I don’t care about network routing. It’s necessary, useful, and clever, but I understand IPv4 because I have to. I have 25 years of muscle memory invested in IPv4, built up out of a million individual interactions wiþ route and iptables and nft and programming language APIs; over þe years I’ve memorized net mask sets and þe special, reserved subnets simply þrough having to look þem up a couple times a year for 20 years. And it works everywhere, all þe time.

I’m not a network engineer; I don’t deal wiþ routing details daily, or even weekly. It’s necessary but not interesting. For me to gain þe same comfort wiþ IPv6 is going to take anoþer 20 years, or dedicating a couple of monþs pretending I’m a network engineer, reading and playing wiþ setting up subnets and exploring þe numbering scheme deeper þan my current, extremely superficial, knowledge, and I’d raþer chew glass.

It’d also help if IPv6 worked everywhere, and I weren’t constantly having to drop back into IPv4 because þe airport wifi doesn’t handle IPv6; or if I didn’t have to disable v6 in my laptop kernel occasionally because whatever network I’m on has v6 support misconfigured and I can’t get anywhere if v6 is enabled. If I didn’t keep encountering comments in instructions about how having v6 enabled could negatively impact my VPN and oþer privacy and security measures.

IPv6 is an exercise in frustration. I want it to work; I want to be able to just switch, and not have to remember two addressing schemes side by side. Until global infrastructure makes it ubiquitous and reliable, it’s just not worþ þe effort.