You can either get a block of /24 to announce yourself (you've got to cover all the technical setup and costs of this) or use their free 44net.connect service and just organise a wireguard tunnel.
You cannot use it for anything commercial.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/07/22/china-advanc...
Maybe Apple and Ford, but it's more than fair that DoD has large blocks since they created ipv4 to connect themselves to other networks. It was only 10 years ago that the US government decided to give up control of IANA.
There were and still are are other global networks -- none of them come close to being anywhere near as open or interoperable. What's the next closest, PSTN maybe?
Configuring my OS to prefer IPv6 addresses of DNS responses significantly reduced the number of web captchas I see (on NAT444 with native IPv6).
IPv4 is old and broken, use IPv6.
It's crazy I can get fiber to my house in the US, but not IPv6.
I was doing this back when I had BT in London, my internet speed back then was pretty abysmal and it would randomly drop routes- ironically this tunnel actually improved my internet (because of the routes not being dropped, not the speed).
And they can always tell your ISP if they don't like paying to connect to the tunnelling server they should just implement v6.
It wasn't always like this, but it was for me the last time I tried.
Our free tunnel broker service enables you to reach the IPv6 Internet by tunneling over existing IPv4 connections from your IPv6 enabled host or router to one of our IPv6 routers.
https://tunnelbroker.net/If they have enough v4 for all their customers, sure fine.
On v6 you don’t have that problem.
I strongly disagree. That's obsolete knowledge, thrown around by people who want to be considered security conscious but haven't actually updated their knowledge in many years. A statement with similar implications might be "security conscious operators require their users to rotate their passwords monthly", which is what a lot of people use to think a decade ago, and now what it really communicates is that you're talking to a dinosaur.
IPv6 will never replace IPv4 because it is a different protocol rather than merely a new version. The name is a lie.
No, it's not. If you really want a NAT there is no reason you can't use a NAT with ipv6. In fact, it can work even better because instead of using a random port for the translation, you can use a random ip address for each connection.
You're conflating the two parts of NAT: address translation and inbound filtering. A router can block any inbound traffic coming from WAN, even if the IPv6s on the LAN side are public.
In fact, hole punching for IPv4 shows this distinction. By default inbound traffic is blocked, but as soon as private host has opened up a connection, it is (indirectly) reachable and nameable (via the routers public IP + port).
BTW, static IPv4 NAT with public addresses on both sides exists as well.
And as you say, hole punching is still “PUBLIC IP” + port. Not an IP and any port you fancy unless the firewall was configured correctly.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe you’re confused, maybe IPv6 is just rubbish. Maybe all 3.
Otherwise, what are the practical differences?
But if you've ever had to deal with endpoint security, if you're just doing static rule based blocking/throttling, /32 or /24 blocking is often your best option. Thanks to CGNAT this often means having a pretty large impact since an ISP's residential customer might end up getting randomly assigned a "bad" address and the cooldown for these rules is often months long or more.
In IPv6 land, you can just block a /128 or even a /64 and rarely hit anyone else in the crossfire.
tracert -4 google.com
tracert -6 google.com
I do get very different hops and latency.
However for “happy eyeballs” algo to fallback to IPv4, latency needs to be very bad on IPv6.
Especially for DNS, browsers don’t wait “very long” for the AAAA (v6) record to be resolved when they already have the A record (v4) and will start the v4 connection after at max 50ms (iirc thats the spec value, but imo it is too long and most browsers wait less I think).
The good news is that if the AAAA still arrives later it will be cached, thus this only affects the first connection to a site.
As for the actual v6 connection being slower (lets say both A and AAAA come from cache) the browser will start a v6 connection and only fall back to v4 if the connection isn’t established within some time (I think the spec says 250ms).
And to make this all more complicated HTTP1/2/3 enter the decision matrix. I.e. should the browser rather try v4/http3 than v6/http2? Opinions probably differ.
All of this is also on the critical path to a website loading for the user, thats why all of those waits cannot be too long. At some point the benefit of the better protocol will be outweighed by waiting. Even worse if the website doesn’t support v6 and the wait was for nothing.
For many years and even how there are networks that advertise they can do ipv6 and hand out real addresses but nothing works.
IPv4 is old, very old. But how is it broken? It's literally been working just fine since it came out.
That there are limited addresses is something else: it doesn't mean it's broken.
I don't care that spying/surveillance devices have more trouble spying on me with IPv4 than with IPv6 and I don't care that some apps have a harder time establishing connection.
IPv4 works. SSH over IPv4 works. Browsing the Web over IPv4 works.
It is broken for you by upstream NAT and CGNAT.
The Internet was supposed to be a purely peer-to-peer network, where the addresses on each side of a connection pointed to an end node. That's why protocols like FTP or SIP break when NAT is used, and why you have to play games with port forwarding if you want to run services from your house (assuming you have a public IP address at all).
Because just about all applications are currently architected in such a manner.
