A deep historical dive into why IPv6 is so complex, tracing the evolution from circuit switching and bus networks through ethernet, MAC addresses, ARP, DHCP, and bridging. The author explains that IPv6 was originally designed to eliminate all this legacy cruft — no more MAC addresses, ARP, broadcasts, or layer 2 bridging — but that vision never materialized because layers are only ever added, never removed. The core unfixed flaw is the TCP/UDP 4-tuple tying session identity to IP addresses, which breaks mobile IP. QUIC is identified as a potential path forward, since its session identifiers could enable transparent roaming without layer 2 bridging hacks.
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