alt Hacker NewsIPv6's failure was mostly caused by the IETF's ivory tower dwellers, who seem to generally have no practical experience or understanding whatsoever of how networks are actually built and run today, especially at the small to mid scale.
Small site multihoming, for example, is an absolute disaster. Good luck if you're trying to add a cellular backup to your residential DSL connection.
IETF says you should either have multiple routers advertising multiple provider-assigned prefixes (a manageability nightmare), or that you should run BGP with provider independent address space; have fun getting your residential ISP or cellular carrier onboard with this idea.
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IPv6 was a total failure of imagination.
The fact is that already in 1993 routing tables were just too big, and the fact is that having a "flat" address space was always going to mean huge routing tables, and the fact is that because IPv6 is still "flat" routing tables only got larger.
The fix would have been to have a subset of the address space that is routed as usual for bootstrapping ex-router address->AS number mapping, and then do all other routing on the basis of AS numbers _only_. This would have allowed us to move prefix->AS number mappings into.. well, DNS or something like it (DNS sucks for prefix mapping, but it could have been extended to not suck for prefix mapping), and all routing would be done based on AS numbers, making routing tables in routers _very small_ by comparison to now. Border routers could then have had tiny amounts of RAM and worked just fine. The IP packets could have borne AS numbers in addition to IP addresses, and all the routers in the middle would use only the AS numbers, and all the routers at the destination AS would know the routes to the destination IPs.
But, no. Great missed chance.
Well, we still could do this with IPv6, but it would be a lot of heavy lifting now.
EDIT: Ah, I see draft-savola-multi6-asn-pi existed.
EDIT: Ah, see also LISP [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6830]. But LISP is essentially dead.
> a cellular backup to your residential DSL connection
Hmm, what's the problem? I suppose your home devices should never be exposed to the public internet, and should only be accessible via a VPN like Wireguard. NAT64 is a thing if your home network is IPv4.
BTW what's the trouble with multi-homing? Can't an interface have two separate IPv6 addresses configured on it, the same way as IPv4 addresses?
IETF has a history of being hostile to network operators. I mean actual network operators - not the people who show up at conferences or work the mailing list who just happen to get a paycheck from a company that runs a network (and have zero production access / not on call / not directly involved in running shit). It's gotten better in the last few years in certain areas (and credit to the people who have been willing to fight the good fight). But it's very much a painful experience where you see good ideas shot down and tons of people who want to put their fingerprint on drafts/proposals - it's still a very vendor heavy environment.