When Skype first came out many moons ago it allowed peer-to-peer connections with clients, but a lot of clients were behind NAT (especially ones that could not do PCP or UPnP), so Skype had to come up with the notion of "super nodes" that could do relaying.
Protocols like STUN/TURN/ICE/etc had to be developed to deal with all of this blocking of traffic.
If clients could know their 'real' addresses and allow things like PCP (which is often needed for (e.g.) video games), then perhaps there could me less strictly consuming and more collaborating.
The whole idea of "consumer" and "server" nodes is so baked into how people think about networking they don't even realize it. But that's not how the Internet was intended to be in the first place.
And if you seriously believe that Dropbox appeared because of NAT, and not because people prefer out-of-the-box solutions, I can only suggest you to go out of your bubble, and discuss technical issues with random people.
"Intended" btw is not even an argument. Internet wasn't intended for many things which we happily do here.
And yes, Dropbox does exist because of NAT, or more generally the fact that "consumers" are second-class citizens on the Internet. If everyone had a publicly routed address and an entry in DNS - which is how the Internet was originally envisioned - we'd have solutions that don't require a third party server.
Both of your examples just show how deep the Stockholm syndrome is. IPv4's limitations have shifted the way people think about networking so much that they rarely even realize they're doing it. But this isn't the way it was supposed to be. "Intended" is completely valid when we're talking about how something has strayed from its original design and the ramifications of it.
I'm not naive enough to think that we can ever get rid of the "consumer" and "producer" ideas that have crept into everyone's head. But it's important to remember that these ideas came about only because of limitations in the protocol, not because they're some kind of natural law of how global networks function.
CG-NAT breaks all this. iroh relies on relays from people with non-broken internet (no CG-NAT).
Yes, and DynDNS too. Which is fine, cause it works, and that is what I said. The claim to which it replies is that people have to pay to Dropbox cause poor souls were stopped from sharing files using existing technologies like FTP by the damned IPv4, and not because they simply prefer an out-of-the-box GUI thing.
Relying on peer-to-peer relays also doesn't scale, which is why Skype dropped its supernode architecture.
Dropbox gained popularity *BECAUSE IT MADE IT EASY TO DO THIS WHEN YOU'RE STUCK BEHIND NAT TRASH*. By the time it was even a thought in anyone's brain the internet had already been ruined by that garbage.
It would never have existed in a world without NAT because it wouldn't have been needed, syncing data between computers you owned that all had publicly routable addresses is a much simpler problem.
Every ISP that has CGNAT v4 without providing full v6 needs to be shut down. They are either incompetent or actively choosing to make their users' service less useful to restrict them and/or encourage "upgrades". Internet service has a public routable IP address, period.
I'm sorry, but this claim is one of the brightest examples of false consenses effect I've seen in ages. People generally just prefer an icon on desktop to click/tap. And that's the reason Dropbox found its audience.
Dropbox gained popularity because none of us can or want to bother to do it with FTP, with the exception of a very small and determined minority.
Why do you think that even FANG engineers use cloud storage systems such as Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive/etc. Can't an elite software engineer put together a FTP server?
Why do you think Dropbox et al are still a thing in spite of projects such as Syncthing?
This is not the only instance where user experience and convenience show their value. Look at Docker, for example. The "aktually" crowd will be fast to say that anyone can do the same with chroot et al, but they will again be missing the whole point. It's the same thing why Microsoft tried to invest in Aspire even though Docker is here.
It's like complaining that people can buy bread when all they need to make their own is flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's completely besides the point, ain't it?
CGNAT works for you? Do you play video games at all? Because there are all sorts of people for which it doesn't.
The fact that you may be fortunate enough to get a publicly-accessible IPv4 address on your WAN interface does not mean everyone else is. This type of attitude seems to be akin to "I gots mine."
The last three companies I've worked at have all been IPv4 only. I set up IPv6 in our lab, but neither the SCADA software nor the PLCs we use support it at all, and none of my coworkers can troubleshoot it if problems pop up.
I've got a buddy that's a technical manager at an ISP and he'll straight up tell you they don't do IPv6 because he and his people don't know it.
Why would you not use ipv4?
But goodness, the infinite-subnets-of-same-size glitch is so amazing. I see companies all the time that struggle to subnet their sprawling enterprise. Different subnet sizes everywhere, fragmented networks, subnet migrations to try to defragment, so on.
Many orgs are so short-staffed and staffed with mediocre talent that they spend their days fighting fires and keeping their flawed current practices operating just well enough to keep the lights on and not cause outages or security breaches. Things like "optimizations" and "redesigns" of the IP stack, even in 2026, would be a 5-10 year journey without a dollar sign benefit attached to it. So they limp along until the transition is seamless and necessary or monetarily desireable.
Replicating even a simple ipv4 lan with mostly stable local addresses and some isp uplink is pretty complex, even assuming all the devices involved support ipv6, which they wont
It's much easier to run a dual stack with v4 for ease of use on the lan and v6 as an additional address that can change whenever and is only used to reach the wan
But the main reason you'd care would be if you can't get a public ipv4 address to NAT to. And if you can't get that, some of the internet breaks anyway.
