
World IPv6 Day: firing up the engines on the new Internet protocol - atularora
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/world-ipv6-day-firing-up-engines-on-new.html
======
mike-cardwell
IPv6 really isn't that difficult. It only takes a few minutes to get a free
IPv6 address from a tunnel broker and add it to your server. My websites and
email were all dual stack less than 24 hours after I started looking into IPv6
for the first time. I wrote a blog post about it last year:

[https://secure.grepular.com/Setting_up_IPv6_is_Easier_Than_Y...](https://secure.grepular.com/Setting_up_IPv6_is_Easier_Than_You_Think)

If you get a cert error it's because the certificate is signed by cacert.org
and several major browser/os combos don't have their root yet.

~~~
btilly
Congratulations. Now more people are unable to access your website and email
because of known bugs with dual stacks than are likely to access your website
and email through ipv6. The main issue are people whose setup says that they
will connect preferentially via ipv6, who try to connect because their
operating system has support for it, but whose IP provider does not have
support.

See
[http://getipv6.info/index.php/Customer_problems_that_could_o...](http://getipv6.info/index.php/Customer_problems_that_could_occur)
for more potential problems you've created.

Of course this is a kind of problem that needs to get fixed before ipv6 can be
broadly adopted. Which is why this ipv6 days is going to happen.

~~~
mike-cardwell
Going dual stack means approximately 1 in 2000 people can't visit my website.
It is a simple tech blog. I am ok with those figures. Other sites obviously
wont be.

------
mootothemax
A handy quick test of your current IPv6 readiness is to try Google IPv6:
<http://ipv6.google.com/>

Sadly it doesn't work for me - for curiosity's sake I'm now going to try via
Lynx from my servers :)

~~~
zaphoyd
<http://test-ipv6.com/> gives you a bit more info about exactly what is
working and what isn't in regards to your v6 connection.

~~~
phirephly
So I'm on Toredo, which means IPv6 works, but it says I can't visit IPv6
websites, which I understand to be a DNS issue. Any hints on how to get that
working?

~~~
trezor
Google is selective about exposing IPv6 DNS entries. Your ISP has to be in the
Google IPv6 program which means that Google trusts your ISP to provide quality
IPv6 connectivity. Basically, Google don't want half-assed IPv6 networking
setups tainting their brand as unreliable if for instance Bing works (having
only IPv4), but Google is slow or inaccessible.

It's understandable from a marketing point of view, but IMO a pretty coward
stance on employing new technology. I'm using Google services over IPv6, but
the reason I can do that is because I run my own bind instance and have
specifically added the Google IPv6 forwarding entries:

Should you have IPv6 and bind, here is what they look like:

    
    
        zone "google.com" IN {
            type forward;
            forward first;
            forwarders {
                2001:4de0:1000:a4::2;
                2001:4de0:1000:a3::2;
            };
        };
    

Other than that, reasons for not reaching IPv6-sites, even if you have IPv6
enabled is that (at least) Chrome is _very_ selective about IPv6 support. It
_may_ accept IPv6-only sites if the position of the moon is right relative to
the suns orbit around the milky way.

With Firefox this isn't really an issue, but Google has tried _really_ hard to
avoid IPv6 being used with Chrome. For instance: If you are on a tunnelled
IPv6 connection (i.e. non-native, like teredo) it will attempt to detect this
and _block_ IPv6-connectivity because Google has chosen for you that this may
provide an inferior web-experience with higher latency compared to plain IPv4,
if available.

Google's IPv6-efforts so far, while I could give them credit for at least have
taken a few baby-steps, is by far the most cowardly I have seen anyone take. I
find it very hard to applaud them.

~~~
zaphoyd
Lets hope "World IPv6 Day" goes smoothly enough that they can drop some of
those restrictions. =)

~~~
trezor
Indeed. I wish, just like for Firefox, there was an extension which could tell
me what protocol I am using.

As far as I know, Firefox does not discriminate nor positively favor neither
IPv6 or IPv4. So far, this is what has given me the best IPv6 experience, and
I'm very disappointed Google/Chrome has decided to do their best to conceal
from the internet that there are users out there, and that they are ready.

IPv6 deployment is largely a chicken and the egg type of problem and IMO this
decision doesn't really help.

------
drtse4
I'm wondering if one day, the real necessity to switch to ipv6 _fast_ (after
years of experiments) and the fear for possible connectivity issues will
create a y2k effect among the population...

~~~
uxp
Reminds me of the busysignal I'd get after dialing into Prodigy. "Please wait
while we allocate an IP address for your internet connection."

