The IPv6 Neglect

I’ve been holding this in for a while, but today really pushed it over the edge. It’s 2025, and there are still major platforms and companies — yes, including GitHub — that do not support IPv6. That’s not just a minor inconvenience. It’s a glaring red flag about the internal state of the company, and a strong sign of deeper technical rot.

Let’s be clear: IPv6 isn’t some new experimental protocol. It’s been around for decades (1998), and for the past 8+ years it’s been the standard. Hosting providers, cloud services, and ISPs have been transitioning steadily. IPv4 is functionally exhausted. If a service still doesn’t support IPv6 in 2025, then something is fundamentally wrong.

gantt
    title How long IPv6 has been around
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat %Y

    section Internet Standards
        IPv6 Existence: active, ipv6, 1998-12-01, 2025-05-10
        World IPv6 Launch: 2012-06-06, 2025-05-10

    section Social Media Platforms
        Facebook: 2004-02-04, 2025-05-10
        Twitter: 2006-07-15, 2023-07-23
        X (formerly Twitter): 2023-07-23, 2025-05-10
        Instagram: 2010-10-06, 2025-05-10
        TikTok: 2016-09-01, 2025-05-10
        Vine: 2013-01-24, 2017-01-17
        ICQ: 1996-11-15, 2024-06-26
        Skype: 2003-08-29, 2025-05-05

    section AI Milestones
        GPT-3 Released: milestone, gpt3, 2020-06-11, 0d
        ChatGPT Launched: milestone, chatgpt, 2022-11-30, 0d

    section Developer Tools
        GitHub: 2008-04-10, 2025-05-10
        NordVPN: 2012-02-13, 2025-05-10

A Real-World Story

Earlier today, I wanted to spin up a website on Hetzner. Their pricing is excellent — especially if you opt out of getting a public IPv4 address (would save you a cup of coffee). Many people go this route now, since IPv4 is limited and expensive. I figured this would be a great chance to go fully IPv6. A modern stack, clean config — the new age of the internet.

And then… it all fell apart.

SSH access

After scaling up the machine, the first thing that I obviously tried to do is to SSH into the machine, and guess what? It didn’t work.

After some digging, I discovered the reason — NordVPN doesn’t support IPv6. A major VPN company. In 2025. Still stuck in IPv4. They claim it’s for “security” reasons. But the reality is, other VPN providers manage to do it just fine. So no, it’s not a security limitation/feature — it’s just a lack of will. Or worse, a pile of tech debt no one dares to touch.

Fine. I disabled the VPN and managed to connect to my server.

Clone my code

Next, I needed to clone my project into the server. Simple enough — or so I thought.

I tried using HTTPS. Then SSH. Nothing worked. At first, I suspected a firewall misconfiguration or maybe some local network issue. But after checking everything, the real culprit became clear: GitHub doesn’t support IPv6.

Yes, GitHub — the largest code hosting platform in the world, backed by over $1 billion in revenue and nearly 6,000 employees — can’t serve a git repository to an IPv6-only machine. In 2025.

I assumed this had to be a known issue, something they were already fixing. But when I looked it up, I found this discussion thread, opened three years ago, with over 300 comments from equally frustrated users.

And the response from GitHub? Nothing. Not a single comment from an actual engineer. Just an automated message from a GitHub bot.

💬 Your Product Feedback Has Been Submitted 🎉

Thank you for taking the time to share your insights with us! Your feedback is invaluable as we build a better GitHub experience for all our users.

No status update. No acknowledgment. No “we’re working on it.”

That’s not just poor support — that’s what organizational decay looks like.

Docker Compose collapse

At this point, I gave up trying to pull the repository remotely. I cloned it locally, zipped it, uploaded it to the server, and unpacked it manually — like it’s 2004.

But the problems didn’t end.

As part of the deployment, I had a simple Docker Compose setup that pulled system packages, built the image, and ran the exporter. The Dockerfile used Alpine and looked like this:

FROM python:3-alpine
WORKDIR /app
RUN apk add --update --no-cache gcc libc-dev libffi-dev
COPY ../../requirements.txt .
RUN pip3 install -r requirements.txt
COPY ../../exporter exporter
COPY ../../main.py .
CMD ["python3", "-u", "main.py"]

But the apk add step failed. Not because of syntax or code — just timeout errors. DNS resolution errors. Broken network paths. Package mirrors not reachable.

My guess? The Alpine package mirrors didn’t support IPv6 properly. Or something upstream just didn’t route correctly. Either way, the build was dead in the water.

And then came the moment of surrender: I paid extra on Hetzner to add a public IPv4 address to the VM.

Everything instantly worked. SSH stabilized. apk fetched packages. pip installed the Python requirements. GitHub clone worked. Docker Compose built the image like nothing had ever gone wrong.

It wasn’t my config. It wasn’t a mistake. It was just the reality of trying to run infrastructure over IPv6 in 2025.

Why this matters

If a company can’t implement something as basic and foundational as IPv6 in 2025, you have to ask: what else have they neglected?

Chances are, the original engineers are long gone. The core networking stack is so tangled that no one dares touch it. The fear of regression is stronger than the drive to improve. At that point, the company isn’t evolving — it’s just surviving, patch by patch.

This isn’t just an inconvenience for a few people on exotic setups. It’s a sign of technical debt accumulation, organizational inertia, and poor architectural agility.

And when IPv4 finally becomes fully unviable — what then?

Investors and clients, take note

This kind of neglect should be a wake-up call. Companies that can’t adapt to basic industry standards like IPv6 are not future-proof. They are, in fact, slowly decaying. Locked into legacy decisions, afraid to refactor, and falling behind.

By contrast, services like GitLab work just fine over IPv6-only setups. They’re building with the future in mind. They understand where the internet is going, and they’re preparing for it.

If you’re evaluating a product, a service, or even considering investment — try running it in an IPv6-only environment. It’s a simple test, and it can reveal a lot.

Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just about networking. It’s about whether the company is still capable of growth — or whether it’s already rotting from within.