it still frustrates me to no end that the only reason why residential networking is complicated is IPv4

and IPv6 is almost three decades old

instead of all this bullshit with port forwarding, NAT punching, and other shit, you should be able to just know your own public IP address and send it to someone else to connect directly to you, but you can't on IPv4. instead you have to deal with bullshit

and just to explicitly point it out: IPv6 was standardised in 1998. it has been literally 27 years since IPv6 was fully described and implementable and people still aren't using it everywhere

shitheads like Microsoft offer only-IPv4 endpoints for sites like GitHub, but even then, people can use IPv4-over-IPv6 to communicate with them. everyone should have an IPv6 address and IPv4 should be a relic of the past but for some reason that's not the case despite some countries only being able to have tens of IPv4 addresses total

@clarfonthey as sad as it is I think it might be as simple as "my IPv4 address is 10 digits and I can remember it, and I cannot remember my IPv6 address for anything, specifically because it is a larger addressable space" (edit: I can't count either apparently)

@apisashla @clarfonthey I'm not convinced that that's a meaningful factor, to be honest - entirely too many people have dynamic IPs for "remembering your IP" to be viable at any real scale, for starters.

Not to mention that there's a much more obvious reason why IPv6 is lagging: because right now IPv4 addresses are a valuable asset that networking companies have a lot of, and the scarcity + needing them is what makes them valuable, so there's a direct monetary loss associated with broader IPv6 deployment.

@joepie91 @apisashla @clarfonthey Shrug it off all you want, but it's cited regularly as an argument against IPv6 — usually in the context of one's RFC 1918 addresses.

That said, I'm not saying the reason you offer is wrong; there are a multitude of factors making IPv6 less preferred for many.

(I will note that for some parties, there is a "direct monetary loss associated with" continuing to depend upon IPv4, too — the adoption graphs don't go "up and to the right" just due to good vibes. 😀)

@jima @joepie91 @apisashla it's cited regularly but it genuinely feels like a bad-faith argument cited to avoid discussing the more likely reasons which you and others mentioned: reducing access to the public web, selling addresses as a scarce resource, not wanting to spend money to upgrade, etc.

@clarfonthey @joepie91 @apisashla While I won't disagree with you that SOME OF IT is very likely bad faith arguments masking something else, I implore you to understand that a lot of people are lazy and don't want to learn new things. 🥲

@jima @clarfonthey @apisashla This does not match my experiences. Rather, I've found that when it *seems* like people "don't want to learn new things", there's usually a different underlying reason that's not being spoken aloud for one reason or another.