[HN Gopher] Roku devices don't support IPv6 in 2023 and it's cos...
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       Roku devices don't support IPv6 in 2023 and it's costing ISPs
        
       Author : robbiet480
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2023-03-06 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (community.roku.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (community.roku.com)
        
       | Awelton wrote:
       | I just bought a brand new motherboard that still has VGA and PS/2
       | ports, so I would guess IPv4 isn't going away any time soon. Old
       | standards seem to hang around forever for legacy support. Why an
       | ISP would assume they could set up an IPv6 only network is beyond
       | me.
        
         | outworlder wrote:
         | Not sure why we are comparing hardware with software here. Your
         | motherboard can run IPv6 just fine :)
         | 
         | You probably bought a server motherboard, so the ports are
         | there for old KVM-type devices. Good luck buying a consumer
         | motherboard with VGA and PS/2 ports.
        
         | drdaeman wrote:
         | Unless it's a server motherboard, it most likely supports
         | DisplayPort or HDMI, possibly even over Thunderbolt/USB-C?
         | 
         | Legacy compatibility is not an issue (unless it makes things
         | complicated, unreliable or limited in the name of backward
         | compatibility). Lack of modern functionality is.
         | 
         | Similarly, presence IPv4 support in devices is not a problem -
         | lack of IPv6 support is. The comparable issue would be if you
         | have bought a new motherboard but all it supports is VGA - now,
         | that'd be quite inconvenient (even if it's a server board that
         | runs headless 99.99% of the time).
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | This reminded me of an e300-8D I recently parted ways with.
           | Bought new in 2017 but only had VGA out from the BMC... I
           | gave away the VGA monitor I was using with it. Looking back
           | I'm surprised I didn't just buy an active converter, it was
           | such a pain to pull that monitor out :p.
        
       | skee8383 wrote:
       | No one cares about ipv6. not even VPS providers, it's always
       | turned off by default unless you want to go through the pain of
       | enabling with commands. no thanks.
        
       | ehPReth wrote:
       | I really hate Roku as a product, ads on the home screen and the
       | remote(??) of something I paid for? No thanks. Though, I will
       | concede it is cool to load mostly "unapproved" apps if the
       | developer shares the app ID. (Certain x-rated sites liked to
       | advertise they have a Roku app, something that would never make
       | its way to most other TV boxes)
        
         | HelloMcFly wrote:
         | I went away from it, but ultimately came back because its
         | universal search worked best for me. Fire Stick, Chromecast w/
         | Google TV, and Apple TV all routinely were unable to inform me
         | that a show or movie I searched for was available for me to
         | stream on a service I already subscribed to.
         | 
         | At least on my Roku I can turn most of the fluff off, and I'm
         | much more confident I won't spend money renting something I
         | have available to stream for free. Beyond the basics of 4K and
         | HDR support, I didn't realize this would be the most important
         | thing to me.
         | 
         | Edit: saw this article not 60 seconds later haha
         | https://www.theverge.com/23621907/streaming-tv-boxes-roku-
         | am...?
        
         | adamwk wrote:
         | I also think it's appalling how much input lag there is with
         | these devices. It's 2023 and there's seconds long delay between
         | input and response with these things. I get they're cheap but
         | how much CPU is needed to move a cursor?
        
           | lockhouse wrote:
           | I've tried pretty much all of them except Apple TV, and I'd
           | say Roku is the _least_ laggy overall. Our FireTV devices
           | became so laggy they were unusable. Android TV isn't too bad,
           | but Roku feels a bit more responsive to me.
        
         | some-guy wrote:
         | I promise you, LG's WebOS is worse in almost every conceivable
         | way.
        
         | luhn wrote:
         | That's par for the course nowadays, unfortunately. I couldn't
         | name a smart TV system that doesn't have ads.
         | 
         | Roku is far from being the worst offender, my LG C2 that I paid
         | out the nose for has the majority of the home screen taken up
         | with ads.
        
           | Scubabear68 wrote:
           | Apple TV doesn't have ads.
        
             | goosedragons wrote:
             | It basically has ads with the default home screen setup to
             | show you what's new on ATV+ and iTunes. Slightly more
             | tasteful than McDonald's McDelivery Banner ads but it's
             | essentially the same.
        
               | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
               | The background-banner at the top of the Home Screen shows
               | banners from the currently highlighted app - if you
               | remove the AppleTV+ app from the top-row of your home-
               | screen then you don't see any promotions of any kind.
        
           | dimgl wrote:
           | > I couldn't name a smart TV system that doesn't have ads.
           | 
           | What do you consider to be ads? Apple TV is pretty tasteful
           | in this regard. It never feels like I'm getting served an ad
           | at all. In fact, with all Apple products I never feel like
           | I'm getting served an ad.
        
             | yamtaddle wrote:
             | I feel the same way about tvOS, but I've not used it
             | without being subscribed to Apple TV, so I don't know if it
             | pushes that hard if you don't have it. Otherwise the
             | default screen has their service's stuff mixed in with
             | other services (if they support that--some don't, like IIRC
             | Netflix) and the amount of promotion isn't worse than if
             | you're in another streaming app and they're trying to show
             | you shows you're already paying for, that they want you to
             | watch--and the actual app menu has none of that, no ads at
             | all.
        
               | dools wrote:
               | > but I've not used it without being subscribed to Apple
               | TV, so I don't know if it pushes that hard if you don't
               | have it
               | 
               | It doesn't. The only apple product I'm pushed to use is
               | iCloud on my phone and computer which is quite aggressive
               | because it's a notification you can't disable .
        
             | manicennui wrote:
             | Apple TV shows promotions for apps in the top row. These
             | are ads. They are often shows the user isn't interested in,
             | but the service is interested in pushing.
        
               | nemothekid wrote:
               | I'm pretty sure thats a feature for any app you put in
               | the top row. If you have Netflix in that row it will show
               | you recommended.
        
