Why must our internet infrastructure be so fucked.
Just ran into my first issue with CGNAT last night when my Minecraft server stopped being contactable after my ISP moved me from a publicly routable IP to one behind CGNAT. I feel you wholeheartedly, imo if I want to host something, there shouldn’t be any higher barrier to entry than a simple port forward.
I believe Minecraft works with ipv6 so u should be able to use that. Assuming u sent on a telco that only gives u a fucking ipv4.
You may want to check your telcos agreement on that.
As far as the Telcos are concerned, we all need to happy little consumers of media.
We aren’t allowed to generate and publish any media of our own.
The Governments agree with them.
There is a business reason for it with the ever shrinking public ipv4 space available. Universal ipv6 support is a must, but gestures at the OP post.
Yeah once I figured out what happened I did check the agreement and saw that I was completely at their whim with no recourse (MATE internet if anyone is curious). So at this point I’m shopping around ISPs that allow for a static routable IP, if anyone has any recommendations then let me know. Looking for 250/25 or better when it comes to speed
Most of the good NBN ISPs have dual stack networks with a delegated ipv6 prefix and will turn off CG-NAT by request on the ipv4 side:
- Superloop (and exetel as same underlying network)
- Leaptel ($1 extra month for a static ipv6 prefix)
- Aussie Broadband
- Launtel
Aussie broadband have cgnat but will turn it off if you ask. I don’t pay for a static IP and I’ve not had it change in 5 years, but I can pay $5 a month to guarantee it
While I don’t have an official static IP with iiNet NBN, I don’t remember the last time it changed. It’s been at least 18 months on the same IP. They also allow you to open up remote access ports on your link (they block all the common ports by default) via their toolbox interface.
You might be able to manually enable IPv6 in Optus’ APN.
My Telstra eSIM didn’t automatically enable IPv6, when my physical SIM did, but enabling it in the
telstra.wapAPN fixed it.Optus ipv6 is still next to non-existent from what I recall, even on home NBN networks. Even TPG/Vodafone are starting to roll it out, although it hasn’t reached the MVNOs like Kogan yet.
EDIT: They might be finally rolling out ipv6 on their network going by this whirlpool thread
Satellite and Mobile are both pretty bad options for hosting.
Have you looked at tailscale or CloudFlare zerotrust to allow access to your server?
Well I don’t want my server hardware somewhere I don’t control (kinda half the point of self hosting). That leaves me with the choice of ADSL or starlink (one is multiple orders of magnitude faster with multiple order of magnitude lower ping). I use mobile on my phone to access my services when I’m not at home.
Tailscale is basically just a VPN but it requires an ipv4 introduction point.
wut? My IP is hella cucked behind cgnat and I use tailscale with no worries
So ur using a public tailscale introduction point. I don’t like the idea of that but I guess I might have to.
If you prefer to control the coordination server you can also use headscale, although you’ll still need to host it on a VPS.
yeah this is the alternative. If the tailnet connection stays up, the vps can go offline and it won’t drop. So if your paying per compute usage then you could fire up headscale only when needed to save dosh
Yeah I looked into that.
Genuine question:
What does ipv6 give you that ipv4 does not? I genuinely can’t tell the difference as an Internet browser. Particularly on the phone.For me, it’s an additional, redundant layer 3 route between my dual stack nodes. I’ve had instances where v4 or v6 paths have broken, and I’ve not noticed until my monitoring systems explicitly notify me.
I’d also like more tools to use MPTCP which would make them more resilient.
What does ipv6 give you that ipv4 does not?
A public, directly routable IP address which doesn’t cost a fortune for the ISPs. In fact, an incomprehensible number of public, directly routable IPs per user such that it’s an embarrassment of riches compared to ipv4 (the only important limitations are more down to the number of subnets per user, which is usually still way more than you need at 256 for /56 prefixes).
And it’s even better if all devices and networks support it, since you no longer have to rely on n layers of NAT, reducing latency and complexity.
