Living with IPv6: Comments

Comment on "IPv6 Weekend Update"

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:06:41 -0500

Thanks for this. I blogged about this when it came out - http://www.personal.psu.edu/dvm105/blogs/ipv6/2008/03/6to4-and-reverse-dns.html

I've since switched to a static tunnel from Hurricane Electric, and that's solved the problem.

- Derek Morr

Comment on "IPv6 Weekend Update"

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:25:08 -0500

Greetings. There is one other thing that you can do to get a reverse domain setup for your use there. https://6to4.nro.net lets you define a DNS server for ipv6 reverse lookups. The tricky part is that every time your comcast IP changes you'll need to re-delegate the addresses and change your server so that it listens to the new address reverse space.

The good news though is that since radvd auto-configures your internal addresses and the bottom 80 bits stay the same, you only need to change the named.conf to the new first 48 bits and you won't have to touch the zone file at all.

It might get tricky if other people password the nro site for your dynamic ip before you get there though. I don't know if you can override it?

- Kazriko

Comment on "ipv6.google.com"

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:27:29 -0500

Cool! I see it too.

- Derek Morr

Comment on "ipv6.google.com"

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:04:41 -0500

Today I noticed that new IPv6 servers are used (at least for me) by google. The 'cache-link' contains an IPv6 address: http://[2001:4860:0:1001::28]/search?q=cache:YqLrl1H-aFgJ:nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Version_6+ipv6&hl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=nl

- Pieter van Leuven

Comment on "IPv6 at Internet2 Joint Techs"

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:44:03 -0500

Re Mairead's comment... Heck, at the rate the IT service providers around the University are deploying v6 capabilities, they may as well wait until v8 comes along. Or just wait until after v6 is really needed and then try to play catch up. Like trying to prepare for Y2K on January 1, 2000.
/end sarcasm

- Phil Devan

Comment on "IPv6 at Internet2 Joint Techs"

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:42:22 -0500

Derek, while you were gone we decided to scrap all plans to move to IPv6. I think Phil Devan was the one behind the decision.

- MAIREAD MARTIN

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:53:15 -0500

I understand your point, but I have to respectfully disagree.

Socket support isn't a "foundational structure" of Perl. It's supported in an extension module. Why wasn't the socket module extended to support IPv6? I'm not arguing about the core language. I'm arguing about the (poor) design in this part of its standard API (to the extent that Perl can be said to have one, since it largely depends on third-party modules). As I mentioned in a post a few months ago, why can't I use a single API to write IP-version-agnostic code in Perl? I can do that in C, Python and Java.

I don't buy your argument that languages can't be held accountable for lack of support of newer standards. C predates IPv6 (and Perl), and yet it fully supports IPv6. Yes, any "legacy" C code has to be updated to use the new v6-aware APIs. But every modern OS has supported those APIs for years (they're part of POSIX 1003.1g-2000, for example). Likewise, Python's IPv6 suppor was cleanly added to its socket module. Python is almost as old as Perl, and it also predates IPv6.

In neither C nor Perl do you have to resort to hacks like checking for a special IPv6-aware socket module and then branching accordingly every time you need to make a call to the resolver or socket functions. Nor do you have to pass special "use IPv6" flags to other libraries. On any reasonably modern Python installation, the ftplib, httplib, poplib, smtplib, and telnetlib modules (to name a few) will automatically use IPv6, if available. That's a much cleaner design.

- Derek Morr

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:56:17 -0500

I'm sorry; I love hating on Perl as much as the next guy, but languages can't be blamed for being caught flat-footed by major changes to their foundational structures that come _after_ the languages are created. [RFC2460](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2460.txt) that defines IPv6 is dated December 1996. I don't even care to guess at when it was actually taken seriously by, well, anybody. By that time, [the Perl 5.6 development track was running](http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl/pod/perlhist.pod). Look at the number of languages still reeling from Unicode changes... same thing. (Arguably, this goes a long ways towards explaining Lisp's problems with large-scale acceptance.) Oh, you think it's easy to guess ahead? You think that everyone developing in Perl should have seen this coming? (And mind you, not just "the core perl developers" but every library developer writing a library that touches sockets.) OK, wise-guy, tell me the changes you will need to make to your favorite language to adapt to the next OS that will have 50% market share that isn't Unix- or Windows-based. And I don't mean "guess", I mean, _know_ which language changes are necessary. You can't. Ultimately, a language must depend on certain things for it to be able to do anything for it to be even remotely usable and useful, and when those things change out from underneath it, bad things happen. This is inevitable.

