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> Should I support IPv6 on my server?

> You can if you want, but despite what some people will claim, it probably won’t make much difference.

This apathy is exactly why adoption is slow. For all its faults Google needs to be commended for their commitment to IPv6. They are the only large email provider I see sending and receiving email using IPv6 even though "it probably won’t make much difference"



It's okay imo. IPv4 on the internet is getting very expensive very fast. The market will do its thing and the solution is already on hand: IPv6. The addresses are virtually free. Sure it's not with all the fanfare and it doesn't meet all of its promises, but it will happen and fast.


Close to 5€ per month for my virtual server. Almost half the total cost. I’m still paying them because I’m not sure people could still contact my web server (and when I used it my mail server) if it was IPv6 only.


Mr. cube00, for a static website it's a toss-up (you should activate it anyway if you're able to!).

The problem is that (for example) for forums etc., 40-bit addresses (the best-approximation considering that only a slice was allocated and /64 is treated as a single network connection) adds a whole lot of problems when it comes to combating spam etc. 8 bits sounds like nothing to you but you multiplied their problem 256 times. In shorter words, it's not always economical to turn the proverbial switch on. For Google, they can rely on their AIs but for small forums? That's just (unfortunately) an additional attack surface on something that they want to be gone.


How do you make sure that the single IPv4 address you are blocking is not used for CGNAT? When you don't care about collateral damage you could as well block IPv6 /40 or /48s. Currently this is maybe not a problem yet because most people don't have CGNAT addresses but the problem will become bigger.


Hotmail sometimes blocks not only my IPv4 address, but the entire subnet. We already have collateral damage.


It also helps when you connect from mobile networks, as due to various things (including, afaik, licensing shenanigans) there's a huge push for v6 in mobile networking. Even your v4 traffic is probably going over v6 using 4x6x4 translation.


One issue we’ve seen is more bugs with IPv6 over the years. For example, this bug only affects IPv6 traffic: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/spectrum-routers-dro...

Yes, Spectrum should fix their issue and if more of the Internet was IPv6 user facing, they’d have to more urgently, but what will happen instead is companies will just turn off IPv6 for maximum compatibility.


except ipv4 has a lot of bugs as well. (the reliance on ARP and non clean layer separation is the major pain point IMO).


Right, but given how widely deployed IPv4 is the bugs are generally shallower. E.g: if there firewall bug existed with IPv4, I bet it would be fixed now.


About ~60% of the emails I receive arrive over IPv6. Google is not the only provider using IPv6.




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