There's a lot of edge cases to bite people still.
That said, something like 50% of users have working v6 now, which helps to file down the edges. Growth of v6 in the last 10 years has been much more significant than the previous 10 years. I suspect the next 10 years will be pretty significant, too.
I don't think many organizations are in a position to force adoption though.
You have mandates from say US government for government services and vendors and similar in some other countries. Some countries can force it through strong regulations on equipment sales. And then there's Jio (and maybe other ISPs) that have significant market power in some locales and a significant lack of v4 resources and can strongly encourage vendors and partners to support v6 for better service to users on their network.
First, IPv6 in the 90s and 00s is different from IPv6 today. Various extensions and standards have been added that make IPv6 administration easier than it was in the early days. I want to say RDNSS is one of them. Background: one of v6's early selling points was SLAAC, where DHCP could be disposed of and endpoints would auto-configure their own IPs in accordance with the network announced by a router. Problem is, without DHCP, there was no way to get DNS, and DHCPv6 wasn't widely deployed/it was discouraged... so how does one get a DNS server automatically? RDNSS came around to announce DNS servers from the router directly.
TLDR: Early IPv6 sucked more than today.
Second, it's simply a chicken-and-egg problem, particularly at the consumer network level. User-friendly IPv6 router configurations are still rare for home routers, and ISPs have simply dragged their feet. At this point, if we're going to have government mandating all manner of things for consumer products, we should be mandating IPv6 support on home routers and that ISPs delegate at least a /60 to each customer.
I’ve seen some truly unhinged takes here, my favourite ever being something along the lines of European cars not having cup holders because we don’t have drive-throughs in Europe… I have driven my Volkswagen across this continent and enjoyed many a hot beverage on the move.
I’ve come to learn that discussions on a lot of things, in English, usually end up as a comparison to the States, especially if it involves the healthcare sacred cow.
"On request" meaning you told your CPE equipment to send a DHCP-PD packet, i.e., you didn't have to call them and ask for something special with your account.
But if you are living in a Western country, then you are probably blessed with CGNAT-free residential internet.
Some carriers in my country have recently started to share the same IP between 4 customers, each having a port range (1-16363, ...), but you can always request a full IP for free.
I, unfortunately, have been on CGNATed residential internet since 2016, though I used to still get a public IP on request (they stopped doing that though.) I live in South East Asia, for context.
Without IPv6 my only choice would have been relying on a centralized service like Zerotier and Tailscale.
Worse is I have IPv6 connectivity for devices, yet still no open ports available, so no serving available. And I only receive a /64 so no delegation available through router.
So now it's Hurricane Electric tunnel to their nearest (in my city) hosted node for IPv6 and a prepaid 50 USD/year node (technically x2 since I wanted a backup to play around with) for IPv4 port forwarding.
Both options are acceptable because the needed infra is close by in the largest metroplex in Texas, it just sucks to have to do all this extra work to replicate what I could do with a dial-up ISP.
I'll say this - having LLM assistants handle the nasty routing and firewall rules needed to make this hodge podge work without needing to be a network engineer has been very helpful.
Personally, I had major issues with the 5g wan equipment and my network as well as a snafu with ordering... Sales rep put in the order for a static ip with a ssn based SMB account, but that got removed during provisioning and couldn't be added back. (And then billing issues because the account didn't get cancelled properly, either)
I was just looking at flipping back, but now it seems the default for new resi accounts is CGNAT. They say they'll give me a real IP upon request at no additional charge, but it's anyone's guess how long that holds out.
They don't do IPv6 at all.
Michigan USA.
Me as somewhat of a nerd, even doubt if I need a public IP, seeing how cyber security is looking today.
You can generally request to get off it though, at ~1-5$/m extra cost.
One of them I had to call phone support and they asked me why I wanted to turn it off. I said I wanted to run a server and they turned CGNAT off on my account.
> "China: 358M
> "Both countries have roughly the same population"
To save anyone else curious from looking it up - their populations are about 1.4 billion (1400 million) each.
Indeed a shared IP is arguably a benefit in that it makes fingerprinting harder.
If your ISP had customers who were interested it could spend $150k on a /19 block giving 8000 IPv4 addresses and charge an extra ₹100 a month for them and after two years it would be in profit.
In fact I think Jio and Airtel offer static IPs for residential use for something like ₹300 a month, which given how cheap IPv4 addresses are is a massive money spinner, but I have't spoken to anyone living in India about ISPs for a couple of years.
Lab-grown diamonds found a strong role as industrial components, which expanded overall demand for diamond materials and widened their use cases. IPv6 may follow a similar path, with adoption concentrated in newer and novel applications where IPv4 addresses were scarce.
IPv4 seems likely to remain in place for many existing applications, much like natural diamonds in jewelry, regardless of policy/advocacy views.