thus simplifying network management.
> having worked at two companies where they ran out of RFC1918 space
I get running out of 192.168.0.0/16, that is easy enough if you have a lot of locations and one /24 per location. But how in earth does one run out of 10.0.0.0/8 IPs, outside of a company merger?!
I get running out of 192.168.0.0/16, that is easy enough if you have a lot of locations and one /24 per location. But how in earth does one run out of 10.0.0.0/8 IPs, outside of a company merger?!
Often things are allocated and remain unused, but cannot be reallocated. So companies end up with large parts of 10/8 reserved. I recently had to start using some weird 100 addresses (some reserved router protocol) for this reason. It doesn't help that a lot of AWS stuff wants to consume an IPv4 for no good reason (IE, the machine gets an IPv4 but isn't reachable from the internet).
100.64.0.0/10 is reserved for CGNAT providers to assign to CPE. If you don't connect to a CGNAT then there's nothing stopping you from using it, however. Tailscale hands out addresses in 100.100 for that reason (deconflict with customer private networks)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_shared_address_space
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_shared_address_space
Okay, so I may have left out a key detail that these "companies" were large ISP's and had massive networks of their own with hundreds of thousands of devices, let alone customer devices on that same network that needed to be managed.
When every set top box, cable modem, customer wifi gateway, and all of your routers/management interfaces need RFC1918 space it goes real quick, real fast.
It gets even worse when you are have to have a lab where you can setup infrastructure that looks/feels exactly like production and thus needs similar setups, now do that for testing/staging... and there's doubling of your required IP space already.
When every set top box, cable modem, customer wifi gateway, and all of your routers/management interfaces need RFC1918 space it goes real quick, real fast.
It gets even worse when you are have to have a lab where you can setup infrastructure that looks/feels exactly like production and thus needs similar setups, now do that for testing/staging... and there's doubling of your required IP space already.
10/8 isn't actually that much space. It's only 256 /16s. Either way, mergers are common and it only takes one VPN to another company also using 10/8 to have a problem.
>10/8 isn't actually that much space. It's only 256 /16s. Either way, mergers are common and it only takes one VPN to another company also using 10/8 to have a problem.
I've had to address that with partners/service providers. It just requires a double NAT to make it work. Which is a pain, but necessity is the mother of invention after all.
I've had to address that with partners/service providers. It just requires a double NAT to make it work. Which is a pain, but necessity is the mother of invention after all.
It's not just NAT, you may also need split DNS, and it's a constant drag on everything because you keep needing to map between two sets of addresses. And it gets way harder when you have multiple or large companies involved, because you do start running out of RFC1918 space.
It's particularly silly because none of that is necessary at all. v6 means that each side has unique prefixes and you don't need to do any of the above. Even if you need to connect to someone without v6, all you need to do is NAT each partner's RFC1918 space into 64:ff9b:1:N::/96, with a different N for each partner. Then they're all accessible in a single unified address space.
It's particularly silly because none of that is necessary at all. v6 means that each side has unique prefixes and you don't need to do any of the above. Even if you need to connect to someone without v6, all you need to do is NAT each partner's RFC1918 space into 64:ff9b:1:N::/96, with a different N for each partner. Then they're all accessible in a single unified address space.
>It's not just NAT, you may also need split DNS, and it's a constant drag on everything because you keep needing to map between two sets of addresses. And it gets way harder when you have multiple or large companies involved, because you do start running out of RFC1918 space.
You won't get any argument from me about the utility of IPv6 over IPv4.
I just pointed out that the scenario presented is workable with IPv4 -- in fact, I've done it more than once.
Sometimes you don't get the choice as to what IP version or addressing scheme you use. Not every environment is a "green field."
Back in the early 'teens, when we contracted/partnered with others that had overlapping IPv4 ranges, if I'd told my boss that "it would be so much easier to do this if we were native IPv6. Given me three-six months to migrate the routers at our dozen locations to dual-stack, replacing any equipment (don't worry, that'll cost less than $250,000) that can't support IPv6, then renumber our dozen class B's, re-implement our 802.1x infrastructure, reorganize our firewall policies and the myriad other tasks we need to do to migrate away from IPv4. By the way, I'll pretty much be engaged in this full-time, so you may need to hire a couple guys to do the work I'd otherwise be doing. And don't forget to tell the C-suite that they can't have the application access they wanted until this is all done."
I suppose I could have said that to my boss. But rather than doing that, then updating my resume as I'd probably have had a lot of extra time on my hands, I said "I'll make it happen. Please give me the contact info for my counterpart at the other organization."
You won't get any argument from me about the utility of IPv6 over IPv4.
