[GTALUG] IPv6 only WiFi hotspot

[James Knott]

On 2019-09-25 12:37 PM, Val Kulkov via talk wrote:
> I found myself connected to an IPv6-only WiFi hotspot a couple of
> weeks ago. In a small town in Greece.
>
> At first, I could not understand why I was getting DNS errors for so
> many sites. Then it occurred to me to check my connection with
> ifconfig, and voila: I had an IPv6 address, but no IPv4.
>
> In short:
> - Google, Wikipedia, Facebook worked fine
> - Expedia, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Flighthub, TripAdvisor, Travelzoo
> were not accessible
> - many sites found through Google were not accessible
>
> I am guessing that some Internet providers in Greece probably charge
> less for a service that does not involve allocating an IPv4 address
> for a downstream link. Still, considering that setting up an
> IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnel is relatively easy, I do not understand what stops
> these providers from setting up such a tunnel and using it for all of
> their downstream links who would be assigned an IPv4 address from a
> private address space.
>
> I also fail to understand why major travel sites such as Expedia are
> not yet IPv6-enabled. This makes no sense to me, especially
> considering that travelers are more likely than other categories of
> people to find themselves in an unusual hotspot with no access to
> public IPv4 address space.
>

The world is moving to IPv6 and in some places IPv4 isn't even
available, particularly in Asia.  Some companies, such as Bell, are not
moving for whatever reason.  I'm on Rogers and have had IPv6 with them
for over 3 years and I used a 6in4 tunnel for 6 years before that.  Some
companies, such as Comcast in the U.S., provide IPv6 and only provide
IPv4 with NAT.  That means their customers do not get a public IPv4
address at all.


Incidentally, here's an article I came across yesterday.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/belarus-becomes-first-country-to-make-ipv6-mandatory-for-isps/

IPv6 has been needed for a long time.  The longer people stick with
IPv4, the more there will be problems with using the Internet.