------
Roritharr
it seems my isp won't provide native ipv6 addresses until they are somehow
forced to... -_-

------
gimpf
Related: The Germany-based IT book and magazine publisher Heise
(<http://www.heise.de>) did this back on 2010-09. The test has been such a
success (practically no problems, for their share of readers, though) that
they made that permanent. They wrote that those Big Guys had asked them on
their experiences. Maybe this actually works out. (Source, German: @
[http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Globaler-Test-fuer-
da...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Globaler-Test-fuer-das-Internet-
der-Zukunft-1168595.html))

~~~
zaphoyd
The Norwegian companies A-Pressen Digitale Medier (<http://www.apdm.no/>) and
VG Multimedia (<http://www.vg.no/>), both news publishers with non-technical
audiences, had similar experiences. The IT group that helped them set it up
published the results of their experience and brokenness testing here:
<http://fud.no/ipv6/>

------
apu
After roughly 8 years, how do DJB's predictions/comments hold up on ipv6?

<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html>

~~~
requinot59
_"The IPv6 designers made a fundamental conceptual mistake: they designed the
IPv6 address space as an_ alternative _to the IPv4 address space, rather than
an_ extension _to the IPv4 address space."_ \-- djb (emphasis mine)

It's true that it would have make sense to embed IPv4 address space into IPv6!

~~~
zokier
Kinda like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#IPv4-mapped_IPv6_addresses> ?

edit: Actually, now that I think about it, accessing IPv4 internet from
IPv6-only LAN should be almost trivial. Lets say you happen to have 3000::0
IPv6 network completely unused, which also fits the entire IPv4 address space.
Then you could configure your DNS server to respond to AAAA queries for
domains that have only A records with an corresponding IPv6 in your free
block. Ie news.ycombinator.com(174.132.225.106) would become 3000::ae84:e16a
or something like that. Then your router which is default gw for the hosts
receives a package destined to that special network, it takes the payload and
puts it into a IPv4 packet with destination decoded from the IPv6 address.

It seems kinda obvious approach, wouldn't require any modification of the
hosts or to the internet. Of course I don't know why anyone would want to run
a IPv6 only LAN instead of mixed v4/v6, but maybe there is some reason to. Are
there some problems that I haven't noticed? Surely someone must have thought
about this before.

~~~
zaphoyd
This is referred to as NAT64/DNS64
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanisms#NAT6...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanisms#NAT64))
and is the strategy many mobile phone networks (such as T-Mobile USA) are
taking.

Effectively they give devices IPv6 addresses only and run a DNS server that
makes up "fake" IPv6 addresses for all of the v4 only DNS records. It works
well except when applications embed IPv4 literals (as they won't go through
the DNS system and get translated)

------
AndrewDucker
Now, if only my router supported IPv6. Sadly, it doesn't seem to come out of
the box on any home-oriented routers.

~~~
zaphoyd
This is actually not true anymore.

Off the top of my head all Apple Airport Express/Extreme/Time Capsule routers,
DLink 601/655/855, linksys WRT610N/E3000. All support IPv6, most of those let
you configure the router as 6to4 or 6in4 (tunnelbroker, etc) tunnel endpoint
as well. The DLink ones even support a stateful DHCPv6 server to provide
specific v6 address ranges to your LAN clients.

The support on the most recent revisions often isn't just limited to firmware
either. The Dlink routers have IPv6 ready logos on the box and instructions
for IPv6 features in the manual. You can pick these routers up in your local
Best Buy or Office Depot and the v6 support is not limited to the high end
ones either.

I am sure there are more than those that I have listed, they are just the ones
that I have personally used for home IPv6 stuff.

~~~
nitrogen
I have a fully-upgraded D-Link DIR-655 rev.A (unless there's some other prefix
before the 655 you mentioned) and it does not seem to support IPv6.

~~~
zaphoyd
Sorry, I meant DIR-615/825 not 655/855. You are correct, the 655 does not
support IPv6 at the moment. According to Dlink support forums in 2009 there
were plans for the 655 to get upgraded but I haven't heard anything since.

Note: the way Dlink has done the IPv6 upgrades on the other models is by
releasing a new hardware revision. So DIR-615 Rev C,D, and E supports IPv6,
but Rev A and B don't. =\

------
moxiemk1
Here at Carnegie Mellon University, we're allocated routable IPv4 addresses
(and real DNS entries) for each MAC address you connect to the campus network
with.

As far as I can tell, I have zero support for IPv6. Autoconf doesn't work at
all, and I'm unable to find any documentation about it. Sigh.

------
zacharycohn
According to <http://twitter.com/#!/IPv4Countdown>, we will run out of IPv4
addresses in about a month. Won't June already be a few months past when we
run out?

~~~
zaphoyd
That counter is when global registries have allocated everything, not strictly
when all useable addresses are in use. IPv4 addresses will never "run out",
they will just get more expensive and complicated to use until the point where
IPv6 is cheaper and easier. IANA exhaustion is just one big milestone along
that path.

~~~
zacharycohn
Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation! I assumed that this was counting how
many are in use/assigned, versus simply allocated.

------
pavel
Here's a start-up idea: an IPv4 address market/exchange (unless something like
this already exists)

~~~
wmf
<https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/>

(IPbay does have a nice ring to it, though.)

------
steadicat
Google: “Though IPv4 plays an important role in the Internet, as our goal is
to enable open innovation, support for the protocol will be removed and our
resources directed towards completely new technologies, such as IPv6.”

