IPv6
IPv6 is version 6 of the Internet Protocol (this definition needs IndieWeb-specific relevance).
Why?
There are numerous improvements in IPv6. The most pressing reason to implement IPv6 however is the increased address space. IPv4 uses 32-bit numbers to address devices connected to the internet. This means there are roughly 4.3 billion different addresses.
The way these addresses are assigned, broadly speaking, is a central organisation called the IANA (Internet Assingned Numbers Authority) assisgns blocks of addresses to each of the five RIR (Regional Internet Registries) who the in turn assign addresses to their respective ISPs. The IANA has run out of numbers to issue to each of the RIRs, and on September 24, 2015 ARIN ran out of IPv4 numbers in its free pool [1].
We've basically run out of IPv4 addresses. IPv6 however uses 128-bit numbers to address devices connected to the internet. Therefore running out of addresses is much less of a problem.
home.tylergillies.club would actually argue that the primary advantage of ipv6 in this space isn't the amount of available addresses (that is important), but rather that the most primary advantage is that there is no such thing as NAT in ipv6. In home.tylergillies.club's opinion NAT is the bane of the internet and why we aren't already living in a p2p utopia.
How
The software side of things should be relatively easy. For example, in nginx its as simple as adding a
listen [::]:80;
line in the server block.
Getting the server itself connectable over IPv6 can be a little more tricky.
If you do not have native ipv6 support from your ISP you can configure a tunnel from Hurricane Electric's Pv6 Tunnel Broker. They have a nice form you fill out and they have a configuration dropdown for your operating system. If you run into any difficulty home.tylergillies.club will be more than happy to assist ( tjgillies@nospam-gmail.com)
IndieWeb Examples
Examples of IndieWeb community members whose personal sites support IPv6:
- David Shanske on https://david.shanske.com/ since 2014-12-25.
- Christopher De Vries on https://idolstarastronomer.com/
- ...add yourself here!
IndieWeb Projects
IndieWeb projects that support IPv6:
- All App Engine projects (automatically), including e.g. Bridgy
Hosting
These web hosting providers support IPv6:
- Google App Engine. Details; also on custom domains.
- Linode. Details.
- DigitalOcean. Details.
- AWS. Details (VPC), Details (other services).
These CDN providers support IPv6:
See Also
- Blog that posts good analyses of IPv6: https://www.potaroo.net/ (feel free to find & add specific posts from that blog to this page)
- Criticism: unclear why ipv6 is taking so long (theories: broken incentives, some design issues)
- https://tailscale.com/kb/1134/ipv6-faq/
At Tailscale we believe the main reason for the slow IPv6 rollout is that it simply has not been able to provide enough direct value, when deployed as a hybrid in parallel with IPv4. The intention was to deploy IPv6, then retire IPv4 completely, in which case IPv6 would have made the Internet overall simpler and cheaper to manage, which is a big benefit. Unfortunately, this value doesn’t materialize until the very end, after IPv6 has been fully deployed to billions of devices. This means companies usually will not recoup the costs of IPv6 deployment on a predictable timeline, which makes investment hard.