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Well, it has been over 7 years since World IPv6 Launch Day, when Stack Overflow over IPv6 on World IPv6 Launch Day was asked (with no answer, yet).

It would seem to be a great shame for a technology company not to be able to support IPv6 in 2019. I am about ready to shut down IPv4 on my network, but I cannot because SE doesn't support IPv6, and I really have not seen an explanation or any plans or timelines when support may be expected. Just about every other site that I regularly use supports IPv6, and I did shut down IPv4 for a while as an experiment, but I needed to enable it for the SE sites.

One suggestion in the comments was to enable it for Server Fault, and we now have Network Engineering. SE as a company should at least be able to dip its toe into IPv6, or at least explain to its users a broad outline of its plans.

Are there any plans for SE IPv6 support? Is there even a wild guess for the time frame? Do I need abandon SE? Please, someone from SE fill us in on anything related to IPv6.

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    It's going to be a long time before all major websites have a fully functioning IPv6 address. While I think IPv6 would be nice for SE, if you plan to go 100% IPv4-free, you need to expect breakage.
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Jul 22, 2019 at 6:32
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    going 100% ipv4 free is... dumb. And I don't use that word lightly. IPv6 support would be shiny, but the usefulness depends on the ISP, and its something you hardly notice unless you're seriously lucky or take the effort to set up a tunnel
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 22, 2019 at 7:46
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    @forest: "It's going to be a long time before all major websites have a fully functioning IPv6 address." That is simply not true. Almost all the major web sites are fully functional on IPv6, which is why I could disable IPv4, except for SE.
    – Ron Maupin
    Jul 22, 2019 at 13:45
  • @JourneymanGeek, what is dumb is needing NAPT and breaking the IP paradigm. Also, when looking at my firewall logs, there are several orders of magnitude in difference between the number of IPv4 attacks to IPv6 attacks attempted against my network. Obviously, that will change at some point, but simply losing that traffic would be great.
    – Ron Maupin
    Jul 22, 2019 at 13:48
  • @RonMaupin - that simply isn't true. As a backbone, IPv6 is grand, but end to end there are still problems all over. Lots needs fixing before this will be reliable. And there are many more important bugs/features to sort first :-)
    – Rory Alsop
    Jul 22, 2019 at 13:49
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    @RoryAlsop, I am a network engineer who works with this stuff every day, and IPv6 is fully ready for prime time. It improves IP in multiple ways, and it restores the IP paradigm that NAPT breaks. See the answer to this question on Network Engineering.
    – Ron Maupin
    Jul 22, 2019 at 13:52
  • I live in a modern, first world country with multiple ISPs. ONE ISP of about 6-7 has native IPv6 listed as a feature, and such. And I occationally have things on servers breaking. Folks who can knowingly take advantage of ipv6 is a 1% of sorts, and I suspect IPv4 will never 'really' be gone, at least in consumer and internal networks.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 22, 2019 at 13:59
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    I guess it also depends on your definition of a "major website". As a quick check, while my ISP supports IPv6 traffic, their own website is IPv4. As is my cell phone provider's.
    – 1201ProgramAlarm
    Jul 22, 2019 at 14:55
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    @RoryAlsop One can easily break IPv4 too.
    – Ron Trunk
    Jul 22, 2019 at 15:57
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    @RoryAlsop The only way the ISPs will implement resiliency is if their customers demand it, and the only way that will happen is if we start using it. If you wait for IPv6 to be perfect, it will simply never happen.
    – Ron Trunk
    Jul 22, 2019 at 16:27
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    @1201ProgramAlarm, there are about 80,000 web sites registered with and verified by the IPv6 Forum. Virtually every site I use, except SE, is on the list, and all I have tested with IPv6-only work just fine.
    – Ron Maupin
    Jul 22, 2019 at 16:30
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    Relevant: ipv6excuses.com
    – Martin Schröder
    Jul 25, 2019 at 13:46
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    @MartinSchröder let's be honest the main excuse is: "we don't want to deal with it, and IPv4 mostly works" it's not true but it's the main excuse.
    – Mgetz
    Jul 25, 2019 at 14:15
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    See meta.stackoverflow.com/a/348224/821436
    – Martin Schröder
    Jul 25, 2019 at 18:27
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    I stumbled across this: "It would be disappointing to discover that a service provider has not yet implemented IPv6 at all. That would be a huge red warning flag that the service provider is not innovative when it comes to network technology. If the provider isn’t offering IPv6 services at this stage, it calls into question its prioritization of innovation and whether it is falling behind the competition in other areas."
    – Ron Maupin
    Nov 14, 2019 at 0:33

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