I just pointed out that the scenario presented is workable with IPv4 -- in fact, I've done it more than once.
Sometimes you don't get the choice as to what IP version or addressing scheme you use. Not every environment is a "green field."
Back in the early 'teens, when we contracted/partnered with others that had overlapping IPv4 ranges, if I'd told my boss that "it would be so much easier to do this if we were native IPv6. Given me three-six months to migrate the routers at our dozen locations to dual-stack, replacing any equipment (don't worry, that'll cost less than $250,000) that can't support IPv6, then renumber our dozen class B's, re-implement our 802.1x infrastructure, reorganize our firewall policies and the myriad other tasks we need to do to migrate away from IPv4. By the way, I'll pretty much be engaged in this full-time, so you may need to hire a couple guys to do the work I'd otherwise be doing. And don't forget to tell the C-suite that they can't have the application access they wanted until this is all done."
I suppose I could have said that to my boss. But rather than doing that, then updating my resume as I'd probably have had a lot of extra time on my hands, I said "I'll make it happen. Please give me the contact info for my counterpart at the other organization."
[deleted]
> But how in earth does one run out of 10.0.0.0/8 IPs, outside of a company merger?!
Twenty company acquisitions.
Twenty company acquisitions.
Btw Often a nat gateway makes sense even for ipv6 because its Easier to firewall
could not edit, but probably a lot of people did not understand my comment.
our company often deals with very strict rules so that most services in the internet are blocked.
we use gcp/gke with surge updates, thus we would loose our static access ip.
however now since they explictly need to enable our services we need a static ip and it is way easier to do that with nat gateway. basically we have a service that connects to http to their external ip which is firewall'd and thus if our client ip's will change it's a headache
however now since they explictly need to enable our services we need a static ip and it is way easier to do that with nat gateway. basically we have a service that connects to http to their external ip which is firewall'd and thus if our client ip's will change it's a headache
No, NAT gateway for IPv6 does not make sense.
Not likely. Greater adoption of IPv6 generally comes down to only one thing: replacing physical equipment. The only thing likely to force that is greater demand from consumer applications, which has not yet occurred.
what? IPv6 has been supported by major telecomunication equipment manufacturers for nearly 2 and a half decades by now.
It is just a matter of getting an inet6 prefix from your RIR/LIR, and configuring it in your network. IPv6 is not hard nor is it difficult to implement, and its nitty gritty details are actually far more logically sound then IPv4. (ARP is a major paint point for instance in large networks, so is IP broadcast traffic).
Most large WAN networks have a core which is either label switched (MPLS) and this doesn't care about anything in regards to the protocol which it is transporting, or is doing dual stack already.
It is just a matter of getting an inet6 prefix from your RIR/LIR, and configuring it in your network. IPv6 is not hard nor is it difficult to implement, and its nitty gritty details are actually far more logically sound then IPv4. (ARP is a major paint point for instance in large networks, so is IP broadcast traffic).
Most large WAN networks have a core which is either label switched (MPLS) and this doesn't care about anything in regards to the protocol which it is transporting, or is doing dual stack already.
>It is just a matter of getting an inet6 prefix from your RIR/LIR, and configuring it in your network
Which is easier said than done. Since my ISP won't provide me with IPv6, requesting a block from my RIR is my only option.
However, I don't meet the requirements[0] for getting a block directly from an RIR (in my case, ARIN).
In fact, unless you have a fairly large internet-facing presence, RIR's won't even give you the time of day:
Edit: Note that the requirements listed above are for end users not service providers.
Which is easier said than done. Since my ISP won't provide me with IPv6, requesting a block from my RIR is my only option.
However, I don't meet the requirements[0] for getting a block directly from an RIR (in my case, ARIN).
In fact, unless you have a fairly large internet-facing presence, RIR's won't even give you the time of day:
Have an IPv4 assignment from ARIN or one of its
predecessors
Intend to immediately be IPv6 multi-homed
Have 13 end sites (offices, data centers, etc.)
within one year
Use 2,000 IPv6 addresses within one year
Use 200 /64 subnets within one year
Edit: Note that the requirements listed above are for end users not service providers.
Hard to blame ARIN there, They have about 70 people working for them, they're not scaled to deal with every tom dick and harry coming to them for assignments.
>Hard to blame ARIN there
I wasn't blaming anyone. If that's the impression I gave, then I communicated poorly.
Just expressing my frustration WRT the inability to get an IPv6 block for myself.
It shouldn't be this hard.
I wasn't blaming anyone. If that's the impression I gave, then I communicated poorly.
Just expressing my frustration WRT the inability to get an IPv6 block for myself.
