I'm asking why did the create IPv6 instead of a version of IPv4 with an expanded address (IPv4-version 2)? Why did they not do an incremental change instead of a whole new thing?
It's a distinction without a difference. Any protocol with addresses larger than 32 bits will necessarily be incompatible with IPv4, so what does it matter whether there's a "4" or a "6" in the name?
IPv6 seems to be a whole lot more complicated than just upping the number of bits used for addresses. Its like they were trying to solve a bunch of things in addition to the address range.
Per the article it mostly has the same headers. What other things are you thinking of? Stateless autoconfig is complex but IPv4 has that option too. Privacy extensions are complex but they are extensions, not the core spec.
Develop the nanotech necessary for us to do upgrades of ASIC chips in routers, and ... it still wouldn't make a difference. You can't negotiate with etched silicon.
We did just expand the address space, is my point. The entire IPv4 range is mapped into IPv6 on a prefix - which is what you're suggesting. IPv4 can be represented in IPv6 as ::ffff:192.0.2.128 for example.
My whole point is that its irrelevant what we did or didn't do, because hardware routers are not software reconfigurable. Whether you expand the address space a little or a lot is irrelevant, because it will cost exactly the same to replace that hardware - in which case, if you have to expand the address space you should expand it by the most you possibly can in order to ensure you don't ever have to replace those routers again.
You can't just link to a long article and claim it shows things are different. What specific differences are you bothered about?
> The justification of why NAT is no longer necessary is nice in a theoretical sense but a pain in the butt if I'm trying to convert my network.
Having used IPv4 networks that used all publicly routeable addresses and ones that did not, the former have always been much nicer, even at a purely practical level of "I want to connect to my work VPN and have it work".
> You can't just link to a long article and claim it shows things are different. What specific differences are you bothered about?
It is a long article listing all the differences - my original question was why did they decide to make all those changes instead of just expanding the address space. All of the changes except for the change to the size of the address space bother me.
> Having used IPv4 networks that used all publicly routeable addresses and ones that did not, the former have always been much nicer, even at a purely practical level of "I want to connect to my work VPN and have it work".
Did you setup your work network for IPv6 or did someone else do it?
My original question was about what justified an obvious problematic change that is celebrating 20 years with only a 10% adoption.
> It is a long article listing all the differences - my original question was why did they decide to make all those changes instead of just expanding the address space. All of the changes except for the change to the size of the address space bother me.
What specific changes? Give me your top 3.
> Did you setup your work network for IPv6 or did someone else do it?
My work network isn't set up for IPv6, that's where I had the problem.
> My original question was about what justified an obvious problematic change that is celebrating 20 years with only a 10% adoption.
What makes you think an address-space-only change would have been less "problematic" or more rapidly adopted? Because as far as I can tell there's no significant difference between "just expanding the address space" and IPv6.
