Gemini capsule over IPv6 only: good idea or not?
I'm hosting a capsule that's available on the same domain name that can resolve both into IPv4 and IPv6 address. Not that I hate IPv4 or anything, but I was thinking: what if it's only available via IPv6? I hear some Gemini clients have issues with IPv6 specifically, but most of the time it's about older versions, and more recent versions seem alright. Has anyone considered and chosen to go or not go with IPv6-only setup? Pros/cons?
For context: it doesn't cost any extra (I think) for me to also have the domain name resolve into an IPv4 address, I'm just being curious and willing to try and possibly break stuff, but in a properly informed kinda way.
Jan 10 · 4 months ago · 👍 norayr
8 Comments ↓
Not everyone has version 6 internet, even if the computer supports it. (I do not have version 6 internet.)
🐝 pirkka [OP] · Jan 11 at 00:30:
Okay, I think it's strong enough an argument to keep v4 then
today i was chatting with my friend who set up an xmpp server on his laptop, and that laptop has no real ipv4.
it also has no real ipv6. i guess we can put it like that.
it has an ipv6 from the deprecated testing ipv6 range, used by yggdrasil network. in short it is an overlay over internet that creates a mesh - everyone can see everyone. it uses dynamic routing, and it does e2e encryption on the network layer. you get your own ipv6 that is inferred from the public key and your private key proves the ip is yours.
wherever you go, you have same ipv6.
so by having yggdrasil ipv6 you can selfhost. you don't need a real ipv6 from your isp. the only problem is that then those who wants to access what you selfhost also need to be on yggdrasil network.
my xmpp server has a real static ipv4.
so it is accessible fro clearnet.
but i also added yggdrasil ipv6, registered it in dns. and now it is also accessible from yggdrasil network.
(by the way it is not accessible for someone with normal clearnet ipv6 via ipv6, but only from yggdrasil via ipv6. i can add a real ipv6 too)
so what it allowed to me? my server can see xmpp servers from yggdrasil network.
i can chat with those who selfhost on yggdrasil and they can chat with me.
so by having a yggdrasil ipv6 i help those who selfhost without having to pay for real ip. or for server. or maybe they don't even have an option to get a real ip.
i think all our internet problems can be solved by yggdrasil. just everyone should have it. because internet is a hierarchical system, and ip addresses depend on geography. and it is normal, good, efficient way to build networks. but over those networks we can make a mesh. yggdrasil does not invent new addressing and therefore does not add a need for a new routing mechanism. same os ipv6 stack can handle this.
on real ipv6:
i think we should get rid of ipv4. it is expensive limited asset and we don't want internet to be limited by only a number that can fit in 32bits.
but to get rid of it we all need to vote for ipv6, by also serving whatever we serve on ipv6. when almost all servers adopt ipv6 and all isps too, we can switch completely.
so i would suggest you still use both real ipv6 and ipv4.
but i also suggest to use 2 ipv6 addresses, one for clearnet and one for yggdrasil.
first is a vote for future better internet. still hierarhical, still ip changes with location.
second is a vote for the mesh. which can make lives of people better right now
💀 StrokedOut · Jan 11 at 02:15:
Bad idea. There’s always something which will break. For example, Antenna is self-hosted and Bjoern’s ISP provides fiber but no IPv6. Without Antenna no Cosmos, and without both nobody will know about the capsule or see new gemlog posts.
in general, earlier we get rid of ipv4 the better. because there is nothing romantic in it, it is a limited resource, and there are more servers and people that want to selfhost or use real ips in other way than there are ipv4s.
internet must be more approachable and accessible, no question.
so earlier we all have ipv6 earlier we get rid of old ipv4 limited internet.
about yggdrasil, it is another routing universe.
right now i chose only to serve on yggdrasil ipv6.
and obviously just adding two AAAA ips in dns(one clearnet and one yggdrasil) won't work.
but if you selfhost your bind name server you can easily answer to requests from yggdrasil source ips one ip and from clearnet - other.
i can imagine that if more people start to host own sites or capsules or other services (which is a better internet), saying oh it should also have ipv4 will only make ipv4 more expensive.
these addresses got exhausted years ago. you can't allocate new, all were distributed.
you can rent ipv4 from those who own it, and limited resource means much higher prices.
we all need to pressure isps to provide ipv6. nothing prevents them doing so except laziness.
and being accessible from yggdrasil universe by yggdrasil ip helps our yggdrasil friends. like i described my server is available on clearnet and yggdrasil that is why it can communicate to servers that are only on yggdrasil.
you may think it is a problem i invent but it is a real actual problem for many. they can't afford renting servers in clouds, but they do have own hardware that can be servers.
then they don't have real ips (4 or 6) and so the transparent equal internet is not approachable for them.
i am lucky my isp provides me real ipv4 and i can pay for it. but my provider also one day decided it will change everyone's static ipv4. they don't care about people who selfhost and don't even know about them. they thought - who cares what static ip is it, this or that, while we had to suffer and reconfigule whole night.
another isp provided real ipv4 to my friend and after a year decided to block port 443 and other ports.
and he selfhosts mastodon.
xmpp can be configured to use other ports by publishing relevant information in dns.
activity pub can't. it needs to be on 443 to federate with other instances. and my friend was providing services to two communities in his town.
he was broke and jobless at that point of time so moving to cloud was out of question.
so he felt defeated by the isp, felt helpless that he can cheaply selfhost. the community members i guess felt disappointed, felt they better used big tech corporate services.
the only way i was able to fix it by not spending money was to use cloudflare's argo tunnel.
yes but that is not for the better internet, that is a dependence on big tech just in other way.
so we need clearnet ipv6 and we need yggdrasil.
another option for my friend would be to use yggdrasil - he could tell community members to install it. but then they would loose federation with most of the fedi instances out there. because as i said they only host on clearnet, and don't also have yggdrasil ips. and it costs them nothing to have, they just need to know there is such a thing, such a universe and real people for whom it is a solution.
Used YGG - Good service ! I was one of the originals who used CJDNS back in the day! Was on the Hyperboria network a long time ago. This ended up becoming YGG, or so I think. ygg is super cool, it does self discovery of other nodes and can even be ran as a private mesh layer.
yes, initially i ran it as a private layer - we had several hosts that worked with peers with friends, and it was our separate network.
we did not care much about being separate, did not configure any access rules or firewalls. just a test network for fun.
later one of our friends wanted just to connect to yggdrasil, asked to setup it on his phone.
and i have added our servers as peers. then he went abroad and added yggdrasil peers from main network.
and it so happened that from that time our hosts were accessible to main yggdrasil network via his phone. (:
then we decided to connect to main ourselves, because of was testing my p2p chat with folks from yggdrasil community.
🦀 AlbertLarsan68 · Jan 11 at 21:10:
When I setup my gemini capsule, I’d make sure IPv6 is supported, and also DN42 (same idea as yggdrasil, but more focused on the routing part, and not so much on the privacy part).
Some of my services are IPv6-first, this means that there is a direct connection to the host when using IPv6, but that using IPv4 adds a reverse proxy in front, which adds more ping and reduces bandwith. Those used to be IPv6-only, but once I got onto a computer which had no IPv6, I added a reverse proxy.