It shouldn't be this hard.
which is why the LIR's exist.
you can get provider independant IP space from a LIR.
you can get provider independant IP space from a LIR.
>which is why the LIR's exist.
>you can get provider independant IP space from a LIR.
My understanding was that it was primarily ISPs that filled the role of LIRs. Is that incorrect?
If so, how can I find an LIR in my area?
Edit: I should have added that I've looked around, but AFAICT, the only "provider independent" group handing out IP addresses in my area is ARIN. I may be missing something obvious, but I don't think my google-fu is so bad that I can't find it, if it does indeed exist.
>you can get provider independant IP space from a LIR.
My understanding was that it was primarily ISPs that filled the role of LIRs. Is that incorrect?
If so, how can I find an LIR in my area?
Edit: I should have added that I've looked around, but AFAICT, the only "provider independent" group handing out IP addresses in my area is ARIN. I may be missing something obvious, but I don't think my google-fu is so bad that I can't find it, if it does indeed exist.
Generally agree, for basic configuration it just works. But I was planning to use IPv6 in some network segments in my company. Providing proper VPN (road warrior style) for employees to access such network isn't simple with IPv6 where every address is routable over internet. Morver Fortigate devices we have don't have such functionality.
How many residences are IPv6 first? How many countries prioritize IPv6 in their consumer electronics?
My house is IPv6 first only because my ISP mandates such.
My house is IPv6 first only because my ISP mandates such.
Where I work now, not likely, because we have hundreds of AWS accounts, VPC peering and private VPC access only over VPN, which can to my knowledge only route IPv4...
You only need a single public IPv4 address to bridge connections to your VPC, though. Everything else can now be IPv6 only.
So you get a discount on your AWS resources and the only downside is that two out of three people cannot reach your services?
https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
EC2 ipv6 SHOULD be cheaper, ipv4 cost a lot because they are becoming scarce
ipv6 much cheaper
if they don't then they should be ashamed
ipv6 much cheaper
if they don't then they should be ashamed
Does GPC support ipv6 only subnets? Some cursory pokes around I can not tell. (I really only work with AWS). Azure? Any other notable services providers have done this yet? I can not tell if this is long overdue or actually something to take note of.
In Azure, enabling IPv6 in any way is a terrible mistake that will break your IPv4 network.
There is zero benefit to enabling IPv6 in Azure, because they carefully prevent any use of the beneficial features of IPv6 that make it worthwhile over IPv4.
A key purpose of IPv6 is no longer needing NAT to the point that IPv6 implementation typically do not support NAT at all -- so Azure engineers developed their own custom IPv6 NAT to force NAT on all of their IPv6 users.
Another key purpose of IPv6 is the enormous address space, which means you no longer need to carefully "carve up" and manually allocate addresses in a stateful way -- Azure engineers restricted IPv6 public address prefixes to blocks of just 16 addresses. Not /16 or anything like that. No. Sixteen.
To assist migration, IPv6 is designed to be dual stack and coexist side-by-side with IPv4 with no (or minimal) impact. Azure engineers made sure that if you turn it on, wildly unrelated IPv4 features will break. In other subnets. Even other virtual networks! Critical features are masked out, making this a non-starter for practically everybody.
To enable layered systems to be migrated, IPv6 is sufficiently "compatible" with IPv4 to allow the use of relatively simple protocol-translating middle boxes. So you can have IPv6 on the outside and IPv4 on the inside, or vice-versa. Not on Azure! It's only IPv4-to-IPv4 or IPv6-to-IPv6. You can't have both, and you can't translate. PICK ONE, NOW.
It's shameful.
Seriously, if any Microsoft network engineers stumble upon this post, you should feel bad. It's 2021 when I'm writing this, mere days from 2022, and you've utterly failed to even begin to support the transition to IPv6 in the public cloud.
Shame, shame.
There is zero benefit to enabling IPv6 in Azure, because they carefully prevent any use of the beneficial features of IPv6 that make it worthwhile over IPv4.
A key purpose of IPv6 is no longer needing NAT to the point that IPv6 implementation typically do not support NAT at all -- so Azure engineers developed their own custom IPv6 NAT to force NAT on all of their IPv6 users.
Another key purpose of IPv6 is the enormous address space, which means you no longer need to carefully "carve up" and manually allocate addresses in a stateful way -- Azure engineers restricted IPv6 public address prefixes to blocks of just 16 addresses. Not /16 or anything like that. No. Sixteen.
To assist migration, IPv6 is designed to be dual stack and coexist side-by-side with IPv4 with no (or minimal) impact. Azure engineers made sure that if you turn it on, wildly unrelated IPv4 features will break. In other subnets. Even other virtual networks! Critical features are masked out, making this a non-starter for practically everybody.
