>and having those machines use e.g. ddclient or similar
How does this work on my networked PDU, UPS, speaker, light hub, or even printer for that matter since you mention it [0]? There is vast universe of "machines" that aren't full fat PCs (or if they are under the hood grant zero native flexibility to the operator over any of that). But they all can take a static IP fine and then get managed from there, shoved into VLANs which are also straightforward with IPv4, etc.
I agree with GP that this is a really, really common scenario in SMB. And it means a lot of stuff can stay up and active with quite minimal network infrastructure.
>but I feel like that's not how IPv4 was intended to be used.
First, why not, and what source? People have been using static IPv4 for this sort of thing for as long as I can remember ethernet (mid 90s) at least and probably before I ever did my first networking at all. But second, so what? It's useful, makes sense and has tons of usage. It allows basic networks to get bootstrapped in a super lightweight fashion and its dependable when there are issues at higher stacks. It certainly doesn't scale, but conversely at scale handling more moving parts reliably also is much more feasible so that's ok.
It definitely seems like one of those things that should have been a gimme in a new standard. With the opportunity to have close enough to limitless addresses why did they have to make it more restrictive then the old very limited system?
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0: Ignoring granted that many of them don't support IPv6 at all, because some already do and that number may eventually be 100% or sufficiently close. And that would probably happen sooner if there was more demand due to IPv6 meeting existing needs.
Also in isolated networks like industry automation or so. You have a couple of devices and static addresses. Very simple.
A couple of years ago I tryed to make my homenetworks complete IPv6, but then I realised, IPv6 is a such pain for me at home with a couple of VLANs and so. Of course just NAT is bad, but it had also it's good points.
How does this work on my networked PDU, UPS, speaker, light hub, or even printer for that matter since you mention it [0]? There is vast universe of "machines" that aren't full fat PCs (or if they are under the hood grant zero native flexibility to the operator over any of that). But they all can take a static IP fine and then get managed from there, shoved into VLANs which are also straightforward with IPv4, etc.
I agree with GP that this is a really, really common scenario in SMB. And it means a lot of stuff can stay up and active with quite minimal network infrastructure.
>but I feel like that's not how IPv4 was intended to be used.
First, why not, and what source? People have been using static IPv4 for this sort of thing for as long as I can remember ethernet (mid 90s) at least and probably before I ever did my first networking at all. But second, so what? It's useful, makes sense and has tons of usage. It allows basic networks to get bootstrapped in a super lightweight fashion and its dependable when there are issues at higher stacks. It certainly doesn't scale, but conversely at scale handling more moving parts reliably also is much more feasible so that's ok.
It definitely seems like one of those things that should have been a gimme in a new standard. With the opportunity to have close enough to limitless addresses why did they have to make it more restrictive then the old very limited system?
----
0: Ignoring granted that many of them don't support IPv6 at all, because some already do and that number may eventually be 100% or sufficiently close. And that would probably happen sooner if there was more demand due to IPv6 meeting existing needs.