[connicpu]

I got a brand new router recently, IPv6 was still disabled by default! I honestly can't understand the reasoning, I don't even buy the internet visibility argument because the default incoming connection rules for IPv6 after I enabled it were deny-all. We really have a long way to go still in getting equipment everywhere enabled on it.

[Gigachad]

Some ISPs have v6 enabled but it's just broken or sub optimal. I imagine the logic is that v4 always works and the user could only see a benefit from having v6 off by default.

[connicpu]

True, on an individual level that probably represents the best benefit. Anyone who actually cares would also know to go through the settings to check the defaults on all of those things with a new router too.

[otabdeveloper4]

IPv6 is a security liability and provides no benefit to the user.

[Dagger2]

Both of those statements are wrong. It provides benefits to the user and it's no more of a security vulnerability than having any other networking protocol is.

If anything, v4 is more of a vulnerability because it's so easy to scan and because NAT increases the complexity enough that most people don't understand how their networks work.

[otabdeveloper4]

Three decades of IPv6 mis-adoption shows otherwise. "Running out of IPv4 addresses" is not a problem you face unless you're an internet service provider or a mobile network.

99.99999% of the rest of us don't care because we use 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8 when we have to do networking.

Yes, NAT is complex. That sucks. No, blindly stating "you don't need NAT and you're holding it wrong" is just plain incorrect.

Please make NAT easier to use and configure, don't sweep it under the rug and pretend like the world can function without it.

[Dagger2]

It causes no end of problems, not just for ISPs and mobile networks but also for people running server networks and for end users like us. I suppose it can be hard to see that when you grew up with the problems and have never used a network where you didn't need to deal with them though.

The world can mostly function without NAT. It's mainly only used to work around address shortages, which aren't an issue on v6, so there's simply no reason to use it most of the time. It can be a useful tool in your toolbox, but it's one that you only need to use very rarely.

Here's a benefit from v6: 40% faster connection setup†. Measurable benefits show that there are benefits. "No need to use NAT" is of course another obvious benefit of v6.

†: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-tells-app-devs-to-use-ip....

[otabdeveloper4]

No, NAT is not for network address shortages.

NAT is a cruicial privacy and security feature.

"No need to use NAT" is, of course, a horrible anti-feature, not a benefit of IPv6. (And, of course, in the real world the vast majority of IPv6 is rolled out with NAT anyways.)

[keiyakins]

NAT is neither a privacy nor security feature, what are you talking about? Have you actually tested what your CPE does when it gets packets addressed to internal IPs from the WAN port? Almost every time, the answer is just pass it on to the target host. Thinking NAT is a security feature makes your network MUCH less secure.

As for privacy - you can fingerprint individual devices pretty trivially, and with privacy extensions for SLAAC you can only tell what /64 network it's coming from, which is no more information than IPv4 (unless you're behind CGNAT, but frankly being behind a 4-to-4 CGNAT shouldn't count as internet access because you literally can't get incoming connections.)

[Dagger2]

Having enough address space to not need to NAT is hardly an anti-feature.

I don't have any hard stats, but NAT seems to be very rare in v6 deployments. You don't really hear of ISPs using it. I'm certain you could find some if you looked hard enough, but mostly it's not a thing.

[preisschild]

NAT was never intended for security and privacy.

IPv6 security is like IPv4 security: Firewalls

For privacy IPv6 uses Security Extensions, which shuffles your ipv6 ip.