2019-10-08 14:45:01 +00:00
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title: How IPv6 can help protesters in Hong Kong
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2019-10-08 13:36:51 +00:00
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pub_date: 2019-10-08
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---
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author: Nico Schottelius
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twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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2019-10-08 14:45:01 +00:00
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_discoverable: yes
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2019-10-08 13:36:51 +00:00
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---
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abstract:
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Protesters in HK encounter communcation disruption by Apple.
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This article shows how this can be avoided by using IPv6.
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---
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body:
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Recently
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Apple decided to [remove a central
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app for communication in Hong
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Kong](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49919459), just
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[to add it later
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again](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49961149).
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With this move Apple effectively disrupted the communication between
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people demonstrating in Hong Kong and at the same time endangered
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those who wanted to protect themselves from violance on the streets.
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In this article I want to show how this problem can be mitigated by
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the use of IPv6.
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## The core problem: centralisation
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The main problem is that we depend on centralised
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services. One of the questions is, why do we depend on centralised
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services at all? The reason for this is that there are not enough IPv4
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addresses and for that reason we use NAT to hide multiple devices
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behind one IPv4 address. Wait what? Let's take it a bit slower.
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## How NAT works
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In the old times of the Internet, every device in the Internet used to
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have a public IPv4 address. However when the number of devices began
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to exceed amount of officially available IPv4 addresses, NAT was
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introduced and it works as follows:
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Many devices are hidden behind one Public IP address. So for a phone
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to communicate with another phone, it needs to connect via a
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2019-10-08 14:45:01 +00:00
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central, publicly available IPv4 server. So in the end, the complete
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picture looks as follows:
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2019-10-08 13:36:51 +00:00
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## How IPv6 solves the problem
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In the IPv6 world, there are enough IP addresses available.
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So every device, every smart phone, every alarm clock, every computer
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can have a public IP address. Because every device can have a public
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IPv6 address, they can communicate directly with each other:
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## How to communicate with IPv6?
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So how does it look like with IPv6? Instead of relying on a central
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entity (Apple in this case), you can directly connect to the phone of
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your friends. This way, you could even use your standard browser like
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Firefox, Chrome or Safari to write a message to your friend's phone.
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## So, what to do now?
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At the moment IPv6 is picking up pace in deployment and ISPs
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2019-10-08 14:45:01 +00:00
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everywhere in the world are moving forward with it.
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However, if you do not have IPv6 connectivity,
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[ungleich provides IPv6 VPNs](https://ungleich.ch/ipv6/vpn/) that
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enable you world wide to have IPv6.
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If you are an application developer, I urge you to checkout whether
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your application supports IPv6, because in the future you might enable
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people to talk to each other, just by supporting IPv6 now already.
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2019-10-08 13:36:51 +00:00
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## More IPv6
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If you are interested in IPv6, we invite you to join the [IPv6
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chat](https://IPv6.chat) or [follow us on
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Twitter](https://twitter.com/ungleich).
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