- Kyy

Comment on "C'mon, Apple. Give me IPv6 on the iPhone."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:29:43 -0500

I too was hoping to see an IPv6 toggle in the 2.0 firmware. I figure it can't hurt to provide Apple some feedback to indicate people would like to see it.

PS. Your federated authentication mechanisms don't seem to work (either LJ or OpenID).

- Richard Lotz

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:45:17 -0500

I might end up fixing it myself.

As for the author testing IPv6, he could if he chose to. He could configure two machines with link-local addresses and test connectivity.

I agree that Perl doesn't have a big corporation backing it. To me, that's all the more reason not to use it in an enterprise :)

- Derek Morr

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:32:39 -0500

Hmm, why not fix this yourself and send a patch to the author of IO::Socket::SSL?

I suspect that if you employer is insisting that you use Perl and you require this feature, they wouldn't have a problem with you spending time to implement it and send in the patch. At which point not only you benefit, but all the other users of IO::Socket::SSL do.

Note this in the IO::Socket::SSL docs:

Support for IPv6 with IO::Socket::SSL is expected to work, but is experimental, as none of the author's machines use IPv6 and hence he cannot test IO::Socket::SSL with them.

Seems that that author of the module doesn't have a need for IPv6, so to expect him to spend his free time adding support for it is kinda of asking a lot. Remember, Perl doesn't have a big corporation like Sun or Google (where Guido works now) behind it, it relys entierly on volunteer labor for things like this.

- Stevan

- Stevan Little

Comment on "C'mon, Apple. Give me IPv6 on the iPhone."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:46:42 -0500

Agreed, Apple should have enabled IPv6 on the iPhone to at least allow providers to enable IPv6 on their GGSNs, etc and to try out some new applications. Enabling IPv6 on mobile networks where proxies and walled gardens can exist are actually the easiest networks to roll out IPv6 because the provider can launch their own services that need not target the whole Internet.

Truman

- Truman Boyes

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:45:08 -0500

Interesting post. This made me think about the JUNOScript/XML PERL libraries that I use to connect to various routers and push their configurations. They include dependencies on SSL libraries which will likely cause a problem if connecting to IPv6-only routers. I think the while OSS industry is going to have a lot of trouble supporting IPv6 in their existing software.

Truman
www.truman.net

- Truman Boyes

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:30:58 -0500

Truman
www.truman.net

- Truman Boyes

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:32:26 -0500

Heh, I second that! About a year ago I had to write something in perl because the client has all their scripts in perl. I had to choose whether to support SSL or IPv6. But not both because the perl networking libs totally suck.

- Michal

Comment on "Perl considered harmful."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:36:28 -0500

Wow, you actually got java to work with SSL?

- Ann E. Mouse

Comment on "Every European Union member has IPv6 DNS"

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:53:07 -0500

Though not many offer IPv6 glue records yet, but of course: first things first.

PS: trying OpenID login prints a Perl stacktrace.

- Lapo Luchini

Comment on "Internet2 DNS is fully IPv6-enabled"

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:15:49 -0500

There isn't a centralized, plan, no. ITS has deliberately avoided a mandate for IPv6 adoption. There is an IPv6 working group in ITS that's just started. ITS provides IPv6 transit on the Integrated Backbone; your backbone contact can request IPv6 address space from TNS.

There is work happening on IPv6, but it's fairly under the radar. For exampl,e In North America, 2007 was the biggest year ever for IPv6 allocations; it more than doubled the previous record year (2005). In Europe, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (which is the biggest public exchange in the world), doubled the number of IPv6 ports it has.

So it's happening, just very quietly and slowly.

- Derek Morr

Comment on "Internet2 DNS is fully IPv6-enabled"

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:23:16 -0500

Hi Derek. Is there a defined plan/timeline for PSU for role out IPv6 throughout the U? I would have thought with the Feds requiring backbone IPv6 that we'd be seeing a lot more movement throughout the industry by now.

regards,
-Rich

- Richard Rauscher

Comment on "Internet2 IPv6 update"

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:18:12 -0500

JANET also appears to have IPv6-enabled much of their public-facing services: Their NTP servers (ntp[0-3].ja.net), their authoritative DNS servers (ns[0-4,10].ja.net), and www.janet.net are all IPv6-enabled. All that's left are their MX servers.

- Derek Morr