[fluoridation]

>Ever tried to call someone over the internet? Well, now you need a publicly reachable device.

Uhh... Is this the '90s? People don't type in IP addresses (or phone numbers, back in the day) to connect with other people anymore. They connect to a common, publicly reachable server that deals with peers being behind NAT.

[arianvanp]

Most video calling software uses STUN NAT hole punching and not central relay servers. You are definitely publicly routed when you call through Google Meet or WhatsApp or FaceTime

[lazylizard]

https://atscaleconference.com/calling-relay-infrastructure-a...

if i read this right, whatsapp calls go thru relay servers?

[stavros]

To be fair, I think Google Meet with multiple participants still uses a relay server, instead of N^2 streams, but I may be wrong.

[jdiff]

Now you've got significant additional latency, which is why this is very often not what actually occurs in these situations if it's at all avoidable.

[aboardRat4]

It doesn't really matter. Any communications provider must keep call records for the FSB, so routing them through central servers and recording there is the only option anyway.

[jdiff]

Of course it matters. STUN isn't theoretical, it's in actual, practical use across a great many things. There's plenty of things that aren't "calls" in a telecommunications sense. Discord, Telegram, Zoom, Slack, Jitsi, and far more. And there are plenty of other things entirely that use the same tactics to get direct peer-to-peer connections.

[aboardRat4]

>Discord, Telegram, Zoom, Slack, Jitsi

All of them are blocked for not complying with government's regulations where I live.

[jdiff]

That is a quite extreme outlier, then. Hardly relevant to the global IPv6 and peer-to-peer conversation we're having here, and your objection still only applies to one narrow use of the technology under discussion.

[aboardRat4]

>That is a quite extreme outlier, then. Hardly relevant to the global IPv6 and peer-to-peer conversation we're having here

It's China with it's 1bn of internet users and 2bn+ devices .

If you're happy to exclude half of the internet from your "global peer-to-peer conversation", then you don't need ipv6 either, just use the Chinese IPs for your own purposes, there are plenty of them.

Actually this is the attitude I am seeing from the ipv6 zealots all the time: blatant disregard of reality. Nobody wielding and non-negligible amount of power wants peer-to-peer communication. Companies don't want it, governments don't want it, large masses of people who want a person with a vested interest to be responsible for the link quality don't want it.

What ipv6 zealots don't realize is that ipv6 will not bring them their coveted p2p, because, guess what, incoming connections are to peasant computers are blocked by ISPs by default.

[nish__]

Where do you live?

[mnau]

Not OP, but he posted "provider must keep call records for the FSB", i.e. Russia.

[patmorgan23]

May I introduce you to our Lord and Savior the Domain Name System.

[stavros]

How do you think this works, exactly?