On Saturday September 11 2021 18:56, you wrote to All:
Good to see you linked up here.
RS> It has been suggested that I use ipv6, in a nutshell are there RS> advantages of using, disadvantages to not using? Or is it just fun and RS> nerdy to do so?
Warning: I am an IPv6 evangelist. I have been promoting the use of IPv6 in Fidonet for over a decade, so I may be a bit biased. ;-)
Well, it is fun and nerdy and if there is any of that Pioneer Spirit left you would jump in right away. ;-)
But IPv6 isn't just nerdy and fun, it is the future. The Internet has run out of IPv4 addresses many years ago. Not in the sense that thet are burned, all the about 4000 millions of addesses that fit in a 32 bit number are still there, but there are no new ones. There are not enough IPv4 adresses to let everyone have one. And so providers revert to tricks like CGNAT (CArrier Grade Nat) to "solve" those problems. But the real solution is IPv6. IPv6 uses 128 bit adresses, so there is no longer a shortage of addresses. In fact with IPv6 you do not just get one address per household, you get a VERY LARGE block of addresses. Enough to let every appliance in your local network have its own globally routable unique IP address. No more need for non standard ports when running more than one server.
As you can see in the list that I publish weekly in Fidonews, there presently are 107 nodes in Fidonet that support IPv6. The counter goes to 108, but one in the list is flagged as down. I will post the list in the next message. There are four nodes flagged as INO4. That means they no longer have a public IPv4 address for accepting incoming calls. To connect with these nodes you need IPv6. I had expected this number to be larger by now, but we sure can expect this number to grow when ISP's stop issuing public IPv4 addresses to customers.
When your ISP already provides you with IPv6, making your Fidonet nodes IPv6 capable is very easy. I see that you run Binkd Linux. Linux has been supporting IPv6 for "ages" and binkd supports IPv6 from version 1.00. All you have to do is open port 24554, or 24556 in your case, in your firewall(s) and add an AAAA record to awesome.abon.us.