To enable layered systems to be migrated, IPv6 is sufficiently "compatible" with IPv4 to allow the use of relatively simple protocol-translating middle boxes. So you can have IPv6 on the outside and IPv4 on the inside, or vice-versa. Not on Azure! It's only IPv4-to-IPv4 or IPv6-to-IPv6. You can't have both, and you can't translate. PICK ONE, NOW.
It's shameful.
Seriously, if any Microsoft network engineers stumble upon this post, you should feel bad. It's 2021 when I'm writing this, mere days from 2022, and you've utterly failed to even begin to support the transition to IPv6 in the public cloud.
Shame, shame.
Also, last time I checked, in Azure, a single public IPv6 address costs the same as a single public IPv4 address...
I am glad to see I am not the only one frustrated with Azure's supposed "IPv6 support".
All these things sound to me like their internal network only supports IPV4, and they simply maintain some mapping of which IPV6 address maps to which IPV4 address and they convert packets where needed so the customer sees IPv6 yet all packets flow over the wire as IPv4 with no additional headers (so that MTU doesn't need to be decreased)
To me it feels like the entire thing was engineered with only IPv4 in mind from day one, and a decade into it some customer demanded IPv6 support. So of course, some middle-manager at Microsoft gets assigned the "task" of enabling IPv6, and he dutifully went over to the engineers and asked them to turn it on. Horrified, they tried to explain that it's a ground up re-engineering of their entire network stack, at which point I don't need to have been in the room to play out the conversation that unfolded in that meeting room line by line:
"Just tell me what the minimum set of tasks is to enable IPv6!"
"You don't understand, it's not like turning on a tap! We have to redo all of the infrastructure around networking!"
"Do we need all that? Just tunnel the packets or something!"
"That's not the same thing, that's only supporting IPv6 in a technical sense, it doesn't really mean the same thing as doing it properly, and it won't work long term. It'll have to be ripped out and replaced, but while maintaining backwards compatibility with a jury-rigged IPv6 implementation. It'll be a nightmare!"
"Don't worry about that now, I just need to say that we've enabled IPv6 so I can satisfy this requirement."
"It'll just tick the check box! Nobody will be able to actually use it! Our customers will be confused and support will have to deal with the fallout!"
"Let me deal with that."
Etc, etc...
Translation: I just want my KPIs so that I can get my bonus. I'm quitting before the fallout hits.
"Just tell me what the minimum set of tasks is to enable IPv6!"
"You don't understand, it's not like turning on a tap! We have to redo all of the infrastructure around networking!"
"Do we need all that? Just tunnel the packets or something!"
"That's not the same thing, that's only supporting IPv6 in a technical sense, it doesn't really mean the same thing as doing it properly, and it won't work long term. It'll have to be ripped out and replaced, but while maintaining backwards compatibility with a jury-rigged IPv6 implementation. It'll be a nightmare!"
"Don't worry about that now, I just need to say that we've enabled IPv6 so I can satisfy this requirement."
"It'll just tick the check box! Nobody will be able to actually use it! Our customers will be confused and support will have to deal with the fallout!"
"Let me deal with that."
Etc, etc...
Translation: I just want my KPIs so that I can get my bonus. I'm quitting before the fallout hits.
> Azure engineers restricted IPv6 public address prefixes to blocks of just 16 addresses.
That's a /124, right?
That's a /124, right?
What about the legend that the cloud thing is maintained by professionals?
Azure is clearly run very differently than AWS and GCP.
https://www.wiz.io/blog/chaosdb-explained-azures-cosmos-db-v...
https://www.wiz.io/blog/chaosdb-explained-azures-cosmos-db-v...
This is incredible, as if I needed more reasons to dislike Azure hahaha
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GCP has support for IPv6 dual stack in only 4 or so regions: https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/vpc#ipv6-regions not only that but enabling IPv6 is not as simple as it is in AWS and requires a lot of manual fiddling with the subnets. Once enabled it does give you a prefix that is automatically assigned to each VM in the subnet which you can use for containers and the like.
Azure's IPv6 support is terrible, and does not support IPv6 only networks: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-se... including limitations on the prefix size you can get for your VM's: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-se... no /56 like you can get in AWS that you can then slice /64's out of for subnets and no prefix delegation for running container workloads on their own GUA.
Where Azure was ahead was that its load balancers supported targeting IPv6 addresses and thus didn't require IPv4 for forwarding traffic.
AWS fixed that today.
AWS should be lauded, and while it is long overdue (IPv6 core, with IPv4 only on the edge makes so much sense) AWS is the first hyperscaler to do so.