             | scrame wrote:
             | my samsung has a permanent ad for appletv, and I'm an apple
             | hater, so I will never buy it and I can't easily make it go
             | away, which makes me hate it more.
        
       | winstonprivacy wrote:
       | IPv6... Can it just go away already?
       | 
       | Adoption has been declining for years. Many devices don't support
       | it. Many services seemingly support it but break in strange ways.
       | 
       | And not to mention it's a subtle and yet powerful privacy attack
       | vector.
        
         | Plasmoid wrote:
         | IPv6 adoption has been increasing.
        
         | dmd wrote:
         | On what metric does this look like it's declining?
         | https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
        
           | eqvinox wrote:
           | That graph also shows another interesting bit: it seems that
           | IPv6 usage is higher on weekends -- i.e. home internet
           | connections. So it's even worse that Roku of all people
           | doesn't support IPv6, considering IPv6 is ahead in homes.
        
         | ArchOversight wrote:
         | > Adoption has been declining for years.
         | 
         | Source?
         | 
         | > Many devices don't support it.
         | 
         | Source?
         | 
         | > Many services seemingly support it but break in strange ways.
         | 
         | Got any examples?
         | 
         | > And not to mention it's a subtle and yet powerful privacy
         | attack vector.
         | 
         | This is the only statement you've made that has any merit, and
         | even then very little.
         | 
         | Privacy Addresses have been a thing for a while, and most OS's
         | support it. No longer are there stable addresses being
         | generated from the MAC address, and all outbound connections
         | are now on randomized addresses from the /64 that is announced
         | through SLAAC.
         | 
         | Just like IPv4 having a single address for a household, IPv6
         | has a /64 per household (although many ISP's let you request
         | more if you want).
         | 
         | IPv6 is growing, more and more traffic is going over IPv6 and
         | it is not likely to go away any time soon.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | Taking some points from their side not because I necessarily
           | agree with the conclusion but just because this comment comes
           | off a little strong:
           | 
           | Adoption hasn't been declining by any measure but the
           | adoption rate isn't as high as it was 5 years ago. Of course
           | eventually the rate has to slow down because there is less
           | and less to change over so that doesn't mean much. Overall
           | though adoption has continued to increase without any long
           | term dips.
           | 
           | Many devices don't support it is probably one I consider true
           | though. It's getting way better as the years go on but it's
           | fair to say the world isn't past IPv4 only devices in
           | households by any measure. Typically embedded products are
           | the worst. Home security stuff, point of sale gear, older or
           | just crappy media devices, oddly some IoT type devices like a
           | fridge. Plenty of gear also supports it but just very poorly.
           | Of those that do not all understand NAT64 either so while
           | they may support IPv6 but they don't necessarily work without
           | IPv4 (this also getting better as more services move to
           | supporting IPv6 too).
           | 
           | SIP and WebSocket are examples of some protocols that can
           | break services under NAT64, especially with so much of the
           | web being v4 only. They should be fine if the world ever
           | moves 100% to IPv6 though. The era of misconfigured AAAA
           | records wreaking havoc thankfully seems to have come to an
           | end.
           | 
           | I don't have anything to add on the privacy discussion, I
           | think you nailed it there.
        
         | ehPReth wrote:
         | hmmm no thanks. i'd very much like to not have to deal with NAT
         | anymore, just some firewall rules instead.
         | 
         | do temporary addresses do nothing?
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | There remains the problem that we've run out of IPv4 addresses.
         | I agree that IPv6 was not the ideal solution to this, but it's
         | the only solution we have.
        
       | scarface74 wrote:
       | > First off I despise both Apple and that other evil empire
       | (house of mouse) I want nothing to do with either of them.
       | 
       | It's funny that the poster despises Apple. But is okay with a
       | company where the CEO explicitly said that they want to make
       | money not via hardware sells, but via selling user's television
       | watching behavior.
       | 
       | Everything about the Roku is a janky experience. From the ad that
       | takes up the Home Screen to the hard coded buttons that go to the
       | highest bidder.
       | 
       | I have one remote that still has a useless Rdio button.
        
         | ehPReth wrote:
         | > via selling user's television watching behavior
         | 
         | Gross. I hate how commonplace this is becoming. Even your basic
         | non-Roku-OS TV people are saying never to connect it to the
         | internet as it'll just fingerprint stuff on your HDMI and tell
         | advertisers you're watching Game of Thrones
        
           | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
           | I used to think like that, then I realised that my life is
           | not actually being made worse because of it. The TV doesn't
           | know who I am, personally (I'm not signed-in to any accounts)
           | and it's all just mass aggregate data that will probably end-
           | up being ignored by network-execs so why worry?
        
       | frankreyes wrote:
       | There's no ipv4 nat for IPv6?
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | There is but it'd require a special device at each customer
         | location. CG-NAT (a.k.a. double NAT) is probably what they did
         | because it only requires a couple of centralized boxes then the
         | rest is deployed like a normal dual stack network and your
         | average home Netgear router works with it out of the box.
         | 
         | NAT in the other direction (i.e. IPv6 local client, IPv4 remote
         | host) is easier, and I'd be very surprised if they didn't
         | already have that given the number of v4 only sites, but
         | doesn't really help the v4 only devices.
        
           | frankreyes wrote:
           | Sorry flop the numbers. I meant public V6, private V4 nat.
        
