| To me that was the real strength in IPv6. (I know I know innefficient protocol with complex upgrade path lead to near negligible adoption) NAT "fixed" the problem of address exhaustion, but it killed the old internet. You cannot run your own network anymore. In the "old" times, I gave you a phone number or IP address and that's it, direct connection. All anyone could do was show up and take the computer to stop that. Sure there's a phone company or ISP involved, but they just powered the pump, you completely controlled what went through it. Now I can't do that. They ran out of addresses and I share an address with X unknown others. So I can't give you a home address, just to a bank of doors. I could give you an apartment number, but that's also shifting transparently, so num X to you is num Y to someone else. IPv6 would have solved the problem of exhaustion while preserving the right to an address. I could be some number permanently and you could reliably find a connection to my system using it. In that world I could set up a private DNS service in my house no one can alter without physically plugging in. Then have that store records to other addresses. Every part of that chain requires someone finding you and showing up at your door to disrupt. Instead now I have to pay digital ocean 5 bucks to keep an address for me so anything can find me via them. A bunch of servers in my home effectively an island without a coordinate until DO points me out on request. Like having all mail addresses be to the local town hall for them to forward to me. Sure maybe you trust your local town hall, but they are fundamentally beholden to someone else. With IPv6 support and adoption a whole network could be set up independent of any other authority besides BGP. Which requires nation-state levels of mobilization just to block an address, with fallout affecting literally thousands of others. They'd have to nuke a block to suppress any site, only for that site to find another address and be back to normal within minutes. Instead they do a WHOIS, send a scary email and boom, you're unknown, unfindable and disconnected. Hoping that word of mouth brings people to your new "address" exactly like losing your phone (and SIM) while abroad. I know it sucks as a protocol but v6 to me is a massive extremely important development that would change how the internet, and from that all communication, works. |
Private individuals have access to IPv4 blocks and maintain their own soverign networks. That fact doesn't change the reality that most people most of the time pay a network operator (ISP, Telecom) to operate their network. Network operators aren't going anywhere, and these network operators still maintain full control over how packets transit their network. In the case of WWAN networks, they will also know roughly where you are.
All IPv6 does is expand the address space and put the price of an address within reach of anyone... but it doesn't change the knowledge or hardware required to run your own network.