Azure's IPv6 support is terrible, and does not support IPv6 only networks: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-se... including limitations on the prefix size you can get for your VM's: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-se... no /56 like you can get in AWS that you can then slice /64's out of for subnets and no prefix delegation for running container workloads on their own GUA.
Where Azure was ahead was that its load balancers supported targeting IPv6 addresses and thus didn't require IPv4 for forwarding traffic.
AWS fixed that today.
AWS should be lauded, and while it is long overdue (IPv6 core, with IPv4 only on the edge makes so much sense) AWS is the first hyperscaler to do so.
> Azure?
I tried a dual-stack vnet in Azure earlier this year, and eventually had to rip IPv6 out of it: flexible Postgres servers couldn't be instantiated into an IPv4-only subnet (yes, IPv4) if the vnet had IPv6 at all. (Worse, attempting to do so caused the API call to create the flexible PG instance to just time out, and it for some odd reason has a two hour timeout that suggests it's a transient internal error & you should retry. So, four hours.) I didn't really expect flexible PG to support IPv6, but that it seemed to poison the support for IPv6 for the rest of the vnet was really, really disappointing.
I tried a dual-stack vnet in Azure earlier this year, and eventually had to rip IPv6 out of it: flexible Postgres servers couldn't be instantiated into an IPv4-only subnet (yes, IPv4) if the vnet had IPv6 at all. (Worse, attempting to do so caused the API call to create the flexible PG instance to just time out, and it for some odd reason has a two hour timeout that suggests it's a transient internal error & you should retry. So, four hours.) I didn't really expect flexible PG to support IPv6, but that it seemed to poison the support for IPv6 for the rest of the vnet was really, really disappointing.
It's not the only such service. NAT Gateways, VPN, Virtual WAN, and a whole host of others break if you enable IPv6 anywhere.
The reason things like Postgres break is because internally they use what is essentially a VPN Gateway to communicate with your vNet.
The reason things like Postgres break is because internally they use what is essentially a VPN Gateway to communicate with your vNet.
I wonder how long it will take for CDK to support this stuff. I'm not sure how they will back themselves out of the corner of subnets having a required ipv4 CIDR property.
you make it an optional field. it’s converting an optional field to required that is effectively impossible
Anyone with typescript code that references the non-optional field will get type errors if it is made optional. Though stuffing the string with the v6 subnet wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Any code that is blindly using it expecting v4 addresses will already be broken if a v6 only subnet is passed in.
Use it for IPv6 subnet prefix :)
Still waiting on AWS to implement referencing network security groups across Transit Gateway VPCs. Until then, I'm stuck with more IP references than I'd like, and wouldn't dare try to add IPv6 to that.
The end to end IPv6 support for ELBs is welcome, and I try to add IPv6 to every externally facing service, however Global Accelerators and API gateways still do not offer support.
The end to end IPv6 support for ELBs is welcome, and I try to add IPv6 to every externally facing service, however Global Accelerators and API gateways still do not offer support.
This is cool! Though I'm wondering why it's Nitro-only. Are there plans to roll this out to all of EC2?
At this point you can consider all non-nitro instance types to be legacy: it's been years now since all new instance types have been nitro and pretty much every instance family has a nitro replacement that is both faster and cheaper than its predecessor (except in the odd case where the sizes don't line up nicely). So it's very possible they've just stopped letting legacy instance types get new features as an incentive.
However, nitro instances use their own network hardware which includes the ENA NICS and possibly the switches, where it seems like they may have pushed their virtual network stack into hardware, in which case it makes sense that they'd not bother implementing features separately for non-nitro.
Another random network feature nitro instances get is transparent end-to-end encryption for any traffic flowing between two nitro instances in a VPC. There used to also be Network Load Balancer features that only worked for nitro backends/clients.
However, nitro instances use their own network hardware which includes the ENA NICS and possibly the switches, where it seems like they may have pushed their virtual network stack into hardware, in which case it makes sense that they'd not bother implementing features separately for non-nitro.
Another random network feature nitro instances get is transparent end-to-end encryption for any traffic flowing between two nitro instances in a VPC. There used to also be Network Load Balancer features that only worked for nitro backends/clients.
Can Amazon Linux 2 repos be reached via IPv6? Last time I checked it was impossible, so this wasn't very practical to me. Someone else than me was annoyed by this: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=987026
Always thought going IPv6 only is a great way to avoid getting hit by script kiddies too.
On v4 it is 169.254.169.254 hence the final 254 (and other services like DNS at 253), but using the ULA range of ec2 is a simple, effective touch.