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Networking Bug Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows IT

Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6 232

Posted by kdawson from the pioneers-with-arrows dept.
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.'"
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Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6 More

Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6

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  • MS Vista 2.0. Now only £99.99

     
    • Vista unlike OSX has yet to institute upgrade buying. Granted it's probably coming knowing Microsoft's history and they have enough other problems, we don't need to fake up apple's business practices for Microsoft.

      • Vista unlike OSX has yet to institute upgrade buying. Granted it's probably coming knowing Microsoft's history and they have enough other problems, we don't need to fake up apple's business practices for Microsoft.

        The way Apple counts upgrades is a bit different. See, going from Windows XP to Vista is a very radical change, like moving from "classic" MacOS to OSX. But upgrading OSX from 10.2 to 10.3 is still a pretty serious change, like going from Windows 95 to 98. So it's not like you're paying for a sec

        • See, going from Windows XP to Vista is a very radical change, like moving from "classic" MacOS to OSX.

          No, it's not. Vista comes from Windows Server 2003's codebase, and 2003 came from XP. It's the same old Win32 code running on an updated NT foundation. Mac OS Classic and OS X, however, are two completely different operating systems. OS X derives from OpenStep and CoreFoundation, while OS Classic comes from the old System software dating back to 1984.

  • Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)

    by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:42AM (#19436365)
    "2^32 unique addresses ought to be enough for anybody."

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TransEurope ( 889206 ) <{ed.znelbok-inu} {ta} {caine}> on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:51AM (#19436455)
      The really cool thing with that is, there are so many adresses that networms cannot jump to machines via the usage of random ip adresses and you cannot scan entire subnets anymore. It's like to try fishing in an ocean with a gun. Maybe you'll never hit any crature in the big water.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Sancho ( 17056 )
        I suspect that this just means that worms will have to be smarter, gathering information on IP addresses to attack based upon connections, logs, etc. People using BitTorrent will provide a huge number of targets. Compromise a webserver, and you've got the addresses of anyone who visits the site. Read through e-mail headers, and you'll get some more.

        Bots have no trouble finding e-mail addresses to spam. I imagine that in the face of near infinite IP addresses, they'll find some way to continue their atta

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jandrese ( 485 )
          Yeah, there are ways to find IP addresses, but it will defiantly be harder than it is today.
          • I already have trojan scans of ipv6 address space & they're hitting valid addresses with about 95% accuracy. Don't know how they're getting the info (probably sniffing packets from owned machines) but any idea that more IPs means less bots is just security through obscurity and is just plain rubbish.

            (otoh the vista machine here has no problem with anything to do with ipv6 - this article is just incorrect.. the poster is blaming vista/ipv6 for shitty printer drivers).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lawpoop ( 604919 )
        OK, worms can't jump to random ips, but are IPV6 addresses going to be assigned randomly, or in serial blocks? Won't service providers only get a range of ips? Then doesn't the worm only have to randomly select ips that are likely to be in the netblock of its host?

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:57AM (#19436503)
      "2^32 unique addresses ought to be enough for anybody."

      It is enough for anybody. The problem is that it's not enough for everybody.
      • "It is enough for anybody. The problem is that it's not enough for everybody."

        Or more precisely, for everybody and everything. The internet of things is commonly cited as a reason for IPv6.
    • That should read:

      "2^32 addresses should be enough for EVERYBODY."

    • Order of magnitude more orders of magnitude (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The Monster ( 227884 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @10:46AM (#19437115) Homepage

      "2^32 unique addresses ought to be enough for anybody."
      Well, there really aren't that many unique addresses available for machines, thanks to the fact that every subnet requires two addresses for the subnet itself and the broadcast address (never did understand why those couldn't have been the same address), but the article puts it this way?

