Comment by neilalexander
Comment by neilalexander 13 hours ago
If you think IPv6 is too complicated, you are either overestimating IPv6’s complexity or underestimating IPv4’s complexity. IPv6 is undeniably simpler. It has a cleaner header format that is simpler to parse, it has no need for on-path routers to perform fragmentation, it combines host/router discovery and various diagnostic control packets down into a single protocol called ICMPv6, it has stateless address autoconfiguration and correct link-local address behaviours amongst others. It fixes decades of mistakes that have accumulated in IPv4.
> IPv6 is undeniably simpler.
Perhaps to someone who's never been exposed to IPv4.
But for those who know IPv4 from before, it means almost a complete rewrite of all the knowledge. Just about every detail of setting up an IPv6 network is different from an IPv4 network, with just the superficial bits staying similar.
It also has bits that are undeniably more complex than IPv4, like dynamic address allocation. You got SLAAC, RA, stateful and stateless DHCPv6, with the latter being required in certain cases. And with that you now got two different ways to provide DNS servers to clients, and which one takes precedence is undeniably non-trivial[1] and even implementation dependent!
[1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8106#section-5.3.1