Facebook casts a hex with self-referential IPv6

Well, they own the use of the addresses

I noticed this a while back when trying to analyse some traffic anomalies on my home network. If they want to use some of the host part of their v6 addresses in that way then why not? Nice of them to label their addresses like that so we don't need to do reverse lookups. Of course, bad boys could emulate to mislead, but only geeks & network engineers look at v6 addresses anyway.

I'd like some dead beef

I'd put some dead beef in my address, personally. Or c0ffee.

The face:b00c subnet…

… is not new, it was mentioned in RFC5514.

I think I'll use a55 in my future IPv6 addresses.

Old news

I had already noticed this on Sunday. I found out that www.facebook.com was resolving to:

2a03:2880:f013:13:face:b00c::1823

IPv6 "vanity IPs" are fun. I've seen at least :b00b:babe:cafe, the ever present :dead:beef, :b00b:cafe among other funny spellings.

I'm probably going to set up :b00b:135 in the near future...

Voting

I voted Sad, but was secretly thinking Cool.

I think it's the same reason people use custom car registration numbers - to compensate for other shortcomings...

Where is the news here? Facebook did this back in 2011 when they were based out of the US, before they moved to Ireland. facebook.com pointed to 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c::, facebook.de pointed to 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:3, and fb.me pointed to 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:1. Facebook also has been using the Ireland IPv6 range since around 2012 (2a03:2880:10:cf01:face:b00c:0:4, 2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c:0:27, 2a03:2880:10:6f01:face:b00c:0:2, and such).

It's not much different to me using ::80:0 through ::80:FFFF (currently up to ::80:c) for my Web sites, with ::8080:x, ::443:x, ::4443:x, ::8081:x, and ::8008:x reserved for future use.

If you're not using SLAAC, and are running services on different IPv6 IPs, you may need to store IPv6 addresses in your short term memory. If the first 64 bits are in your long-term memory, and the last 64 bits aren't completely random, they are easier to remember.

I have a ULA ::/48 (including four ::/64s) and three public ::/64s in my long-term memory.

I could use ::c00c:1e:: if I wanted, just like The Register could use ::e1:12e9::, but what is the point if it just means having to remember even more in your long-term memory (going from 64 bits to 96 bits). Unless you're working on the servers, IP addresses (whether IPv4 or IPv6) are mostly hidden thanks to DNS.

Something perhaps more newsworthy IPv6-related is that www.whatismyip.com has enabled IPv6 support in the last month or so, so those of us with IPv6 can no longer rely on it to find out what our IPv4 IP address is.