this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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IPv6

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/ipv6
 

I'm curious about something so I'm going to throw this thought experiment out here. For some background I run a pure IPv6 network and dove into v6 ignoring any v4 baggage so this is more of a devils advocate question than anything I genuinely believe.

Onto the question, why should I run a /64 subnet and waste all those addresses as opposed to running a /96 or even a /112?

  1. It breaks SLAAC and Android

let's assume I don't care for whatever reason and I'm content with DHCP, maybe android actually supports DHCP in this alternate universe

  1. It breaks RFC3306 aka Unicast-prefix-based multicast groups

No applications I care about are impacted by this breakage

  1. It violates the purity of the spec

I don't care

What advantages does running a /64 provide over smaller subnets? Especially subnets like a /96 where address count still far exceeds usage so filling subnets remains impossible.

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[โ€“] socialmedia 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the second one would be my sticking point. People can't write applications you would care about if they might not work on every network.

Lots of ipv4 hacks are based around compatibility tradeoffs.

That being said, I dont know that the /64 everywhere crowd is ever going to win that fight.

Using small subnets might break ipv6-pd, which, when it works is worth keeping.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

๐Ÿค” does it actually break PD?...that's actually not an awful reason if it does. Would actually make sense...outside of this post I fall into the /64 everywhere crowd, minus the cases for /127. Your gripe with point 2 is fair...although I haven't come across any applications that need it...beyond the applications I've written that use it...because again IRL I'm in the /64 everywhere crowd. Thanks for the response though