{"id":38740,"date":"2023-03-10T15:21:36","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T20:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=38740"},"modified":"2023-03-10T15:21:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T20:21:36","slug":"roku-doesnt-support-ipv6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/10\/roku-doesnt-support-ipv6\/","title":{"rendered":"Roku Doesn’t Support IPv6"},"content":{"rendered":"

DingleBog3899<\/a> (via John Gruber<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Our tribal network started out IPv6, but soon learned we had to somehow support IPv4 only traffic. It took almost 11 months in order to get a small amount of IPv4 addresses allocated for this use. In fact there were only enough addresses to cover maybe 1% of population. So we were forced to create a very expensive proxy\/translation server in order to support this traffic.<\/p>\n

We learned a very expensive lesson. 71% of the IPv4 traffic we were supporting was from ROKU devices. 9% coming from DishNetwork & DirectTV satellite tuners, 11% from HomeSecurity cameras and systems, and remaining 9% we replaced extremely outdated Point of Sale(POS) equipment. So we cut ROKU some slack three years ago by spending a little over $300k just to support their devices.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Now if ROKU cannot be proactive at keeping up with connectivity standards they are going to be wiped out by their own complacency. Judging by the growing number of offers to replace their devices for free their competitors are already proactively exploiting that complacency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose I’m lucky that, as an end user, IPv6 so far isn’t something I’ve had to think about. It’s kind of like Y2K in that I know there’s been a lot of work going on, but it’s been mostly invisible. I don’t actually know which of my devices and apps have been updated.<\/p>\n\n

Geoff Huston<\/a> (in February 2022, via Tim Bray<\/a>):<\/p>\n

I bet that nobody believed in 1992 that thirty years later we’d still be discussing the state of the transition to IPv6! In 1992, we were discussing what to do about the forthcoming ‘address crunch’ in IPv4 and, having come to terms with the inevitable prospect that the silicon industry was going to outpace the capacity of the IPv4 address pool in a couple of years, we needed to do something quickly. We decided to adopt a new protocol, IP version 6, a couple of years later, and in December 1995 the IETF published RFC 1883<\/a>, the specification of IPv6.<\/p>

There were many views as to how long the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 would take, from an optimistic six-month rapid cutover to a hopelessly pessimistic view of a protracted ten-year transition. If there was a prevalent view at the time, it was that the transition would take a further five years or so. But don’t forget that this was in the lead up to the Internet bubble of 2000, and anything that was going to happen five years from now was shelved as a ‘tomorrow’ problem while we toiled away on adding more carriage capacity to the network, fixing the myriad of issues with routing, and making dial-up modem access work!<\/p>

While this was a pressing issue in 1992, four years later in 1996 there was no longer any particular sense of urgency about the transition to IPv6. Why not? There are four major reasons for the shift in attitude.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Google<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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Google collects statistics about IPv6 adoption in the Internet on an ongoing basis. We hope that publishing this information will help Internet providers, website owners, and policy makers as the industry rolls out IPv6.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s around 38% right now.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n