What's a company secret you can share now that you no longer work there?

CaspianXI@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 1253 points –
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I worked at an ISP. The DHCP server we use for our DSL offering was made in the 90s and hasn't been updated since.

Frankly, I don't see this a a problem as long as the software is up to date and the hardware is sound. I bet there are thousands of SPARC servers out there processing data 24/7 since 1995.

Might want to get on updating it soon for IPV6 though

I don't know, I remember hearing that everything would soon be IPV6 a couple decades ago.

The alternative to IPv6 is CGNAT.

CGNAT is really annoying for users, since the entire ISP looks like a single IP address. This can lead to situations where the entire ISP accidentally gets classified as a bot or otherwise blocked. It's not too hard to find these kinds of stories from StarLink customers.

We are at the point where we are are legitimately out of IPv4 addresses. Household NAT isn't enough and CGNAT has too many problems. IPv6 code was written ages ago and is very stable in all OSs these days.

It really is just these legacy middle boxes holding us back.

This guy knows. CGNAT is incredible sucky and we are definitely out of ipv4. Why not everyone is hopping on IPv6 I don't know. I'm thinking people are afraid of the formatting but that's just dumb.

I’ve tried running my house on ipv6 only before, but you run into A LOT of issues, even with major services. Example: sometimes my devices would fail when trying to connect to Netflix. Netflix.com issues round-robin DNS. One (1) of the possible endpoints turned out to be unreachable from me over IPv6 because of return path MTU shenanigans I had zero control over.

I've worked for a few of the larger ISPs in the US. They all have their own special weird shit like a windows NT machine shoved in a corner in a CO in west Texas that you have to remote desktop into and run some java applet from the 90 to log into a hardwired machine from the 70s just to set up a voicemail box for a phone line. Ain't broke don't fix it leads to some wild setups at companies you wouldn't expect it from.