162 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
162 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
title: Only IPv6 Only.
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---
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pub_date: 2020-03-04
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---
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author: ungleich
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---
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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In this article you will learn why it is beneficial for you to
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go IPv6 only instead of dual stack.
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---
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body:
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## TL;DR
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IPv6 is a solution to the address sparsity in legacy IP (IPv4).
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Only if you stop using legacy IP, you really profit from IPv6.
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The good news is, this has become rather easy nowadays.
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## Current situation
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As of 2020-03-04, legacy addresses are hard to get and are becoming
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increasingly more expensive. In fact, almost
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[all 5 global IP address registries are out of legacy
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addresses](https://ipv4.potaroo.net/).
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What does that mean in layman's terms? If you are having one or more
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dedicated legacy IP addresses, your bills will go up in the near
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future. In fact, [google started increasing prices last year
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already](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-cloud-charging-for-ipv4-but-proper-ipv6-support-is-still-missing-in-action/).
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It is just a matter of time, until others have to follow.
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## Legacy IP world reachability
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One clarification: even if you go IPv6 only,
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**you can, will and want still legacy IP world reachability**.
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When you surf with your mobile phone, when your home or company
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accesses the Internet, you still need access to websites that are
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running on legacy IP.
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Also, if you are running a server, a virtual server, a website or any
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other service, you probably want to be reachable from legacy IP
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clients.
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Good news is: **you don't need a dedicated legacy IP address** for any
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of this.
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Neither to reach the legacy Internet, nor to be reachable.
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## History repeats
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You might remember that in the nineties, https webservers required
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a dedicated **IP address per domain**. That's true. If **example.com**
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and **example.org** were both using SSL certificates, the webserver
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required at least 2 IP addresses. Later the SSL protocol was improved
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to allow domain names to share one IP address. Today one IP address
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can host hundreds or thousands of domains on a single IP address.
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With the shift from legacy IP to IPv6, we can use the same principle
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again. Instead of having a dedicated legacy IP address per service,
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**we can share legacy IP addresses**.
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## Dual Stack is not a solution
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Operating dual stack networks or services does not solve the problem,
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because it still uses legacy IP. In fact, the
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[US government mandates 80% IPv6 only networks by
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2025](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/03/us_government_ipv6/)
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([original
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website](https://www.cio.gov/assets/resources/internet-protocol-version6-draft.pdf)).
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For a good reason, because they want to reduce complexity. And costs,
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obviously.
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While there might be situations in which dual stack is required, in
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general
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* dual stack is more complex
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* dual stack does not remove the costs
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* dual stack almost always can be replaced by IPv6 only plus a gateway
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translator
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Even if you are not using public IPv4 space, you can still save costs
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with going IPv6 only: whenever you connect to a VPN, whenever
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companies merge networks, even [when you only run
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docker](../how-ipv4-stops-me-from-working-in-the-train/):
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with [private ip addresses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network) you can
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easily run into overlapping addresses. This costs time and in the end
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resources.
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## Going IPv6 only
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This brings us to the main topic of this article: going IPv6 only.
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It is possible to IPv6 only, but still connect to the legacy
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Internet. But how does this work in practice?
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## Going IPv6 only with your static website
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It is very easy to create a static website on an IPv6 only webserver
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and have it reachable from IPv6 and the legacy Internet:
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you can either [create an IPv6 only virtual
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machine](../ipv6-only-hosting/), setup a webserver on it and use the
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[IPv4 to IPv6 proyx](../ipv4-to-ipv6-proxy/).
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Or, if you want to have it much easier, you could go with
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[IPv6 enabled webhosting](../zerocarbon-webhosting-with-ipv6/)
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directly.
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## Going IPv6 only network
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## Going IPv6 only
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## Going IPv6 only bittorrent
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If you want to publish your open source software or publicly available
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data via bittorrent, you need can seed it from any IPv6 reachable
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computer. We provide an [IPv6 torrent tracker](../projects/ipv6-torrent-tracker/)
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## Who is profiting from IPv6 only vs. dual stack?
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## How does this affect me?
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## Short review
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Long story short, IPv6 was mainly introduced to fix the address
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sparsity issue in IPv
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## Dual stack setups
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introduced as
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##
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## The changes of IPv6 to the world
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In the next articles we will describe some real, practical changes of
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what we use and how we can work differently with IPv6. If you already
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have suggestions, we are happy to read them on **ipv6 at ungleich.ch**
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or on the [IPv6 Chat](https://IPv6.chat).
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Meanwhile, if you are
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interested in giving IPv6 only VPS a try, there is a 50% discount only
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until [Black IPv6
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Friday](https://swiss-crowdfunder.com/campaigns/black-ipv6-friday?locale=en).
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