      Pv6 supports a 128-bit addressing scheme, which lets it support an order-of-magnitude more devices that are directly connected to the Internet than its predecessor, IPv4.
      order of magnitude [m-w.com]

      : a range of magnitude extending from some value to ten times that value
      For every ~3.3 bits added to a binary number, it supports an order of magnitude more addresses. Leaving completely aside the upper half of the address (since devices are supposed to be mobile, and should therefore have a unique 64-bit host address), the added 32 bits add nearly TEN orders of magnitude, or an order of magnitude more orders of magnitude.

      Note to authors: If you don't understand what words mean, don't use them.

  • Also IPv4 (Score:4, Funny)

    by VincenzoRomano ( 881055 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:42AM (#19436367) Homepage Journal
    I suspect that also IPv4 is having problems.

  • MS' Teredo (IPv6) blog (Score:5, Informative)

    by packetmon ( 977047 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:47AM (#19436417) Homepage
    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...
  • Early attempts by M$ to implement networking foundered badly until they cozied up to Novell for a short stint -- a deal an insider told me was scuttled when Novell code was found on M$ machines without a signed agreement.

    It may just be my long memory seeing repetitive mistakes by the software giant, but it seems like ALL of M$ network implementations seem to suffer in the early going until they manage to buy cheat or steal for good code to solve their own implementation messes...

    Thoughts anyone?

    • I find that thought very suspect, for a lot of reasons.

      The biggest is that Microsoft wasn't the only one involved in the early networking. IBM was as well. LanMan was a joint effort, and I find it highly unlikely that IBM would need Novell's assistance to make networking work correctly.
      • Yes but the Novell insider I am referring to was on the team that wrote much of the code that stabilized Netware's data layer in the early going (prior to Netware 4 but I don't want to be more specific than that-- which was also the exact code which turned up elsewhere on M$ machines prior to a deal being concluded but that M$ insisted had been "deleted from all of the offending machines."

        At the time I was installing networks and a few months after the conversation I am mentioning, , M$ networking stabilize

        • Windows network code had major issues all the time until Win2K where they abandoned their buggy homegrown IP stack and adapted BSDs IP stack. Even if they stole Novell's code, it wasn't enough.

  • dot.Excuses .. (Score:4, Funny)

    by rs232 ( 849320 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:49AM (#19436423)
    "We recognize that not all applications and drivers were up to date by launch and that there have been some compatibility issues as a result,"

    "But we also know that Windows Vista is the highest-quality, most secure and most broadly supported operating system we've ever released."

    Hameroff adds that Microsoft is running an IPv6 network and "to my knowledge has not experienced these types of issues"

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:51AM (#19436451)
    When IPv6 is installed, this happens without fail. As soon as we remove IPv6, all of our printer functions return to normal.

    It fails without fail? ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by numbski ( 515011 ) *
      This is Microsoft. What other OS would allow these sorts of exceptions? Sheesh. Doesn't anyone do a try/catch loop anymore?

      my $result = dosomething();
      if($result eq 'FAIL'){
          return('Hey moron, you fail it!');
      }
      return($result);
       
      monad> myl33tscript
      FAIL
      :D
    • So someone has shitty printer drivers (let me guess.. HP right??) and suddently it's vista's fault.

      I bet they'd get exactly the same if they installed ipv6 under xp too.

  • Very funny, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tygerstripes ( 832644 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:52AM (#19436469)
    Okay, once the M$-bashing has died down, can someone have a think about the subtle implications of this? IPv6 adoption is going to be heavily stunted by this inadequacy if it isn't fixed pretty pronto - and even if it is fixed, with the other problems v6 is having, will anyone actually try trusting it? Not for some time, I suspect.

    Vista adoption is going to increase - it's a sad fact, and I can't see anyone denying it. Therefore IPv6 is going to experience stunted uptake from this blow.

    The one benefit I can see is that anybody who really does see worthwhile benefits in adopting IPv6 will say "bugger M$, there are hundreds of Open Source solutions that support this without issue out of the box". Maybe this could have a positive impact on OSS uptake in the long-term.

