1. Sites that help shoppers choose can add a big visual red flag to any ISP that doesn’t support IPv6. Consumers don’t know what IPv6 is by and large but they do understand seeing a big red flag.
2. Same thing for websites. Add a banner that says “hey your ISP doesn’t support proper internet connectivity which this site utilizes. Contact them to let them know that you are having internet issues.” Again, consumers do not know what’s IPv6 is, but they do know what annoying banners are.
(It’s true that you can use cellular for your home internet, but I consider that extremely compromised.)
This is one of those “if everyone just” solutions that doesn’t work because shopping websites would never do that. Amazon has tons of evidence that even the slightest bits of friction result in noticeable drops in sales.
I don't think I bothered asking them again!!
(Edit "them" = Virgin Media)
But the way that they dealt with the whole thing smelt very "we don't know what we're talking about", enough to put us off.
And shifting all the IP space about would have had costs with very little return, so little business appetite to go through it.
I only found out because I could no longer access a swath of things I used to be able to.
not virgin media, but in the EU
That plus other ISPs v6 implementations breaking things randomly, I understand why they don't bother.
This has taken pressure off the IPv4 legacy address pool, reducing the urgency for older providers.
End-users are typically completely unaware of whether their traffic is being carried over IPv6 or IPv4, and so simply do not care one way or the other. (This particular post is more than likely being made over IPv6, since news.ycombinator.com has an IPv6 address and my OS, browser, router and ISP all support IPv6 straight out of the box, as is now true for the majority of users in my country.)
IPv6 not being supported in many places means the internet is more centralised, less likely to use proper p2p tech- because it's a lot harder to make it work rather than throwing up a TURN box and relaying everything.
"The latency? Who cares? IPv6 sometimes breaks right now" - because nobody is testing it, so why should people be the first to support it? There's no easy upside.
The only real upside for businesses is not having to pay for increasingly expensive IPv4 allocations. But they don't really care, its not nearly expensive enough yet. Customers will get GCNAT, businesses will continue as normal.
All that will happen is that the internet gets slower and less equal.
Which is exactly the same thing that's happening with inefficient memory hungry software: people either have to buy a more expensive laptop or they have a shitty experience.. Nobody is advocating for them, they just feel things getting shittier year on year and many are just choosing to avoid technology instead.
Realistically nobody outside some devoted HN readers are going to self host their own content. At best you'd see something like netflix trying to offload their video hosting costs onto their customers.
bittorent has been around for decades and nobody used it. They emailed files to themselves instead, or used dropbox. This all happened before the ipv4 shortage and people getting moved to CGNAT.
no reason this has to be centralised.
in fact, Jitsi uses p2p with WebRTC until a third person joins the call: then migrates the call to be relayed.
A really nice latency win.
ISPs had/have whole groups trying to stomp it out.
And it was a nightmare due to NAT even then.
It just got worse with CGNAT.
Even Linux distros push you so direct downloads now rather than pointing to trackers.
BitTorrent only has healthy usage for content that’s untenable to host legitimately.
Also, hey now - I have a lot of (actual) Linux disk images, and it works well for that!
It's almost always faster than anything else available, and ipv6 would make that method of sending files closer to the default for most people.
Having VOIP in games or 1v1 lobbies is, in the strictest sense, "hosting" something in the same way.
FD: I work in video games so I speak from this bias.
Isn't self hosting, and small, private/semi-private communities the only way forwards for much of the internet? AI has made content extremely valuable, which in turn has started to destroy the openness of the web. Things are getting more and more siloed, with entry fees.
There's a world where self hosting comes back in a big way. AI ironically makes it much easier.
How about Xbox/PS multiplayer/P2P gaming? Hosting a Minecraft server?
When Skype first came out it was P2P, but had to come up with the "supernode" concept (basically STUN/TURN/ICE) because of NAT: now all of our communication methods basically have to phone into the mothership.
Do we want the Internet to be more centralized (possibly given more power to the tech bros) or more decentralized?
So p2p stuff still doesn’t work without explicit configuration that rules out 99% of your users. It’s super annoying.
It's a shame because if we could only get over stateful firewalling we'd be one step closer to the impossible task of using voice chat in console video games.
Right now they don't have that of course and the only hurdle is "NAT Types" which, as we all know, is a much easier problem to solve for the average person...
(this was sarcasm, if it wasn't clear).
If I'm with a small-time ISP that has to use CG-NAT because they don't have the cash to buy/lease enough IPv4 addresses to give one to each CPE WAN interface, then using things like Xbox/PS multiplayer/P2P gaming is no longer possible. Want to host a Minecraft server? Too bad.
Are those two use-cases "useful to the consumer"?
It wasn't meaningfully more difficult than setting up the server.
It’s gotten much worse.
It also just reduces resource waste (of labor time). Countries like China that have insufficient IPv4 addresses and political power have mandated it. One IP per home is manageable, for now, but CGNAT is really bad.
The reason to regulate in maybe 2000 or so was that staying with IPv4 led to NAT. NAT led to it being impossible for users to receive incoming connections. Inability to receive incoming connections led to (a) horrendous protocol complexity, (b) probably some applications never even being invented, and, (c) everybody using ultra-centralized services. Ultra-centralized services led to advertising-driven distortions of service utility, concentration of political and economic power, and choke points. Choke points led to surveillance state bullshit that's just fully ripening today.
And, yes, this was (in broad outline) foreseeable in 2000. I wasn't the only one.
Their core network has IPv6, but not their customers, 17% market share in telecom in the Netherlands.
Are there more?
PS: From the millions of customers' details leaked it sounds like their market share is a hell of a lot higher than 17%!
It's Optimum Communications and Frontier (my provider) that are really holding the numbers down at ~15% each. The latter is improving very slowly, but not a lot of evidence of change in the former.
Virgin Media exist for two reasons: first they were given a monopoly by their Tory chums (Thatcher) and, second, all ISPs are allowed to make you sign absurdly long, anti-competitive contracts (18 months is common). If ISPs were treated the same as utility suppliers we'd probably be in a better place.