Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6

netbuzz writes in to note that some early adopters of Microsoft Vista are reporting problems with Vista's implementation of IPv6. An example:"'We are seeing a number of applications that are IP-based that do not like the addressing scheme of IPv6,' says one user. 'We will send a print job to an IP-based printer, and the print job becomes corrupted. We're seeing this with Window's Vista machines. When IPv6 is installed, this happens without fail. As soon as we remove IPv6, all of our printer functions return to normal.'"

MS' Teredo (IPv6) blog

[packetmon]

MS has a blog for this sort of thing. Sean Siler promised to answer questions and provide help on issues pertaining to this via an email list I'm on. http://blogs.technet.com/ipv6/ [technet.com] ... Anyhow, those parties with IPv6 issues, I bet ya a HUGE portion of them are using NAT...

They need a better implementation

[multipartmixed]

I think they should scoop the one out of BSD UNIX.

Hell, it worked for them pretty good LAST time..

Re:Simple solution.

[Fweeky]

On *ix, most "IPv4" apps should also support IPv6, and normally try using that first if it's available. It's fairly easy to see how some crappy printer drivers could have this behavior hacked into them and screw up because nobody tested it. Maybe they're freeing memory after an attempt and sending garbage to the printer when falling back to IPv4, or something similarly silly.

Pretty sad considering...

[drinkypoo]

...that they had IPv6 working in Win2k and WinXP. But you had to administer it from the command line, and they wanted to integrate things, so they combined their stacks. They wrote a new stack, and at least in the release candidate it had buffer overflow exploits, including the LAND attack, remote code execution, you name it. So obviously it was written by a dumbfuck - Microsoft already had and fixed these holes in earlier operating systems, starting as early as Windows 95.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. (So if you forgot that Microsoft is just fucking lame in every way, you are doomed to continue to be fucked by them and their crap software.)

Re:Simple solution.

[haapi]

The entire IP stack of Vista/Longhorn has been reimplemented. IPv6 is kind of an "add-on" to the networking code in XP, but in Vista, IPv4 and IPv6 are implemented in a unified stack.

Just sayin', the behavior is going to be different, and having some bugs to shake out is really no surprise.

Re:don't the idiots at MS test anything?

[El Lobo]

They DO test a lot, but it's imposible to not have bugs especially with such a new beast like IPv6. Linuzzzz itself have a million of reported bugs with IPv6, which, again is not strange due to the relative new protocol.

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =6402758 [sun.com]

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/net/0205.3/ 0002.html [iu.edu]

http://lists.ntp.isc.org/pipermail/questions/2007- April/013854.html [isc.org]

etc...

The problem often is in the OS itself, but sometimes the applications and drivers are the problem. So why is this news? Well, judge by yourself.

Re:Simple solution.

[tkdtaylor]

IPv6 FAQ [microsoft.com]

Q. How do I disable IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008?

A. Unlike Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 cannot be uninstalled. However, you can disable IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 by doing one of the following:

- In the Network Connections folder, obtain properties on all of your connections and adapters and clear the check box next to the Internet Protocol version 6 (TCP/IPv6) component in the list under This connection uses the following items.

This method disables IPv6 on your LAN interfaces and connections, but does not disable IPv6 on tunnel interfaces or the IPv6 loopback interface.

- Add the following registry value (DWORD type) set to 0xFF:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip6\Parameters\DisabledComponents

This method disables IPv6 on all your LAN interfaces, connections, and tunnel interfaces but does not disable the IPv6 loopback interface. You must restart the computer for this registry value to take effect.

For additional information about the DisabledComponents registry value, see Configuring IPv6 with Windows Vista.

If you disable IPv6, you will not be able to use Windows Meeting Space or any application that relies on the Windows Peer-to-Peer Networking platform or the Teredo transition technology.

Re:Simple solution.

[3vi1]

Heh... Removing (proper) IPv6 on Linux requires kernel re-compile and if you try on Ubuntu to remove something like Avahi (which 99%+ of people do not need and which _can_ cause a lot of problems with DNS) then you'll see that it would "remove" almost the whole of your system through dependencies.

Or, if you're not an idiot, you just add "blacklist ipv6" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.

Re:Simple solution.

[Movi]

Umm, yes! On linux its as easy as:
rm /lib/modules/'uname -a'/kernel/build/somemodule.ko ; depmod -a on Mac OS X its
rm -r /System/Library/Extensions/YourKext.kext; rm /System/Library/Extensions.*; See?

Vista Performance Tip

[The MAZZTer]

If you have IPv6 enabled (which is the default) on a network which does not support it, all connections are noticeably slower in establishing. Disable IPv6 to get a great speed boost!

Re:Simple solution.

[Bert64]

Windows: A few clicks of the mouse to *disable* ipv6...
Linux: A single command to *remove* ipv6 (rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/net/ipv6/ipv6.ko)

Re:Blame Vista, or applications?

[Wierdy1024]

Has anyone thought of the possibility this is an IP ethernet printer, and it's firmware just isn't coded to tell the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 packets. Maybe alternatively, the printer, which has early alpha IPv6 support is trying to comunicate in IPv6, and fails due to a bug in the printer.

Both these things would be triggered by switching on the IPv6 in vista, but neither are any problem with vista (or even the PC).