DistroWatch Finally Adds Support For IPv6 (distrowatch.com) 112
We've frequently linked to DistroWatch for their coverage of Linux package and release announcements. Now an anonymous reader writes: The DistroWatch website introduced IPv6 support on Friday and the new protocol has been getting a lot of attention. "Over 8% of our traffic this weekend came from IPv6 addresses," commented DistroWatch contributor Jesse Smith. "It was a pleasant surprise, we were not expecting that many people would be using IPv6 yet."
When asked why DistroWatch enabled IPv6 access to their server at this time, Smith answered: "Partly it was an experiment to see how much interest there was in IPv6. Partly it was because it is a little embarrassing (in 2016) to have a technology focused website that is not making use of IPv6."
When asked why DistroWatch enabled IPv6 access to their server at this time, Smith answered: "Partly it was an experiment to see how much interest there was in IPv6. Partly it was because it is a little embarrassing (in 2016) to have a technology focused website that is not making use of IPv6."
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Plenty of people are using IPv6. It's transparent to most so it requires literally no effort to enable it. Anyone using Apple products on their internal network for the last decade has used IPv6 (Bonjour) and in recent past almost all European and Asian providers and even large American ones (TWC) run dual stacks with some small pockets in Asia and some mobile networks having pure IPv6 (due to v4 exhaustion) with translation in place.
Re:IPv6 is a failed technology (Score:4, Informative)
Plenty of people are using IPv6
Especially at the weekend. