I would use IPv6 (with NAT) for two reasons - either my ISP takes away my v4 public IP (and only gives v6 public IPs) or there are some servers that I want to access and they only have v6.
NAT has uses other than just making multiple devices share the same public IP.
I agree with your post and your philosophy.
However, this thread wouldnāt be necessary if IPv6 and IPv4 networks connected together without difficulty. If a node operator is running an IPv6 only node, that node operator has no access to IPv4 networks. Since a very large portion of the Internet still runs on IPv4, many - maybe most - Storj users are going to be accessing Storj network via IPv4ā¦
And thus the problem.
However, IPFS networks run on top of either IPv4 or IPv6 or maybe IPFSā¦
Itās possible to use IPFS as a v4/v6 agnostic overlay in a global private network consisting of operators and clients. Such overlay would make the discussion of v4/v6 moot.
EDIT:
Nevermind. Unsurprisingly, I have my information a bit messed up on this one.
I just tried setting up a 6 node private network spread across 3 separate hosts, 2 Internet accessible and 1 LAN.
IPv6 only IPFS nodes were undialable from the IPv4 based nodes, even if the IPv6 only nodes were connected to a dual stack IPFS node.
IPv4 ā IPv4,IPv6 ā IPv6
did not workā¦
So, I was not correct in my thinking here.
If the IPFS nodes stored data, the content would be accessibleā¦ but the nodes are not dialable across the IPv4/IPv6 split.
IPFS was never designed to convert traffic between networks. I think you like this technology, but it can only do whatās designed for - the file system (with quantum effect: your files exist and doesnāt exist in the same time and only trying to access can give you the exact state).
I do like IPFS. Itās extremely useful on my LANs. I can easily fire up a private node and share files or have other LAN hosts play remote audio/video through a web browser without any further configuration or installation of software.
I had been playing with using IPFS as a replacement for ssh connectionsā¦ tunneling ssh or http through IPFS connections works quite wellā¦
ssh reverse tunnels from IPv4 to a dual stack Internet facing server do pass IPv6 traffic through the IPv4 connection. I was thinking IPFS would work similarly. Apparently it does not. It probably would work if I followed this NAT-PT guide on the IPFS v4/v6 nodeā¦ but thatās not something that could be put in a drop-in solution.