       | hitpointdrew wrote:
       | Who the hell is giving their Roku a public IP? How is this
       | remotely a problem? This is 100% not the fault of Roku, and 100%
       | the fault of the ISP. The ISP should have an IPv6 to IPv4 gateway
       | built into their modem/router. You have a WAN port that is IPv6
       | and an LAN port that IPv4.
       | 
       | IPv6 for local networks, makes no sense is completely
       | unnecessary, and is a hill I will die on. IPv4 is here to stay.
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | > IPv6 for local networks, makes no sense is completely
         | unnecessary, and is a hill I will die on. IPv4 is here to stay.
         | 
         | my mobile phone in the UK on one of the big 4 carriers only has
         | IPv6 addresses
         | 
         | and only has IPv6 connectivity
         | 
         | (using 464XLAT)
        
         | ehPReth wrote:
         | who cares if it's "public" if it's firewalled; likely by
         | default
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | link local ipv6 can be deterministic (no more shuffling IPs
         | around!) and no more silly dhcp services running on anaemic
         | hardware.
         | 
         | Ditto for NAT, where devices can reach v6 endpoints (though
         | stateful firewalls should stick around!).
         | 
         | Honestly, I really hate change. but ipv6 does have some upsides
         | and rather than complicate things, embracing actually
         | simplifies things.
         | 
         | The issue is that we have a lot of sunk cost on how we bolt on
         | shit to ipv4 to make it passable in the modern day, and we
         | begrudge having to relearn what we think is solved.
        
         | carlhjerpe wrote:
         | How do you reach all 2^128 ips when you only have 2^32
         | destinations?
         | 
         | IPv6 makes sense everywhere.
        
         | bonsaibilly wrote:
         | Congratulations on completely failing to understand how CGNAT
         | loads work & their costs, and jumping to a wildly incorrect
         | understanding of the situation
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | Prediction: CGNAT processing costs for gigabit subscribers
           | will become neglible in the medium term (3-5 years). Not that
           | it's wildly expensive today...
        
           | merbanan wrote:
           | MAP-T/MAP-E moves the CG-NAT functionality to the CPE. 60x
           | users per IPv4 address should be doable.
        
           | outworlder wrote:
           | Yeah, and that's currently the top comment.
           | 
           | Which leads me to believe that the main barrier to IPV6 is
           | just that people don't want to re-learn anything.
        
             | dpkirchner wrote:
             | I think the main barrier is that for most people IPv4 works
             | just fine and they've never experienced a problem that IPv6
             | would solve. Maybe they will, some day, like if Facebook
             | and Google shut down their IPv4 IPs.
        
             | JohnFen wrote:
             | > the main barrier to IPV6 is just that people don't want
             | to re-learn anything.
             | 
             | I disagree, actually. I think the main barrier is that
             | networking folks have been pretty bad at explaining this to
             | non-networking folks. IPv6 isn't exactly simple to
             | understand.
             | 
             | I'm a reasonably network-savvy guy, and I'm sure that I
             | understand less about IPv6 than I think I do. I just don't
             | know what parts I'm not understanding properly, and what
             | parts I just don't know about.
             | 
             | It's pretty hard to find good explanations of this stuff
             | that aren't aimed at networking experts.
        
             | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
             | Speaking for myself, but my main barrier to IPv6 adoption
             | is my ISP (Wave/Astound, Seattle eastside) still being
             | IPv4-only, despite having DOCSIS3.1 service.
             | 
             | I didn't think it was even possible to have DOCSUS3.1
             | without IPv6 :S
        
         | bastardoperator wrote:
         | Not going to lie, I just turn IPv6 off on my router because I
         | don't fully understand it and because I pay a little extra for
         | a block of 3 IPv4 addresses.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ArchOversight wrote:
         | The ISP said they got only a limited set of IPv4 addresses,
         | those are assigned to their CGNAT gateways. Which are
         | expensive, especially for an Indian Reservation, not the deep
         | pockets of some MSP.
         | 
         | The users are behind CG-NAT.
         | 
         | But instead of using IPv6 which is cheaper (no need to maintain
         | CG-NAT, translation devices, or deal with traffic that is being
         | routed way more expensively) the Roku devices are only
         | streaming over IPv4.
         | 
         | Each new user that adds an IPv4 only device adds additional
         | load the CG-NAT and additional capacity will need to be
         | provisioned. That is an additional expense and burden.
         | 
         | Most of my traffic at my house (on Comcast) is over IPv6,
         | because most if not all streaming services now support IPv6 for
         | content delivery, so the small amount of data that may need to
         | go over IPv4 when the majority can go over IPv6 reduces the
         | load on IPv4.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | Realistically they are already running a large scale NAT
           | device anyways, otherwise the v6 only clients wouldn't be
           | able to reach v4 only internet services (hello HN server),
           | and if they had planned to CG-NAT from the start it probably
           | could have all been done on the same pair of internet edge
           | routers for much less than 300k additional expense.
        
             | Symbiote wrote:
             | As the article says, the Roku traffic is the overwhelming
             | majority of that ipv4 traffic.
             | 
             | HN and similar mostly-text websites would barely show up on
             | the statistics.
        
           | brokencode wrote:
           | Why does the IPv4 address need to be publicly exposed outside
           | of a customer's LAN? I thought you could set up NAT on a
           | router to translate local IPv4 addresses to something IPv6
           | that is exposed publicly.
           | 
           | Is this simply bad planning from the ISP where they didn't
           | handle it correctly? Or is there something I'm not
           | understanding about NAT?
           | 
           | I think in an ideal world all devices would be using IPv6.
           | But I thought it would be common knowledge among network
           | engineers that many devices still use IPv4, so you have to
           | either handle it somehow or tell your customers that some of
           | their devices simply won't work.
        
             | ArchOversight wrote:
             | Because the IP address the Roku is trying to reach is an
             | IPv4 address. You can't just translate that to IPv6 and say
             | "good luck little packet".
             | 
             | If you translate at the customers router that's fine and
             | all, but now you have an IPv4 packet in an IPv6 packet,
             | that IPv6 packet needs to get routed to a device that knows
             | how to then turn it back into an IPv4 packet so that it can
             | then go travel on the open internet like the electrons
             | intended...
             | 
             | Once that IPv4 response come back, it needs to get
             | translated back to IPv6, sent to the customers edge, which
             | translates it back from IPv6 to IPv4 to send to the Roku
             | device.
        
