Why You Should Turn on IPv6 in Your Home Network
This blog post is aimed at the home networking power user. If you run a custom router (even just something like PFSense) for your home network, instead of whatever the ISP has provided -- this post is for you. You should turn on IPv6. You should do what it takes to enable it, to make it work. The time to do it is today, this weekend, this coming long weekend -- as soon as you can make the time. You need to do it now. I'm going to make my case using some facts and data, but I'm also going to use a bit of hyperbolic humour to make my point.
Why? Well, I'll spare you a blog post containing all of the usual "why to adopt IPv6" arguments. All the tired and shopworn examples about address space size, comparisons to number of stars in the universe, doom-and-gloom prognostication about the end of IPv4, market predictions, charts, browbeating, etc. -- you can get that kind of thing anywhere else on the 'net. The only words I'll spend on the doom-and-gloom angle are in the next paragraph. After that, I want to take a totally different approach to persuading you to "adopt" (turn on) IPv6.
It's now late 2024. The fact is that IPv4 IS exhausted. Every Regional Registry has run out. The only way for an organization to get addresses for public use is to buy them. All the articles saying "We've got X years before we have to deal with exhaustion" (or, months, hours, seconds... whatever) have exceeded their shelf life. That kind of discussion was appropriate a decade ago. Nobody is getting any new IPv4 addresses for cheap. Large companies have known this for ages and were not surprised. They're enacting their plans. Now, this doesn't directly affect you, immediately, as a home user. However, indirectly it does.
ISPs, content providers, cloud providers, and almost everyone else are steering consumers away from IPv4 and into IPv6. They're trying to move everyone over as quickly as possible. This includes you. You may be a power user, but to the big companies -- you're a small time consumer like everyone else they sell their products and services to. In fact... to them, you're an ANNOYANCE! You may think you're some kind of advanced, knowledgable user... To them, you're severely impeding their profit margins! To them, you're the problem!
"What!? How can that be?" you think to yourself. Well, this is what I'd like to focus on. The "mainstream migration" to the new protocol is already well underway. Those same articles which talk about the details always promise that "migration is going to take years and it's sometime off in the distant future, at least a decade out". But those articles are around a decade old in most cases, perphaps older. That decade has since passed. Those plans for migration HAVE been rolling and are much farther along than what those articles may suggest. If you still consider these articles relevant, you're sadly mistaken.
At this time, IPv6 deployment is now at approximately 50%, roughly speaking. It's not an even 50%, mind you... and it might even be slightly less than that. It's hard to pin down what someone means by "50% of the internet is now IPv6". There's lots of precise definitions based upon subscriber count, traffic flow, DNS lookups. You can find tons of articles online detailing these. It's not worth debating the details of whether it's 47.3172752234% or 49.111837479% or 51.7377198%. It's 50%, give or take. It's not 2%. It's not 10%. It's not even 25%! It's about half. In many cases more.
Instead, let's just look at a few simple metrics that affect the average consumer directly. If you have a cellphone with a data plan, there's an 80% chance that your cellphone's data plan is IPv6 ONLY. And depending upon your carrier, it's likely much higher. Around 50% of ISPs in the US offer IPv6 service to their customers. By the end of 2024, around 50% of traffic to google.com is likely to be sent from endpoints that are IPv6, based upon current trends. Approximately half of the top 1000 websites have IPv6 support.
Okay. So IPv6 is already here, the transition is pretty well underway, and it's not like some better idea can come along and replace it -- the adoption is just too far along. So put aside all those articles which complain "XYZ is badly designed in IPv6". Those complainers never show up to IETF meetings, they don't post their solutions in RFCS... and neither do you. IPv6 adoption is happening, whether you like it or not!
So... why adopt now? Why not wait longer? There's all these horror stories online of XYZ or ABC not working in home networks. The "common wisdom" is to "just turn off IPv6" because "it's not ready yet". Sadly, that advice, while once true, is now biting the world in the butt. It's no longer good practice. IPv6 is rarely the problem now. Most consumer OSes have worked out all the kinks. An article from 2017 advising that you turn off IPv6 is spectacularly out-of-date in 2024 or 2025. Technology moves at a very rapid pace. Shall I link you an article about how to have your Mac Quadra dial into a BBS? Is that even relevant? Want a link to a MySpace page? How about I share my ICQ number?
