Who is using ipv6 ... where to start.

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 09:26:48PM -0700, T. 'Nifty New Hat' Mitchell wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 11:30:46PM +0100, John Lagrue wrote:
> > Subject: Re: Turning off ipv6 -- !!DO IT!! [was: Need help with a DNS problem]

> Just curious who is using IPV6 and how does one begin to play this
> game?

	Judging from the amount of smtp traffic I get on IPv6 into my MX
server and the amount of DNS traffic to and from my DNS servers as they talk
to other DNS servers on IPv6, I would have to say a LOT more than most
people on this list would even begin to suspect.  It also explains the
Mozilla slowdown when you have IPv6 enabled but are not globally routed
to IPv6.  Mozilla receives AAAA records for a URL and tries them before
it tries the A records.  When it receives an unreachable error or a
timeout, then it tries the A record.  That's why it appears to be slow.
If you run into a slow site, try running the command "host -t AAAA [host]"
and see if it has any IPv6 addresses.  If it does (and more and more do)
that's your answer.

[mhw at alcove mhw]$ host www.sixxs.net
www.sixxs.net is an alias for noc.sixxs.net.
noc.sixxs.net has address 213.197.29.32
[mhw at alcove mhw]$ host -t AAAA www.sixxs.net
www.sixxs.net is an alias for noc.sixxs.net.
noc.sixxs.net has AAAA address 2001:838:1:1:210:dcff:fe20:7c7c

	Looking at recent BGP tables (core router tables) for IPv6, it
appears that there are about 40 million routable IPv6 networks advertised
on the net (that's routable to the ISP - I can't tell how many of them
are really "live" networks).  At best guess, one would be extremely
generous to say that there are even 10 million (and I doubt it's really
even close to that many) routable IPv4 networks (not counting junk NAT
boxen).  That's at least 4 times as many routable IPv6 networks are there
are routable IPv4 networks.

	As to the other question...  How does one begin to play this game?

	You can start with a bunch of very generic tutorials and howto's
at "IPv6 Style" <http://www.ipv6style.jp>.  There are also plenty of
Linux specific IPv6 sites on the net.  Deepspace6 <http://www.deepspace6.net>
is a good place to start, though it can be a bit slow.  HS247
<http://www.hs247.net> is another good IPv6 resource site.  I can't
even begin to list them all.  Check for the Linux IPv6 HowTo as well.

	I've been on IPv6 in the 2001::/16 TLA (those are the production
address ranges as opposed to the 2002::/16 6to4 addresses or the 3ffe::/16
6bone experiment addresses) for several years now.  You can get a free /64
subnet from Hurricane Electric <http://www.tunnelbroker.net> in 2001::/16
or a free /48 network in 3ffe::/16 from Freenet6 <http://www.freenet6.net>.
You can also get a /48 from Hurricane Electric if you ask and can justify
it.  My IPv6 network is 2001:470:104::/48 from HE.  You connect to these
tunnel brokers using static 6over4 (which Linux incorrectly identifies
as 6in4, which is a different protocol ...  Well...  ifconfig claims it's
IPv6-in-IPv4 which, maybe, isn't really meant to imply 6in4 so maybe I'm
being too picky to say incorrect, just MISLEADING) SIT tunnels.  The
brokers also have methods for adjusting to dynamic addresses on your
end so you can have static IPv6 addresses even with dynamic IPv4 addresses
and tunnels.  If you're on DSL or Cable Broadband, you'll have no problems
and those providers are so far behind the times they don't even recognize
that you're running IPv6 over their networks and none of their blocking
has any effect on your IPv6 traffic, so, yes, you can run servers on
IPv6 even when you can't on IPv4.

	I can't wait to see what happens when the P2P crowd finds out
what they can REALLY do with privacy enhanced EUI addresses which change
automagically and randomly and can not be traced to the end system
(because there is no record or log of the addresses and what MAC
address they are associated with) but only back to the IPv6 network
and subnetwork (SLA).  The RIAA is going to have a shit fit.

	For reference...

	A /48 IPv6 network has 65,536 /64 subnets (the SLA or the forth
number in the address is the subnet address) each of which contain
16 billion billion host addresses (or EUI - End Unit Identifiers -
the bottom half of the address).

	If you just want to play with IPv6 a little, you can try the
6to4 addresses (2002::/16).  Each and every IPv4 address has an entire
and unique IPv6 network assigned to it under the 6to4 addresses.  The
NLA field (second and third numbers in the address) is the hex
representation of your IPv4 address, so 130.205.32.64 (my web
server - www.wittsend.com) would be 2002:82cd:2040::/48.  You can
use that immediately without asking anyone's permission or setting
up any special tunnels.  It's auto configured and auto routed over IPv4.

	If you want a site to test connectivity to, my IPv6-only web
server is on www.ip6.wittsend.com (www.wittsend.com is IPv4-only so
I can keep the separate).  Other sites, such as SixXS <http://www.sixxs.net>,
and IPv6 Style, and Deep Space 6, have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
When you connect to them, they will display, somewhere on their pages,
what address you are connecting from and if it's IPv6 or IPv4.

	Have fun!

> -- 
> 	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
> 	/dev/null the ultimate in secure storage.

	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
  /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/       |  (678) 463-0932   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20040621/fb637c78/attachment-0001.sig>