    • Re:Very funny, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EveryNickIsTaken ( 1054794 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:55AM (#19436489)

      IPv6 adoption is going to be heavily stunted by this inadequacy if it isn't fixed pretty pronto
      IPv6 hasn't been adopted en masse for years. Why would the release of Vista suddenly give reason for people to switch? There's clearly been resistance to the switch, and Vista has absolutely nothing to do with it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nexx ( 75873 )
        No, the GP is saying with this bug, there's even more resistance. He's not saying Vista will suddenly spur interest; he's saying this bug will quash what little interest there was will be smaller.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sancho ( 17056 )
        For one thing, IPv6 is on and enabled by default in Vista. This means that, as more and more people downgrade to Vista, more and more people will be IPv6-ready by default. This is a partial solution to the chicken-egg problem of migrating to a new Internet standard. In a couple of years, ISPs need not be afraid of migrating to IPv6 since Vista will be fairly prevalent. Their support centers won't have to deal with thousands of calls from people trying to get XP to play nice with IPv6.

        • They're not ipv6 ready no matter how many vista deployments there are.

          You have to use the new sockets/winsock functions to be ipv6 enabled for a start.. and most apps aren't (including things like Active Directory, which is a biggie.).

          I've got a vista installation here.. it's running a whole heap of stuff.. the total list of listening ports from ipv6 capable apps is: 135,445 (SMB.. pity the domain controllers can't respond.. heh.). 3389 (TS), 5357 (No idea). Compared to a list of ipv4 listening ports abou

    • IPv6 adoption is going to be heavily stunted by this inadequacy if it isn't fixed pretty pronto

      What makes you think people are going to use Vista? There's no evidence of that to date. Vista has other larger issues than IPv6 that keep people away from it.

      Everyone knows that GNU/Linux or OSX is the upgrade path from XP.

      • What makes you think people are going to use Vista? There's no evidence of that to date. Vista has other larger issues than IPv6 that keep people away from it.

        Twenty million licenses sold already is "no evidence"? That's more than all the active Linux and MacOS machines out there in just a few months.

        I have Vista on my laptop, and it is quite an improvement over XP. The very few rough edges I've encounetered have been with support of oddball hardware, like my Sprint Wireless Broadband card, which didn't h

        • Microsoft really kicked themselves in the balls

          I'm just glad it wasn't me for a change. I don't really hate Microsoft, but it sure seems like they hate me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by johnw ( 3725 )

          Twenty million licenses sold already is "no evidence"? That's more than all the active Linux and MacOS machines out there in just a few months.
          You think there are fewer than 20 million Linux boxes in use? Where on earth did you get that idea?

          • This study [hitslink.com] shows there are already 5 times as many Vista workstations in use versus Linux workstations. Assuming Microsoft has sold ~20M copies through May, that means there are far fewer than 20M linux workstations in active use. Unless you assume that more than 4/5 Vista installs is pirated.

            Note my original statement should have been qualified to compare Vista with Linux workstations, and not all "Linux machines". Comparing the population of a workstation OS to a server install base doesn't make much se

            • This study shows there are already 5 times as many Vista workstations in use versus Linux workstations. Microsoft has sold ~20M copies through May

              Citing a web survey is bad, but you got it wrong too. Your little link showed 2.18% for "other" and 3.74% for Vista, which is neither a five times advantage nor anything to crow about, but it's bullshit. There are more than a billion web users [internetworldstats.com], so your little market share study has been gamed or there are 40e6 Vista users - twice the wild M$ estimates based

              • Yes, your indeirect measure of RAM is certainly more relaible than one based on visitors to 40,000 LiveStats customer sites.

                Here's a hint: one billion internet USERS != 1 billion WORKSTATIONS. The majority of internet users share a PC, wither with family or and an Internet Cafe.

                Vista is not selling AS FAST AS MEMORY MAKERS EXPECTED, but it is by no means not selling. I see Vista laptops galore on the Chicago commuter trains, far more than OSX or Linux machines. In fact, my Ubuntu laptop is the only Linux la

  • They need a better implementation (Score:5, Informative)

    by multipartmixed ( 163409 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @09:54AM (#19436475) Homepage
    I think they should scoop the one out of BSD UNIX.