               | brokencode wrote:
               | Oh, what a mess. I don't like that at all.
               | 
               | I was assuming that there was some way to translate the
               | IPv4 address of the server to an IPv6 one and process it
               | that way, putting the burden of supporting IPv6 on the
               | server side. I had no idea that Roku would actually need
               | to be exposing an IPv4 server to handle these requests.
               | 
               | That makes sense then that the ISP would need some number
               | of IPv4 addresses that it could use to communicate with
               | IPv4 servers then on behalf of IPv4 client devices.
               | 
               | Shame on Roku for perpetuating this problem.
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | CG-NAT (NATing centrally at the ISP's internet edge) is
             | cheaper/simpler than something like 464xlat (NATing v4
             | locally over v6) since you can do the former on 2 boxes
             | instead of 20,000. That said the 2nd option is much cooler
             | :).
        
               | ArchOversight wrote:
               | 464XLAT still requires IPv4 boxes on the edge to
               | translate IPv6 traffic back to IPv4. Whether that is two
               | boxes or 20,000, the same is true for other CG-NAT
               | solutions. Someone somewhere is bearing the cost of
               | translating.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Usually you need a special box at the consumer side to do
               | 464XLAT, it's not something you can just ask your
               | customer's Netgear to do and it's usually more expensive
               | if you want to provide it as the customer's rented
               | router. CG-NAT however looks completely normal to all
               | gear (other than the particular numbers assigned) except
               | the 2 edge boxes. It's the ultimate cost saving kludge.
        
               | cmeacham98 wrote:
               | Most modern OSes (I know for a fact Android, iOS, and
               | Windows) support automatically doing the 4->6 translation
               | on their side (as a matter of fact, some cellular
               | networks in the US are ipv6 only).
               | 
               | I'm unsure if consumer routers would pass on the
               | appropriate RA flag to tell the OS they need to do this
               | in their default configuration however.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Well the devices that support 464xlat already support
               | IPv6 by definition. CG-NAT/464XLAT+Client NAT at the
               | gateway is for the devices like the Rokus that don't
               | support IPv6 at all.
        
               | cmeacham98 wrote:
               | NAT64 doesn't work if the connection is made to a
               | hardcoded IP(v4) address rather than DNS entry, and
               | that's way more common than you'd think! Thus why 464XLAT
               | and similar exist.
        
         | lmm wrote:
         | > IPv6 for local networks, makes no sense is completely
         | unnecessary, and is a hill I will die on. IPv4 is here to stay.
         | 
         | Why would you make everything gratuitously complicated by
         | having two separate forms of addressing? All that IPv4 gains
         | you is new and exciting ways to mess up your networking. Just
         | give every device a normal public address (of course you
         | probably want to firewall off inbound traffic from the WAN to
         | the LAN, but that's got nothing to do with addresses) and have
         | a normal network rather than some bizzare frankenstein mashup.
        
           | znpy wrote:
           | > you probably want to firewall off inbound traffic from the
           | WAN to the LAN
           | 
           | But all modem/routers are doing it anyway, they might as well
           | do that on ipv6.
           | 
           | Effectively all router appliances (at home and soho level)
           | are linux appliances, and the firewall is built into the
           | kernel (and in use anyway).
        
             | phpisthebest wrote:
             | Sorry I do not trust the likes of home router vendors to
             | implement a linux firewall correctly
             | 
             | While people may say "NAT is Not security", it is in fact a
             | layer (ahd huge one) in the security onion, that ipV6 is
             | likely going to increase drastically the amount of
             | ransomware and other malware on the public internet simply
             | because that NAT layer is gone
        
               | blibble wrote:
               | > that ipV6 is likely going to increase drastically the
               | amount of ransomware and other malware on the public
               | internet simply because that NAT layer is gone
               | 
               | malware has connected outwards to c&c servers for more
               | than 20 years
        
               | JohnFen wrote:
               | > Sorry I do not trust the likes of home router vendors
               | to implement a linux firewall correctly
               | 
               | Neither do I, but that's a fixable situation. Get an
               | appliance router that lets you put DD-WRT (or similar) on
               | it. Or use a computer instead of an appliance and set it
               | up any way you like.
        
               | phpisthebest wrote:
               | I am by trade a network administrator, and I run
               | enterprise gear in my home.
               | 
               | I am not running a home router or dd-wrt. But I am not a
               | typlical user going down to best buy to pick up the
               | latest Belkin or Asus wireless AP / router combo they
               | have on sale for $99 and hooking it up to my internet
               | using default "wizard" settings from the mobile app...
               | 
               | Nor I am I trusting Comcast, or ATT to configure their
               | residental rented equipment properly with proper firewall
               | rules
               | 
               | My comment is not about me, I have enterprise grade
               | nextgen firewalls that are $$
               | 
               | My comment is about Grandma that calls up comcast to have
               | them set it all up, or Sally that is going into best buy
               | for the "Geek Squad" so hook her up...
        
               | yamtaddle wrote:
               | I remember what it was like when lots more home computers
               | were routable from the public Internet, because having a
               | NAT router between them and there wasn't a
               | nearly-100%-adoption thing yet. In fact, I worked at an
               | ISP (dial-up and DSL) in that era.
               | 
               | It was indeed a shit-show. Adding a NATting router to
               | those set-ups instantly increased their security
               | tremendously. Sure you could use a proper firewall, but
               | the router w/NAT Just Works.
        
               | phpisthebest wrote:
               | I cant wait until all the printers, and webcams all
               | showup on the public internet again....
        
               | yamtaddle wrote:
               | Portscanning for smb shares and webcams, LOL. Good times.
               | Found entire offices routing their whole network
               | publicly, back then, shared network drives and printers
               | right there for use by anyone who stumbled on them. It
               | was nuts. Worms spread like crazy. It was a real mess,
               | and that's with the Internet being _way the fuck
               | friendlier_ than it is now.
        
