
Revisiting Apple and IPv6 - AndrewDucker
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2015-07/applev6.html
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giovannibajo1
I disagree that the missing of 464-XLAT is a problem for Apple. 464-XLAT is a
big incentive for companies like Skype et al. to keep shipping software that
only works on IPv4.

Instead, the need for 464-XLAT on iOS is completely overruled by the new
policy that requires apps to be able to correctly operate in IPv6 mode only
from iOS9 onwards (or they get rejected). So Skype will now be _forced_ to fix
their backend servers to handle IPv6 connections, or they won't be able to
ship on iOS9. This way, Apple completely bypassed the need of a transition
solution.

In fact, iOS support might even be a good global push for companies to
transition to IPv6 support (just like Mobile Safari has been for begin
dropping Flash and supporting HTML5 videos). If anything, I think this policy
change should overrule whatever negative points you want to give to them for
not supporting 464-XLAT.

~~~
ploxiln
In fact, I'd argue that "transition aids" have significantly hampered ipv6
adoption thus far.

I remember back in ~2007 (edit: actually 2005 I think) when on my home linux
system firefox started hanging for 30 seconds when loading web pages. It was
because it was trying ipv6 first, but I of course didn't have real ipv6
connectivity. I was more novice back then and I'm not sure what exactly in the
OS or router pretended to have ipv6 connectivity. But this problem got worse
with Windows Vista and "Teredo" automatic tunnels and 6in4 and various
schemes.

Too often, these schemes don't work close enough to 100% reliably, and then to
be safe, ipv6 has to be _disabled_. In fact, ipv6 was enabled in early
versions of Firefox and OS X, and then in later updates it was _disabled_
because too many people unknowingly had _broken_ ipv6 setups because of hare-
brained "transition aids". And then a couple years later they came up with
"happy eyeballs" so they could turn ipv6 back on again.

The major transition over the past year is only due to major cable ISPs
offering native ipv6 subnet broadcasts to consumer connections. So much for
automatic tunneling, magic multi-homed public-ish 6in4 routers, etc. They
added great amounts of complexity to ipv6 and delayed adoption because they
were flaky. And only now is native ipv6 catching on.