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

  • It's a feature! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @10:11AM (#19436643) Homepage Journal

    'We will send a print job to an IP-based printer, and the print job becomes corrupted.
    Ah-ha! You've discovered the undocumented, but terribly useful, user-papercut-protection device!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )
      No, it's the DRM. It's an unprotected data path to the printer, so the images are degraded!

  • Blame Vista, or applications? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @10:12AM (#19436665) Homepage
    I've got Vista, an IP based printer, and even IPV6 via a tunnel broker. I've had no problems with printing or any other network applications.

    So I have to wonder, is this really an issue with Vista's IPV6, is it an issue with the driver writers, or is it a minor issue with Vista's implementation of the layer that supports IP printers?

    The article seems to indicate "we turned off IPV6 and then it started working". Well that tells us a little, but it's hardly time to start blaming the IPV6 stack. There's quite a few different components that could be responsible. I had problems with Firefox on Ubuntu on my network, and was able to track it down to a faulty implementation of DNS on my DSL modem only under IPV6.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Wierdy1024 ( 902573 )
      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).

      • 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.

        I thought of that exact possibility after I made my original post. It's a definite possibility, and from the little we know matches the data better than "Vista's IPV6 stack is broken". Personally I think putting out a big article saying "IPV6 on Vista is broken" before you really know anything is totally irresponsible.
  • We run out of IPV4 addresses.

    Sigh. While it is entertaining to watch Vista get hammered over and over for security and bugs, it is kind of sad to know that so many are blindly buying it since they feel saddled to the Microsoft rut.

    I wonder if all the issues and bad press with Vista is at least partly behind their flurry of licensing activity with various Linux distributions.

    At any rate, licensing or no, I love Linux. The more I use it and learn about it, the more I am so glad I made the jump a few

  • Oh, is that all? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AdmV0rl0n ( 98366 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @11:11AM (#19437691) Homepage Journal
    Vista crashes our main network switches here. We did not have a requirement for Vista, so we've banished it until we do an upgrade on firmware project, which will be done on a if/when required by the business (HP pro curve switches).

    We found this on Beta and tried to talk to MS, after being passed from piller to post and jerked round (we frankly have real work to get on with) we gave up. We tested with the full release, and, well, until we have time its just barred from the business.

  • Embrace, Extend, and Explode! :D

  • Vista Performance Tip (Score:4, Informative)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <(megazzt) (at) (gmail.com)> on Friday June 08, 2007 @12:04PM (#19438731) Homepage
    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!
  • Standard Operating Procedure: To usurp a world standard and boost Microsoft sales:

    (1) Deliver a "world standard" implementation
    (2) ???
    (3) Offer Microsoft-only extensions with subsequent "patch" (for efficiency of course)
    (4) Developers use the extensions
    (5) Standard subverted!!
    (6) Profit

    Implementation Notes:
    step (2) may be completely omitted for already well established and widely adopted standards (e.g. C, C++)
    step (2) has recently been proposed as "Break something important"

  • I dare to ask, "who the hell cares"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 5n3ak3rp1mp ( 305814 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @06:54PM (#19445583) Homepage
    OK, I've been a programmer for some time now, and most of that time I've heard of IPv6, and seen some interfaces to configuring it (OS X), even if it's not "on" per se... but WHAT the heck problem was it supposed to originally solve, again? And perhaps because it's not solving any pressing problems (from what I can tell), implementations of it are not getting the attention they dubiously deserve? Is NAT not going to keep us from eventually running out of IPv4 addresses, or some other workaround that sort of namespaces different subnets of the Internet?

    Will it really be important some day for every physical item in my possession to have a unique address and an RFID tag?

    Do sysadmins at big corporations really WANT every one of their machines to have an address that is uniquely addressable from anywhere on the Internet? Will this help to solve issues such as VPN'ing behind a firewall, etc.?

    An honest question.

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