           | hitpointdrew wrote:
           | Why would I want any of my devices on my network to have a
           | publicly route-able address?
           | 
           | > Why would you make everything gratuitously complicated by
           | having two separate forms of addressing?
           | 
           | How is IPv6 itself not "gratuitously complicated". You think
           | I am going to remember the IP of my firewall, my network
           | switch, if it is that mess of characters that is an IPv6
           | address? I can easily recall 10.10.10.1 is my gateway, or
           | that 192.168.1.1 is my gateway. You think instead setting up
           | local DNS server and domain so I can do myrouter.lan is
           | somehow "less complicated"?
           | 
           | Hard pass.
        
             | xxpor wrote:
             | Why would you need a DNS server? That's what mDNS is for.
        
               | vetinari wrote:
               | Some people might have more than one subnet. Or road-
               | warrior VPN and VPN-ing in. It is nice when your networks
               | name resolution works, even if you are outside your
               | network.
        
               | xxpor wrote:
               | If you have multiple subnets, you almost certainly have
               | an advanced enough router that it supports mDNS
               | forwarding. There's no reason why it can't work across a
               | VPN either.
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | fe80::1 is your gateway, fe80::2 can be your switch,
             | fe80::blah can be your server. Let the device automatically
             | get it's temporary public address it uses when talking
             | through fe80::1, you shouldn't really need to know it or
             | use it. If you really do feel free to use DHCPv6 or a
             | static SLAAC offset of mDNS but you're just making more
             | work for yourself if it's a home environment.
        
             | ownagefool wrote:
             | The main reason would be to do p2p without hacks / servers.
             | 
             | Why are you so militant against the idea?
        
             | tristanbvk wrote:
             | >Why would I want publically routable addresses
             | 
             | Hate to break it to you but that is how the internet was
             | intended to work for end-users. Firewalls are cheap and
             | easy to install :)
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | > Why would you make everything gratuitously complicated by
           | having two separate forms of addressing?
           | 
           | If it ain't broke, don't fix it? If IPv6 brings no benefit to
           | my LAN, why should I spend all the effort needed to shift it
           | to IPv6? I can just make the connection to the internet IPv6
           | and leave everything else alone.
           | 
           | Although I have additional friction in my case, in that I
           | have numerous devices that are IPv4-only. So no matter what,
           | I'd have to at least have one LAN segment that is IPv4.
        
           | tristanbvk wrote:
           | Finally some sense. There are so many senseless IPv4 shills
           | here. IPv6 always works, never had a problem with it.
           | 
           | Just switch to it alrready.
        
             | slackdog wrote:
             | I'll switch when IPv4 stops working. Until then, I have no
             | reason to switch.
             | 
             | > _It 's costing ISPs_
             | 
             | I hate my ISP so this is actually a feature. If they add an
             | IPv4 surcharge to my bill then I'll reconsider.
        
           | acedTrex wrote:
           | A pipe dream, but the best case seems to be a total
           | standardization on v6
        
       | zamadatix wrote:
       | By traffic it seems like "if only we didn't have these Rokus!"
       | but it's a streaming device, it generates a lot of traffic
       | compared to the other IPv4 only devices. Inevitably the long tail
       | of devices is what's costing them extra (sounds like CG-NAT dual
       | stack or 464xlat at the gateway) not just the Roku devices.
       | 
       | As someone who operates their own ASN with IPv6 because I like v6
       | so much the problem here was simply poor planning. Handing out
       | Apple TV's to replace Roku devices isn't going to make the need
       | for v4 services go away at these homes.
        
         | ArchOversight wrote:
         | It may not reduce the need for IPv4, but it will reduce the
         | need for costly CG-NAT devices and capacity for IPv4 when the
         | streaming can happen over IPv6 which does not require the
         | costly CG-NAT devices.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | I may be mistaken on how many people this ISP is serving but
           | for 300K they should have gotten pro serv, licensing, and
           | hardware for ~100 million sessions, some of which now no
           | longer need to go through the NAT64 hardware.
           | 
           | Hopefully they didn't buy through the same people that sold
           | them the NAT64 hardware+software without CG-NAT built in
           | though...
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | Wonder if ISPs will just let their CG-NAT get overloaded and
           | if you want to send a v4 packet you just have to wait for
           | your time slice on the hardware.
        
             | toast0 wrote:
             | I've seen that. Too many connections, so the idle timeout
             | is now ten seconds. And, as per usual middlebox NAT, no
             | packets sent when closing an idle connection, and no
             | response to packets sent on 'unknown' connections.
        
       | hugoromano wrote:
       | The recent Netflix password-sharing cracking may create some Roku
       | victims.
       | 
       | The other day, I reviewed the devices logging into my account,
       | all inside my house. However, there was one caveat: two Apple TVs
       | in IPv6 and one Roku in IPV4, with different ASNs, showing as two
       | separate networks 900 km apart. I didn't receive any Netflix
       | notice so far.
        
       | vkdelta wrote:
       | For a company who thrives on making cheap devices and charging
       | for licenses/platform, this is almost a crime especially when
       | supporting ipv6 on Linux based devices is much easier now. Wonder
       | why don't support it.
        
         | colordrops wrote:
         | Are Rokus Linux based? I'd love to install an alternate
         | distribution on one.
        
           | yamtaddle wrote:
           | From Wikipedia:
           | 
           | > The Roku box runs a custom Linux distribution called Roku
           | OS.
           | 
           | Looks like yes.
        
           | throw0101c wrote:
           | > _Are Rokus Linux based?_
           | 
           | Even if it wasn't, don't most embedded OSes come with IPv6
           | support? How small do you have to be to not have it? QNX is
           | pretty compact, and even it has it:
           | 
           | * https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/7.0.0/#com.qnx.doc.neut
           | r...
        
             | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
             | LwIP is common on embedded devices. It has only supported
             | dual stack in the last few years but even if it's possible,
             | there are resource savings when only running v4.
        
           | filmgirlcw wrote:
           | What would the point be, exactly? The stuff that makes a Roku
           | worthwhile are all the apps and the proprietary drivers and
           | networking stack stuff. If you're going to put an alternate
           | distro on it, you might be better off getting a whitebox
           | Android TV/Kodi/whatever box off of Aliexpress than trying to
           | get around the limitations on the Roku hardware.
        
             | javajosh wrote:
             | It would be pretty cool to be able to program my Roku to do
             | anything I want, rather than be limited to whatever they
             | want. In theory I can connect another device to the TV and
             | use it as a display, but even in that case the Roku
             | software is active. A security researcher (amateur or
             | professional) is going to want to get in there and see
             | what's going on in addition to running through a proxy.
             | 
             | There are also some scenarios (admittedly pretty contrived
             | in our compute-rich world) where your TV computer is the
             | only one available to you, and so it would be in your
             | interest to expand its functions. Imagine a kid in a poor
             | neighborhood - theoretically with just a keyboard and a USB
             | stick he could be using that TV as an internet-connected
             | computer to learn how to program. That's a lot more value
             | than running Netflix, IMHO.
        
           | abracadaniel wrote:
           | This is an area that seems surprisingly empty from my
           | observations. There doesn't seem to be much interest in
           | rooting Rokus, and even if you did there doesn't seem to be a
           | good open source replacement. The closest would be to install
           | Android TV, but that's just exchanging one closed garden for
           | another.
        
         | Syonyk wrote:
         | > _Wonder why don't support it._
         | 
         | It's probably harder to tie devices in a single household
         | together with IPv6 than with IPv4, or so they think.
         | 
         | They don't make (much) money on their devices, they make money
         | on selling data collected and aggregated by their devices.
         | Their "privacy" policy [0] is a hoot to read. "Whatever we can
         | do, we will. If the laws of the country we collected the data
         | in would interfere with that, we'll move the data and then do
         | what we want." I mean, they grant themselves permission to nmap
         | your network for other devices! Emphasis mine.
         | 
         | > _We may receive information about the browsers and devices
         | you use to access the Internet, including our services, such as
         | device types and models, unique identifiers including
         | advertising identifiers (e.g., for Roku Devices, the
         | Advertising Identifier associated with that device), MAC
         | address, IP address, operating system type and version, browser
         | type and language, Wi-Fi network name and connection data,
         | __and information about other devices connected to the same
         | network__._
         | 
         | [0]: https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us
        
           | jmclnx wrote:
           | > It's probably harder to tie devices in a single household
           | together with IPv6 than with IPv4, or so they think
           | 
           | So I wonder if this means it is harder to ID the consumer
           | with IPv6 ?
        
             | megous wrote:
             | It's easier. You'd be using SLAAC and your devices would
             | have globally unique IP address based on the MAC address of
             | their network interface.
        
               | outworlder wrote:
               | Expect that some systems use random temporary IPv6
               | exactly to make it harder to track (even Windows)
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | > It's probably harder to tie devices in a single household
           | together with IPv6 than with IPv4, or so they think.
           | 
           | It's probably easier, in fact. A significant and growing
           | number of households are behind CGNAT on IPv4 and not have a
           | 1:1 household : ip address relationship. On the other hand,
           | if they're on IPv6, they're most likely on the same /64.
           | 
           | But, Roku's not doing IPv6 was handy for me when Netflix
           | decided not to accept IPv6 connections over Hurricane
           | Electric tunnels. I didn't have to change anything, and I
           | didn't have to do anything, the Rokus were already ignoring
           | IPv6.
        
             | mitchs wrote:
             | The big issue with v6 is you don't know what every ISP is
             | doing with their IP space. The current RIPE recommendation
             | is to delegate somewhere between a /48 to a /56 to every
             | customer. Some ISPs might only delegate a 64, and perhaps
             | typical home wifi setup may only use a single /64. For data
             | aggregation maybe the error is ok, but I've wondered about
             | what IP banning/filtering looks like for v6. Assume
             | everyone gets a /64 and most cats will have 256 lives, and
             | sometimes 16384. Assume everyone has anything larger than a
             | 64, and you may block 255+ other people with the intended
             | target.
        
               | Gigachad wrote:
               | IP based bans have long been obsolete imo. These days a
               | combination of google captcha tracking and phone number
               | verification is mostly used. A few things like IRC and
               | 4chan still do IP bans which is painfully obvious when
               | you notice you are randomly banned depending on what CG-
               | NAT handed you at the time.
        
           | yamtaddle wrote:
           | > __and information about other devices connected to the same
           | network__
           | 
           | They may also be doing more nefarious things, but this might
           | just mean it watches for UPNP and other announcement-
           | broadcast messages on your network (like, say, mdns).
        
             | Syonyk wrote:
             | The rest of their "Haha, you bought one of our devices, all
             | your data is ours!" policy doesn't give me much cause to
             | give them the benefit of the doubt here.
             | 
             | At least some people [0] have reported their Roku device
             | scanning their network, which is explicitly allowed in that
             | policy. Though you can probably do a lot of it passively
             | without leaving those annoying traces.
             | 
             | Once they've granted themselves permissions to do it, why
             | wouldn't you? Knowing a house is an Apple household with a
             | lot of devices probably means they've got money, or at
             | least a willingness to take on debt. You can get a sense of
             | when devices come and go to help identify activity, and if
             | you're particularly annoying, you could snoop wireless
             | signal strength of other devices on the LAN to get an idea
             | of who's in the room with you.
             | 
             | If it's only got a few Androids and Chromebooks, well,
             | probably lower income. If you can't find a thing on the
             | LAN, you're probably in the house of a computer security
             | researcher and should behave. Etc.
             | 
             | If they meant to say "We watch for UPNP announcements to
             | identify other content sources on your LAN," they could
             | have said that. But they didn't. They left the door wide
             | open to do whatever home LAN analysis they think they can
             | get away with.
             | 
             | I mean, this is a company whose response to the "Do Not
             | Track" bit is to ignore you [1]. No standards? It's
             | _literally in the name._
             | 
             | > _Do Not Track_
             | 
             | > _Some Internet browsers include the ability to transmit
             | "Do Not Track" signals. Since uniform standards for "Do Not
             | Track" signals have not been adopted, the Roku Sites do not
             | currently process or respond to "Do Not Track" signals._
             | 
             | [0]: https://community.roku.com/t5/Wi-Fi-connectivity/Roku-
             | Device... [1]:
             | https://docs.roku.com/published/cookiepolicy/en/us
        
