• StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 hours ago

    How is IPv6 harder to understand? It’s just IPv4 with all the uncommon stuff stripped out and put into optional headers (which IPv4 also has), and a much longer address now written in hex.

    CGNAT is just a fancy term for NAT done by a carrier. They get a special private IP address range for doing so, but fundamentally it’s still NAT.

    Now IP multicast, THAT is complicated for humans to understand. Especially the whole subscriber logic.

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      4 hours ago

      I’m taking this as a genuine question, so I’ll answer for myself personally. My mental model of IPv4 is quite simple. A computer doesn’t have an address unless you configure one for it, or a DHCP server gives it one. If you are on the same network and there’s no firewall, knowing the ip address lets you reach the computer. The router has one public facing IP address that all your devices have to share, which is inconvenient.

      In ipv6, a computer has two automatic addresses from the MAC address, a link local and a real one, but they aren’t interchangeable, and don’t always work. Instead of DCHP, there is something else that prevents ip collisions somehow, but dhcp also still exists sometimes.

      In my limited experience, i can never count on reaching a device by its hostname, but if i know a local ipv4 address, that’s enough, and they’re easy to remember since only the last part really changes. With ipv6 the address is too long and incomprehensible to remember.

      I love that ipv6 works better for computers, that you don’t have to worry about NAT traversal, but i don’t think it is too hard to understand why humans find using it day to day more confusing if they’re used to ipv4.