[jedberg]

What's interesting to me is that they always had this cost, but in the past it was always baked into the cost of anything that used a public IP (namely EC2).

The prices for IPv4 addresses finally got so high that they had to break it out into a separate charge because otherwise it would be too much to bake into the cost of everything. I also completely believe them when they say they are doing it to force people to be more intentional about their use of public IPv4.

And of course it's a great way to get people to move to IPv6, since those are still "free" (in quotes because those prices are still baked into the things that support them).

[jenny91]

> And of course it's a great way to get people to move to IPv6, since those are still "free" (in quotes because those prices are still baked into the things that support them).

They are basically free because there is no shortage of them.

[jedberg]

The costs to AWS are having to upgrade all their routers and any other equipment that handles IP (including the management cards in each physical host).

[vel0city]

What percentage of their routers were acquired pre-IPv6? S3 wasn't publicly available until 2006, EC2 followed later. Was most enterprise networking equipment in the mid 2000's still without IPv6 support?

[tormeh]

There is no way AWS has any equipment that is not IPv6-ready. These things are replaced about every 5 years or so. I bet it's all software that assumes IPv4, which is arguably worse.

[zokier]

AWS is selling still M4 instances that originally date from 2015, nearly 10 years ago https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2015/06/introduci...

[kjs3]

AWS is holding onto those routers running something earlier than, what, IOS 12.4 from 2005? And all those servers with iDRAC6s from, what, 2012?

Some day people will stop pretending IPv6 support is something that hasn't been ubiquitous in network gear for a decade or more.

[jedberg]

The gear might support it in theory, but may not actually have sufficiently powerful CPUs or enough RAM to actually handle all the traffic. Also there is a bunch of software in between that needs upgrades.

If it were easy and straightforward they would have done it years ago. The fact that even today most things AWS don’t support ipv6 tells me that it’s hard.

[kjs3]

If it were easy and straightforward they would have done it years ago.

You have absolutely no idea what their constraints are or what their IPv6 decision making process is. Neither do I. It might be operational issues. It might be legacy code. It might just be because they've figured not doing it makes them more money or because they think not enough customers are asking for it. Hell, it could be as simple as the right executive thinking "IPv6 is a fad" and roadblocking. But it's not "because the hardware doesn't support it"; that's a long ago solved problem. And AWS designs/builds their own networking gear, so they aren't waiting on Cisco or whomever to give them what they need...they would have done it years ago.

[jedberg]

> You have absolutely no idea what their constraints are or what their IPv6 decision making process is.

Yes I do. I've talked to them about it in depth.

> But it's not "because the hardware doesn't support it";

I never said the hardware doesn't support it. I said the hardware needs upgrades to support it at their scale, which includes software updates to the hardware, as well as the operations around said hardware.

It's been a priority for them for years and customers have been asking for years. It's not done because it requires a lot of work and capital. Hopefully the revenue they bring in from charging for IPv4 will help offset the cost of upgrades.

[organsnyder]

Surely by now all of their equipment can support IPv6 with at most a firmware upgrade?

[spott]

Did they reduce the cost of everything that it was baked into? Did EC2 instances get cheaper?

[jedberg]

If history is any indication, they would either reduce the cost or just not raise it for a while. AWS is usually pretty good about keeping their profit percent steady and adjusting prices accordingly.