Hello Oliver,

On Tuesday November 19 2019 23:23, you wrote to me:

 OT> They way you ask it feels a little bit like it should be everybodies
 OT> duty to have IPv6 connectivity.

Let me put it this way:

It is my considered opinion that the ship of Fidonet is on collision course
with an iceberg. There is no reason for panic, there is enough time for a
change of course. But denial is not a good strategy at this point.

 MvdV>> Well whatever, I suggest you read my Fidonews
 MvdV>> articles about it. Hunt for "IPv6" in the Fidonews archive of
 MvdV>> the last decade. You will find about a dozen articles.

 OT> Any suggestions how to best find these articles in 520 zip files?
 OTl> (last decade means 2000 to 2010?)

You are not entirely new to Fidonet. You were nodelisted in 1994 or so. It
should be just as easy or as hard for you as it is for me to find the articles.
So I will leave the exercise to you.

BTW, I meant 2010 - present.

I have been making it a habit to write a Fidonews article about the progress of
IPv6 in Fidonet at the end of the year. If I feel like it, I may add a list of
refences to the articles to this end-of-year article. Or not...

 OT>>> Tor hidden services (.onion) or i2p connections? ;) My FTN node
 OT>>> at home is only reachable over Tor, because I'm behind a
 OT>>> carrier grade NAT.

 MvdV>> So how come? Are you on a mobile connection? TTBOMK, fixed ISPs
 MvdV>> in Germany do not put IPv4 only connections behind CGNAT yet.
 MvdV>> Fixed IP is DS-Lite when the IPv4 is CGNAT.

 OT> My parents switched from Telekom (6 Mbit/s) to Innogy (50+ Mbit/s).
 OT> The new one uses an IP from the 100.64.0.0/64 range.

And no Ipv6? Then you are on a maimed internet connection.

100.64.0.0./10 is the range reserved for CGNAT. (RFC 2860).

 OT> First I didn't know that these are non-public IP addresses and
 OT> wondered why port forwarding in the router didn't work.

RFC 2860 adresses have been in use for quit some time. But this is the first
time I hear of a fixed line ISP that uses them for their customers without also
offering IPv6. New information for my article... This may be acceptable for Joe
and Jane Average who just use the Internet to surf the web and read e-mail. But
CGNAT /without/ IPv6 - so no public IP address at all - breaks the principle of
end to end connectivity. It should be totally unacceptable to a Fidonet sysop
as running a Fidonet node requires the ability to run a server.

You were nodelisted over 20 years ago, so you are no longer a teenager. I am
not going to ask you why you depend on the Internet connection of your parents.

In the late seventees my life took a turn for the worse. I moved in with my
parents for about a year. Fidonet did not exist yet, but modems were coming and
I was already experimenting with them. To not be dependant on my parents in
everything, I made sure I had my own telephone line. Just saying...

 MvdV>> Anyway, you not having a public IPv4 address, should tell you
 MvdV>> something: that IPv4 is running out.

 OT> Yes, not enough IPv4 addresses for a new provider.

Indeed. The well of IPv4 has run dry. Most older ISPs still have some on the
shelve, but new ISPs have to buy them at EUR 15 - EUR 20 each and that is too
much of an ivestment for most. So they have to go CGNAT.

But... IPv6 addresses are free. New ISPs offering no IPv6 are doing something
wrong. No way they would have me as a customer...

 MvdV>> An excellent reason to ask your ISP for IPv6. Or switch to one that
 MvdV>> does already support it.

 OT> Experiences shows that asking the customer support for IPv6 does not
 OT> change anything.

You could at least give them the opportunity to explain why they do not offer
IPv6 yet. Maybe they will tell you that they are working on it and it will be
functional before the end of the year? Or perhaps they are extremely cheap?

I once dumped a DNS provider for not offering decent IPv6 support and not
having a time table for implementation. I gave them ample time. I told them
that if they hadn't fixed it in a year it would be goodby. They did nothing and
so goodby it was. Mind you that was ten years ago. I would not be so patient
now.

 OT> Switching the provider is often not an option or has other
 OT> disadvantages.

I would never have made the switch from DTAG to Innogy in the first place...

 OT>>>  Connections over Tor are automatically encrypted

 MvdV>> Binkd already has build in encryption...

 OT> Not really secure.

It does not bother me.

However... for those interested in encryption:

1) Mandatory implementation of IPsec is part of the IPv6 specs. IPsec includes
encryption pf the packet payload. So with IPv6 you can have encryption without
messing with the implemantation layer.

2) In Fidonet I have used encryption on the message level. This I find much
more useful than TLS or other session level encryption. Only end to end
encryption on the message level protects against nosy sysops reading in transit
routed netmail.

http://www.vlist.eu/downloads/MVLIST.ASC

When Fidonet netmail still heavily depended on routing, there was a lot of
resistance against routing encrypted mail. Hence the ENC flag. I have been
carrying it from day one.

 OT>>> I don't think we should discriminate against any transport
 OT>>> mechanisms or strongly prefer one over the other. Whatever
 OT>>> works.

 MvdV>> I am not a member of the "more is better club". More mutually
 MvdV>> exclusive connection methods are detrimental to connectivity.

 OT> I see your point, but why are the connection methods mutually
 OT> exclusive?

I used the wrong term. I meant "mutally incompatible". My bad.

 MvdV>> As a point you are not part of the Fidoweb, which did not exist in
 MvdV>> the nineties when you were a node. As a point you only need to
 MvdV>> connect to your Boss node. And outgoing only. So you may not fully
 MvdV>> appriciate the value of universal connectivity...

 OT> I think I do appreciate it.

I think we do not mean the same by "universal connectivity".

My definition of "universal connectivity" is that every node can connect to
every other node. That implies a common protocol for every sender-receiver
pair.

 OT> In my definition of "universal connectivity" a node (or point) should
 OT> be reachable everywhere even when it has no public IP, is behind a
 OT> firewall, CGN, switching between networks, etc ... I think overlay
 OT> networks like Tor or i2p are a good fit for Fidonet.

I don't think connections over TOR or similar will ever become a wide spread
method of connection in Fidonet. For a variety of reasons...

 OT> Maybe IPv6 will solve all connectivity issues soon,

What connectivity issues other than IPv4 address exhaustion?

 OT> but I wouldn't hold my breath ...

IPv6 /will/ solve the issues associated with the exhaustion of IPv4 adresses.
It is already happening so you can keep breathing.


Cheers, Michiel

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