[Hobadee]

That's a gripe I have with IPv6. There are too damn many special networks and addresses!

With IPv4 I can easily remember 10.0.0.0/8 and 192.168.0.0/16, but I can't remember the other one off the top of my head. (172.16.0.0/12 I think?). Multicast is 224.x.x.x/x IIRC, but definitely need to look that one up when I need it.

IPv6 has SO many special networks. Network. Public. Multicast. Link local. (Which isn't like an IPv4 link local, but apparently it can actually be on the LAN? IDK - I was just learning about it earlier today.) And every interface seems to have about 5 different addresses of each type.

[oarsinsync]

Amusingly, there a lot more special IPv4 networks that you just don't know about too. e.g. Link local IPv4 is 169.254.0.0/16. It just isn't auto-configured on every IPv4 interface by default, like fe80::/10 is on IPv6 interfaces, and the TCP/IP stacks on most platforms do not enforce the link-local properties of it in IPv4 like they do in IPv6.

It's like the difference between HTML and a strictly typed language. Permissiveness and flexibility is both a blessing and a curse. As with a lot of things, which thing it is in any given situation depends greatly on the situation.

[9dev]

For almost all cases, there is absolutely zero need to ever remember addresses, or dealing with them directly. Give your devices proper names, and your router’s DNS will handle resolution automatically.

There is no point in your network having sequential addresses, so you don’t need DHCP; routers advertise configuration, clients know where to look for it.

IPv6 is amazing, if you let it handle connectivity without trying to micromanage it.

[Ekaros]

I think this is the big hangup. Wanting to micromanage each and every address. Instead of letting it just manage itself. Reminds me on some level of the pet vs cattle of containers and servers. Mental switch is needed. And many are resistant towards this.

[globular-toast]

One thing I've noticed is if people have spent a long time learning something they are incredibly reluctant to switch to something that no longer requires that knowledge. It's like driving an automatic car when you've already learnt to drive manual. I see this pattern everywhere and people are definitely reluctant to give up their hard-earned v4 knowledge.

Remembering IP addresses... How quaint!

[mixmastamyk]

Sounds like me. My concern, if one just forgets everything, how does one know if their router, firewall, etc are too permissive? Security is still my responsibility.

And one still needs to pay attention for ipv4, so what is the benefit? A simultaneous half-vigilant, half-careless stance is not workable.

[aboardRat4]

What do you mean by "give your devices proper names"?

[preisschild]

probably hostnames. So you can easily connect to them via mDNS <hostname>.local

[aboardRat4]

Does Android do mDNS?

[9dev]

Just plain old hostnames really.

[aboardRat4]

Hostnames are either in a static hosts file, which you need to distribute to your machines somehow (probably using older names or raw addresses, which you do not know, because need the names in the first place), or a DNS, and for most people the DNS is under ISP's control.

Even if you have your own DNS server out there somewhere, you still need to allow a bit of DNS hijacking from your ISP in order to receive that verification SMS and enter the code into the ISP's log-in page.

DNS is a great thing, but just too much of a pain to configure.

[9dev]

Any bog-Standard home router will resolve hostnames on your LAN, and that’s everything you require in most cases. No ISP involvement at all.

[aboardRat4]

Not every bog standard home router can do ndp proxying.

[preisschild]

mDNS handles this too and is zero-configuration.

[aboardRat4]

Does your Android phone do mDNS?

[patmorgan23]

You forgot 127.0.0.0/8 for loopback, 100.64.0.0/10 for CG-NAT, and 203.0.113.0/24 and 0.0.0.0/8

[ozim]

Why do you need to remember that when you can look it up?

Important part is knowing there are special networks.

[throw0101a]

> IPv6 has SO many special networks. Network. Public. Multicast. Link local.

IPv4 has those exact same ones: link-local (169.254/16), multicast (224/4), public, private (RFC 1918).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_IP_addresses

IPv6 is (IMHO) simpler: 2001::/32 and anything else (either link-local (fe80), multicast (ff00), and ULA (fc)). So either it starts with a "2" or an "f".

[deknos]

but not on the same computer. and the application does not have to figure out which one it has to use.

[simoncion]

Yes on the same computer. Pretty much every multicast-capable host has a unicast address and has multicast groups that they join when they get an IP address. [0] Edge routers almost always have -at minimum- a global address and a "site-local" address. Any host that has multiple active interfaces can have multiple "categories" of addresses assigned to it.

You might also be unaware of the fact that network interfaces can usually be assigned multiple IPv4 addresses, just like they can be assigned multiple IPv6 addresses.

> ...the application does not have to figure out which one it has to use.

You might be surprised to learn that that's the job of the routing table on the system. Applications can influence the choices made by the system by binding to a specific source address, but the default behavior used by nearly everything is to let the system handle all that for you.

[0] You appear to be unaware that multicast addresses aren't assigned to a host. I suspect you're unaware that IPv6 removed the special-case "broadcast" address. It's now treated as what it actually is; the "all hosts" multicast address.