             | birdman3131 wrote:
             | They use this for the remote feature in the app. You can
             | control roku's on your network without being signed into
             | the roku account tied to the device iirc.
             | 
             | (At least. Not saying they are not doing anything else bad,
             | Just that there is a valid use.)
        
       | michh wrote:
       | What I don't understand is why. Their OS is built on a linux
       | kernel from at most a couple of years ago. I'm assuming the same
       | goes for the libraries and the parts of the userland they didn't
       | make themselves. On any linux kernel not from the 90s it's more
       | effort not to support IPv6. Unless they rolled their own, which
       | would be a tremendously stupid thing to do.
        
         | tpmx wrote:
         | Perhaps they have a limited development team and chose to focus
         | on matters that bring in the most dough and/or make their
         | average customer the happiest.
        
       | cocodill wrote:
       | that's not a bug, it's a feature
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | The amount of idiocy and ignorance around ipv6 is crazy.
       | 
       | I've seen many supposedly senior engineers that claimed they
       | didn't want to implement ipv6 because anyone could connect to
       | hosts from "outside".
       | 
       | Nat has become so engraved in people's thinking that they can't
       | even understand the actual role of a firewall anymore.
       | 
       | We're going to see many stories like this, where networking
       | incompetence will start costing pretty pennies to companies.
        
         | whatwhaaaaat wrote:
         | It's not just that ipv6 is publicly routable but rather the
         | mistrust of ipv6 itself. There have been a multitude of
         | remotely exploitable vulnerabilities with ipv6 many in embedded
         | devices that are not getting patched.
         | 
         | Turn on ipv6 and all of these vulnerabilities are instantly
         | exploitable. It's not a matter of filtering as some of these
         | vulnerabilities are in parts of the icmpv6 required for
         | configuration. For an alarming example check out some of the
         | rtos vulns back in 2020.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | On the flip side I'm so regularly impressed by what random
         | HNers know about networking (particularly due to containers) I
         | sometimes wonder if there is a point in me being a network guy!
         | 
         | I think a large part of the general attitude is IPv6 is a topic
         | everyone is exposed to but few have really been expected to
         | know so there is a lot of strong feelings about how it's crazy
         | compared to the thing they've already spent 20 years getting
         | familiar with. I think if everyone was exposed to NAT in the
         | same fashion there would be a 10x stronger reaction against NAT
         | than IPv6 but at this point everyone is used to NAT and IPv4
         | and forgets how weird/annoying they really are too.
        
         | tristanbvk wrote:
         | I have devices on public v6 at home. When I hear people
         | complain about these things I honestly ask them. What the hell
         | are you running on your machine that you dont want anyone
         | accessing? Bind it locally then or use an fwall.
         | 
         | I am astounded by the lackadaisical stance of network admins in
         | the pro-v4 camp.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | Basic corporate and home networking with NAT and sane default
         | firewalls have been solved for so long now that even senior
         | engineers have never had to deal with it. I haven't had to deal
         | with firewalls in 15 years now.
         | 
         | So I can't entirely fault them for not understanding, but
         | you're right, it's kinda nuts.
        
         | FridgeSeal wrote:
         | > I've seen many supposedly senior engineers that claimed they
         | didn't want to implement ipv6 because anyone could connect to
         | hosts from "outside"
         | 
         | I had this argument with the head of dev ops at my previous
         | work. They claimed IPv6/dual stack networks were a security
         | risk that couldn't possibly be tolerated. The fact that they
         | were going to be private sunsets, and would have a firewall,
         | NACL's, etc was lost on them.
        
       | totallyunknown wrote:
       | I have reviewed the logs for our video CDN and out of 150,000
       | sessions, only 48 were identified to be using IPv6. These
       | sessions were identified by the user-agent Roku/DVP-12.0
       | (12.0.0.xxxx-xx), indicating that the recent update to the
       | operating system now supports IPv6.
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | I wonder if it's just a bunch of old and outdated Roku boxes
         | causing problems? They probably work off of a ~3-5 year support
         | cycle like phones but are updated even more infrequently by
         | endusers (why should they if it's still working for them?).
        
           | totallyunknown wrote:
           | All other streams are made with 11.5 - which is the official
           | latest version.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | Release notes don't say anything about that change but it
         | wouldn't surprise me if it was left out.
        
       | favaq wrote:
       | What makes no sense in 2023 is to have an IPv6-only network. That
       | is liable not to work. Someone will eventually bring some old
       | device that won't be able to connect.
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | Did you mean "IPv6-only network"?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | favaq wrote:
           | Definitely, thanks!
        
       | dmitrygr wrote:
       | My #1 step in troubleshooting any network issues is to disable
       | IPv6. Step #2 is so rarely needed that I no longer remember what
       | it was. IPv6 has been a failure, it is about time we openly
       | admitted it. Why? Simple - it causes consumer pain and no
       | consumer gain
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | You can't just change the size of an IPv4 address without
         | creating a whole new thing.
        