See, you're likely already using and relying upon IPv6 in at least one aspect of your network usage. Your cellphone data plan is very likely to be an IPv6 plan. And you can't tell the difference as an end user. But... I'll assume that you don't have IPv6 turned on in your home network. That's who this article aims to persuade -- the power user who runs a network lab at home. Who tinkers with networks and technology for fun. And I'll bet that you, as a power user don't have IPv6 in your home network. Maybe you want it on, maybe you'd like to turn it on, but you keep putting it off as "sometime later".
Why are you running your own advanced setup at home? Most folks choose not to be bothered with the hassle. What made you start networking as a hobby? The fun and excitement of the challenge of doing it? The chance to learn a new skill? As a means to keep your skills on networking sharp, for your career? Maybe you're an enthusiast for new technology? Maybe you like having "the best thing around"? Maybe you're keen to get into the new technolgies on the cutting edge -- an "early adopter"?
Well... your grandma, your mom, your brother, the loud guy at work who won't stop talking about the latest sportsball game scores... whomever comes to mind with the phrase "hopelessly technologically illiterate" -- their home networks are now better than yours! They have adopted the latest technology. They're the early adopters! About half of them are probably using IPv6 (statistically speaking)... and you're not!
How did this happen? They're not even tinkerers! They don't even know what an IP address is! They've never heard of a subnet. To them a "router" is the box from the cable company with the antenae on it that gives them wifi signal. They don't know a CAT-6A patch cable from a phone cord! They they don't know what DNS is or does. To them a server is the person bringing them their food at the diner. They think a network switch turns off the network! How are they adopting new tech when you're not!
How did this happen? Simple... You let it happen! Really. While you were sitting around, tinkering with the latest change you made to your DNS zoning... or renumbering your network for the umpteenth time for fun... or upgrading your router OS... or fantasizing about that shiny new Ubiquiti WAP you wanted to get -- they got IPv6 on their networks. Sure, getting IPv6 going on your network was something on your list. You always planned to get around to it eventually -- but it wasn't worth starting, until your ISP had IPv6... Oh!
What? Did you think that the good folks over at Verizon or Comcast or Xfinity or whomever were just going to call you up PERSONALLY on the phone and say: "Hi! We know you run a high-end network at home. We're all just really impressed over here with how well you're doing it. Anyhow, I wanted to let you know that we're going to turn on IPv6. I've got my finger on the Enter key right now. We're about to go live. We just wanted you to be the first to know. You can help us debug it. I'll spend the next 12 hours on the phone with you, if I have to, to get you up and going. Ready to get started?"
Yeah. Right. Dream on! That was never going to happen. Okay... well... you stopped calling them to pester about IPv6! Nobody there in the tech support knew what you were talking about. The common response was: "WiFi 6? Yeah... we'll be rolling that out soon. Probably. You can use WiFi 6 APs with our service -- they work." Or something like: "IPv6? Is that a new streaming protocol?" Nobody there seemed to know what was going on!
Well... while you were tinkering, they were doing something with those pedestrian and unprofessional, consumer grade routers that you wanted to avoid. They were changing their settings. The ISP just remotely logged into the "cheap piece of crap" (as you call it) that they gave to those customers, turned on the IPv6 switch, correctly setup all the settings for their "simple use case", and the customers didn't really notice, for the most part. Sure there were a few pain points in the earlier days -- but they've hit 50% of their customer bases, on average, now! Sometimes they have to roll back -- but they're moving forward!
You wanted so badly to prevent the ISP from messing with the configuration of your oh-so-holy network... that you got SKIPPED OVER for adopting the new technology! You're a technology laggard, now, when it comes to IPv6! It is what you wanted, after all. Your grand plan to prevent the ISP from destroying your beautiful network settings was a smashing success. Don't cry about it.
And, after all... it's really not that bad! Okay... so you failed at being the earliest adopter of the shiny new thing. That's fine. What about all those other reasons you setup your wonderful, professional grade network? That fun and excitement from a new challenge? That chance to learn new skills? To sharpen your skills for your career? To HAVE THE BEST THING AROUND? Now's your chance to shine! Did you think that you could rest on your laurels; never change your network or improve it? Of course not! When your techno-wimp friends and family have problems with their "crappy consumer grade crap"... you'll need those skills sharp as ever to show them you still know your stuff!
Go turn on IPv6 for your professional grade home network, today. Sure, it's going to be harder than the other projects on your list. It's going to be harder than just flipping the "IPv6" switch, like all those lusers... Remember: You accepted (and crave) that challenge when you embarked on your home-network quest.
Go catch up and surpass 'em! If you were waiting for the "go" signal to start -- this is it.