> STUN and TURN which costs money and uses significant amounts of bandwidth.
TURN does, but not STUN. STUN's just for address discovery and many VoIP providers allow anyone to use theirs. But agreed - STUN on its own can fix only some connection.
Anyway, I think IPv6 can't be here soon enough. That would allow many improvements in the p2p networks!
As someone with native IPv6 connectivity (from a braindead/broken/cheap/stupid ISP, behind Dual Stack Lite, which causes a bunch of other problems) I .. don't believe that IPv6 is
- being generally available soon enough to matter (ever tried accessing your home connection via IPv6 from your mobile? There's no usable workaround that I've found so far and I don't see networks switching to IPv6 anytime soon)
- easy to migrate to (privacy concerns, lots of things to relearn, existing hard- and software WILL break - as my ISP provided cable modem does every three days when my prefix is renewed -> Reboot/reconnect or you're silently offline forever)
The idea is great. I was a fan of the technology in theory. Living with IPv6 at home for ~2 month now I'm considering to cancel my contract _because of issues due to the IPv6 migration_.
That aside, ignoring my anecdotal troubles and my personal disappointment with the way IPv6 is (not..) introduced around me: How would IPv6 help anyway? Just because you're having a globally routable address for all your machines probably doesn't mean that you want them to be directly exposed to the internet? Wouldn't you still need (rather: want) to punch a hole through the firewall?
Also once you know the address that doesn't use NAT, you could just use the STUN idea and just and the data from both ends at the same time.
Regarding ISP problem... have you tried contacting the support to replace the router? If it's their device they should just handle it like any other issue. If they refuse then it may be a problem with the "braindead/broken/cheap/stupid ISP" rather than any technology.
Yes, I contacted the ISP. The reasoning is "that is a limitation/flaw in the firmware of the single router that we provide (and you cannot use your own, or meddle with it). The company behind that product might correct this mistake early 2014 and we will upgrade your routers firmware (you cannot) when we get around. Just.. unplug it every three days for now".
That is the official statement, confirmed several times. The manufacturer (AVM) confirmed that they know about this issue and are working on a fix, but didn't want to commit to the early 2014 part.. Meanwhile the ISP gives you no choice to refuse dual stack lite and have a stable internet connection..
Technology: UPNP might be a way to open ports, but that works for IPv4 as well, no? I mean, the benefits of IPv6 lie elsewhere? A global address (for a time.. my prefix changes whenever my ISP likes to do that. I have the same 'unstable' address problem, still need to update my AAAA records all the time to make incoming connections work), independent of firewall issues?
If I host a game, it can open a port via upnp (and serve people from the internet) with ipv4 as well. Where is the benefit I'm missing, other than being able to see a dancing tortoise on kame?
TURN does, but not STUN. STUN's just for address discovery and many VoIP providers allow anyone to use theirs. But agreed - STUN on its own can fix only some connection.
Anyway, I think IPv6 can't be here soon enough. That would allow many improvements in the p2p networks!