IPv6 support for network play?

As per tweetsix: "Dear @UberEnt please let Planetary Annihilation support IPv6, Dear World, support it through http://kck.st/NFEGYb #sixxs #ipv6"

WIll PA support IPv6, it would make it easier to punch through NATs!

(and support should be pretty easy to add also, just use the proper getaddrinfo() loop

I don't know much about these things ( only came across the terms IPv4 and IPv6 a few times in my life) but if that could avoid NAT errors then I would be very happy. I hate having to wait hours to find a multiplayer game in CoH just because of my stupid router..

you and me both man...

especially when you want to join others who are all on the same router, either you could not join, or only one of them could join...

sometimes you were just lucky though, and it would work fine

Im luckey if i can get a good coh game at all. God I suck so much.

I'm assuming that whatever network library they're using supports IPv6... but yeah, have to have them answer it.

Not sure. We'll talk about it.

NAT punching is much less of an issue in client/server,

IPv6 makes some sense in terms of building a agame for the future. Built to last.

IPv4 is gonna become less and less widespread in the coming 3 to 5 years.

To give an extra incentive: IPv4 address space is running out and more and more users are being stuck behind multiple IPv4 NATs forced upon them by their ISPs aka also what they call CGN / Consumer Grade NAT. As such, there is a chance that in the next few years people will have IPv6 but no IPv4 address and thus they would not be able use the game if it does not support it.

And another: You can support both IPv4 and IPv6 with minimal difference: http://gsyc.escet.urjc.es/~eva/IPv6-web/ipv6.html as such supporting IPv6 is except for the bit of extra testing a cheap feature.

Especially if you are building stuff from the ground up, adding the above small logic and the space in communication packets to list both an IPv4 and IPv6 address (or just multiple addresses) would help a lot.

If you need any answers to questions about IPv6, yell, I have been playing a long long time with IPv6 (going for the 10k honorary developer grade is a bit much for a game, but time-wise if I can help with this just yell, that is if it is even needed as I guess with the team that UberEnt has you'll do great)

Absolutely true, unless you want to run the server on your home internet link and you are behind that NAT. IPv6 will in most cases not be behind NAT and thus no punching will be needed.

Something else different on that, if one is playing a game of more than 24 hours in a row, some ISPs disconnect/reconnect folks to force them to get a new IP address, thus if you are going to do the network code please make a note of this possibility. Or heck, for people who do online gaming, thus with a 3G or changing from wifi to wired to another wifi etc, they will also have IP address changes. As such, please make sure that IP address changes and if TCP gets used TCP re-connects can work for session reconnects. I noticed that a goal is that one can rejoin a game, but it would be great if you don't lose your whole army because connectivity is gone for a few moments


For that matter, will private server be possible during alpha/beta, as I would love to set up a box for hosting a server; can only start to imagine the annoyance by $SO when she finds out that I was playing a game for 12+ though

As a follow-up to this: it seems that various German ISPs have started providing IPv4 CGN / AFTR and native IPv6 per default.

As such, these users (and in the German forum there seem to be quite a few using Unity Media and the likes) will have problems with IPv4 only servers as their CGN breaks connections longer than 30 seconds to avoid them from becoming overloaded.

As such, it is almost a requirement because of that to have IPv6 support...

QFT
I'm sure IPv4 will stick around for quite a while but I hope PA will outlast it.

I agree that PA need IPv6 support, I'll vote for that if developers start accept feature requests.

As i am a network engineer by profession: I believe IPv6 support to be absolutely mandatory for each and every product being released now and in the future.

The IPv4 Adress Space is globally exhausted for over two years now and it will be soon for the regional Registries. Even Enterprises, known for very slow adaptions of new technologies, are working on IPv6 right now and ISPs have begun to provide IPv6 Addresses to their customers.

I guess we will have Dual-Stack for the next 15 years or so, but IPv6 is the future. In my Eyes you must implement usage of IPv6 if you don't want to have a crippled product. And because it's Server-Client this includes having People using IPv6 and People using IPv4 on the same Server.

Oh and a little joke: An IPv4 address space walks into a bar: "A strong CIDR please. I'm exhausted."

LOL (I am also a network engineer so I get that.)

To partially repost something I put in an old thread that got somewhat derailed into IPv6 a while back:

I feel that I should point out that in IPv6 NAT is a violation of the strict interpretation of the RFCs:

This is possible in IPv4 without too much trouble. Especially with UDP. Add in a bit of diffie hellman or X.509 based reconnect authentication and its even secure.

Also:

I'll not enter in the polemic on how IPv4 will last but IPv6 can allow a more easy personal server hosting and PA intends to have those kind of servers.

Although, if it will probably mandatory in future for PA to support IPv6, at the moment it is not a big priority and it can be done later (except of course the client/server architecture is very tide to IPv4).

NAT is evil anyway. I'll be so glad when i don't have to use and troubleshoot that crap anymore... and the same goes for STP. Yay for end-to-end transparency and routing goodness.

Amen brother, amen. Kill NAT, kill it! Kill it with fire!

In my post though I meant IPv4 NAT.....

I have over the last 10+ years given out, for free and fun, over 40k+ /64's and over 13k /48s, no IPv6 NAT going to happen in any of the networks I provide connectivity too.... and yes I kinda know what this IPv6 thing is

Do note that various platforms have "nicely" implemented IPv6 NAT, primarily as there are lots and lots of people who think NAT is their security feature. Though for others it is a way to solve their PI issue....... but this all is offtopic for this thread.

What is important is that IPv6 needs to be in PA, as there are people who do not have real IPv4 anymore (as they are behind CGN, and nope uPnP won't help there). Fortunately PA is client<->server and thus has less problems with NATs, till you want to host a game to a friend.

(For that matter I really wonder what MS is doing with Xbox One, and Sony with PS4, time to start hitting people for that I guess

Ah, my bad.

I wish I could say the same. I have only assigned maybe a dozen or so /60's and maybe 40 or so /64's out of those despite having six /32's to play with. IPv6 uptake in my customer base has been much slower than I would personally like to see.

Yeah I have seen the 6to6 NAT in IOS and while the pragmatic engineer in me likes the fact that the option is there and can even think of a few use cases for it, the uncompromising geek in me hates it the way that Star Wars fan boys hate Jar Jar Binks.

But NAT isn't a security feature at all. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really understand how NAT works. Its the stateful firewall that every NAT box also comes with that actually adds security. Most people just don't understand the workings of TCP/IP and NAT enough to be able to see/understand that.

I think UDP based NAT punching would probably still work fine with CGN in most situations. You would just need to increase the time out values enough to allow for 2 or 3 levels of hole punching, which could be annoying.

That being said I feel it is important that PA support IPv6 at some point. PA doesn't need to support IPv6 on release but if it doesn't then support should be added in a post release patch at some point.

Good question. I am quite curious myself.

agree.

Since all electronics will soon be connected to the internet there will be shitloads of IP's needed the coming years.

**** = many