           | CoolGuySteve wrote:
           | You can though, there is an options field in IPv4 that could
           | have been made to hold extended address values.
           | 
           | It was used as part of the Extended Internet Protocol:
           | https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1385
           | 
           | And the Address Extension protocol aka IPv7: https://www.rfc-
           | editor.org/rfc/rfc1475
        
             | outworlder wrote:
             | And now you need all routers in your path to support it.
             | Effectively creating two incompatible networks and
             | achieving a worse result.
        
               | CoolGuySteve wrote:
               | They're specifically designed so only routers at the edge
               | need to support them.
               | 
               | You should try reading the specs before making technical
               | claims instead of completely missing the point of why
               | those RFCs were created in the first place.
        
           | dmitrygr wrote:
           | Yes, but let's not pretend that IPv6 was just IPv4 with a
           | larger addr size. A lot of other unnecessary cruft got
           | changed. That is kinda the issue. Add an extra octet to IPv4,
           | call it IPv5. Done. DHCP (as is) can already handle variable-
           | length addresses so it'll work unmodified for 5-byte addrs,
           | for example. Same for ARP.
        
             | lmm wrote:
             | > Yes, but let's not pretend that IPv6 was just IPv4 with a
             | larger addr size. A lot of other unnecessary cruft got
             | changed.
             | 
             | Mostly removed (e.g. removing fragmentation). If you're
             | making an incompatible protocol, might as well take the
             | chance to remove the cruft.
             | 
             | > Add an extra octet to IPv4, call it IPv5. Done.
             | 
             | Have fun debugging nondeterministic routing loops lol.
        
             | thesnide wrote:
             | I am wondering if we could hack the ipip tunnel to
             | automagically handle a bigger address space.
             | 
             | Much akin to your idea but mostly supported already
        
             | wvenable wrote:
             | But the IPv6 changes are actually good, right? IPv4 was
             | designed for an entirely different world and IPv6 was
             | designed for this world. You're only going to get one
             | chance to make these kind of improvements.
        
               | tristanbvk wrote:
               | IPv6 has link-local, v4 doesn't. That is a huge
               | configuration win.
        
         | colordrops wrote:
         | At least for local applications at home, this has been my
         | experience as well. I'm sure data center operators love ipv6
         | but it's been nothing but a headache with no benefit for home
         | consumer use.
        
         | yamtaddle wrote:
         | I remember when I first got Google Fiber and the solution to
         | "amazon.com _will not_ load, ever, period " was to disable ipv6
         | on their router.
         | 
         | Not sure I've ever bothered to turn it back on.
        
         | bcoates wrote:
         | That hasn't been my experience at all. Working around slow,
         | unreliable NAT devices (all of them) causes stuff that runs
         | over ipv6 (these days, almost anything that uses significant
         | bandwidth) to work better and faster for me.
        
         | ehPReth wrote:
         | If only everyone hadn't dragged their feet "because it's too
         | hard"; we could maybe be living in an IPv6 utopia? Maybe if the
         | government started handing out fines? haha
        
         | betaby wrote:
         | Please leave the profession - you lack the required
         | qualification.
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | IPv6 was enabled about 6 months ago in my area by my ISP. I
         | noticed it was on about a week after they enabled it because I
         | saw funny IPv6 networks I didn't recognize in a log somewhere.
         | I doubt this national ISP would turn on IPv6 like this without
         | any notification if they were concerned it would cause
         | "consumer pain and no consumer gain". No pain here, and I'm
         | hosting IPv6 only sites I can easily access from my mobile
         | (with native IPv6) for fun.
         | 
         | Is it possible your ISP's IPv6 network was problematic? I'm not
         | sure how you can draw the conclusion that "IPv6 has been a
         | failure" given evidence it's live, in public, serving its
         | purpose. The world has not exploded.
        
         | silisili wrote:
         | I feel similarly, but what is the solution? IPv4 blocks are all
         | but impossible to get anymore, there's a waiting list at ARIN
         | that doesn't really ever move. The company I was working at
         | signed up 3 or 4 years ago for a /24 and never heard back to
         | this day. Sure you can rent/buy them on the open market, but
         | that's only going to last so long, and eventually puts anyone
         | without FAANG money out of the running...
        
           | baq wrote:
           | Regulation. Incentivize ipv6, tax ipv4 only devices, mandate
           | ipv6 in government networks.
        
             | tristanbvk wrote:
             | Ah yes "the government will fix it" okay .
             | 
             | Maybe practice what you preach and deploy v6. I have.
             | Infact I run v6 only.
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | There is a cost there though as mentioned in the forum post.
         | The ISP in question is using CGNAT, but they need more IPv4
         | addresses even with CGNAT to support higher loads. CGNAT only
         | reduces the number of IPv4 addresses required, it does not
         | eliminate the scaling.
         | 
         | However, I do think IPv4 is honestly pretty good for local or
         | even WAN networking for organizations. You're unlikely to ever
         | hit limits in the reserved blocks and it's much easier to read
         | and work with IPv4 addresses. Maybe we need easier configs to
         | block IPv6 except for external addresses?
        
           | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
           | > I do think IPv4 is honestly pretty good for local or even
           | WAN networking for organizations
           | 
           | Strong disagree here: I sometimes do work which involves
           | VPNing-in to SMB company on-prem networks from within other
           | SMB's on-prem networks, so they're all invariably using
           | 192.168.x.x or 172.16.x.x whuch means they all conflict with
           | each other when you want to use LAN resources at the same
           | time you're VPN-ing to another network.
           | 
           | My hope is that IPv6 will mean point-to-site and site-to-site
           | VPNs will die-off and we'll be able to connect all hosts
           | directly to other hosts - but then I'm reminded that
           | configuring an IPv6 firewall for IPSec is conceptually much
           | harder than setting up OpenVPN - and SMBs don't have much in
           | the way of people who even know what IPSec is, ugh.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-06 23:00 UTC)