I self host. Cgnat means my servers ipv4 is not globally accessible hence I’m using ipv6. ipv6 does also reduce network congestion and improve routing efficiency.
The fact that it improves routing efficiently and that Optus does not support it explains all you need to know about Optus.
What explains it just as well is a post on the optus forum asking about ipv6. This was 6years ago.
All the noise that happened recently with the 3G shutdown tells us just how many old phones there out there on the cell networks. Running old iOS/Android versions with a gazillion exploits. I think it’s a good thing that telcos NAT their customers. The last thing we want is for the Internet to be able to easily connect to those devices.
ipv6 does also reduce network congestion and improve routing efficiency.
Unless you are moving gigabits of data, you won’t notice the difference the smaller header payload of ipv6 offers. That’s some serious ePenis bragging bullshit I see all the time among nerds who want to say they’re on the latest and fastest technology without understanding that while they are correct (uploading/downloading a gigabyte over ipv6 will probably complete a few seconds faster over ipv6 instead of ipv4), they’re also making a big deal about nothing.
Your issue is you want to be able to access your home network over mobile infrastructure, while you are paying for a basic phone plan. Optus does offer what you want, but to business customers. Telstra will also permit you to apply a static IP to some of their plans, I managed to do this for a client about 10 years ago. It was just an add-on that Telstra offered. They were on a business plan, but I don’t remember whether a business plan was a requirement.
I think it’s a good thing that telcos NAT their customers. The last thing we want is for the Internet to be able to easily connect to those devices.
That’s the job of a firewall, not a NAT.
That a NAT also blocks connections is incidental, it’s blocking them because it just has no idea how to handle them.
Having been on the other end of this situation before, I’m going to disagree with this take. On a normal network, yes - you have a firewall to block traffic except to specific IPs/ports. Once you are in the Millions of nodes realm though (and I only ever got into the hundreds of thousands), a firewall is too unwieldy. You can never keep it up to date with all your customers comings and goings. Imagine you have 10 million customer devices and 0.01% of them come or go on any given day. That’s 10,000 firewall updates per day. You’re spending a lot of tech time maintaining and updating that firewall, and you introduce a small risk of an incident with every firewall update. And for what? For the most annoying of your customers.
Sorry to be blunt, but it’s true. The tiny proportion of customers who want to be able to remotely connect to their home networks are the first to complain about any sort of network congestion (particularly uploads, which regular users don’t even notice). They make a lot of noise about every $5/month price increase. They are the most likely to be doing sketchy stuff on the network. And six months down the line when there’s some new exploit, they’re the most likely vector into the network of the latest worm as they didn’t maintain their security updates diligently. It is far easier to simply not cater to them and let them be someone else’s problem. As customers, they aren’t profitable.
You handle this by putting your static IP customers on a special VLAN and charge them for the service. And then yes: you have a manageable firewall sample.
The second one of these old phones connects to almost any WiFi network they have an ipv6 (if their device supports it which old vulnerable ones won’t). And nat should not be performing the job of a firewall.
I’m less concerned about the ipv6 throughput gain and more concerned about the fact I get an order of magnitude better ping on ipv6.
U misunderstand my issue. I don’t want ipv6 for a broadband connection. I have home internet via starlink which has ipv6 and cgnat ipv4. Hence my server is only accessible over ipv6. My phone is on a optus network meaning that when I am not on ipv6 WiFi I cannot access my server.
Unless you are moving gigabits of data, you won’t notice the difference the smaller header payload of ipv6 offers.
IPv6 headers are usually bigger anyway1, so the only advantage is more efficient routing (so infinitesimally better latency), but in my experience most routers only support IPv4 hw offload and not IPv6, so it’s only more efficient in theory.
I just like IPv6 because I get a whole /56 prefix to play with, and devices often randomise their host portion through the privacy extensions, meaning they use a new address each day or so.
1 IPv4 is usually ~20 bytes, but it can be up to 60 bytes if you stack a lot of options, IPv6 is only 40 bytes AFAIK.
Starlink isn’t our infrastructure.
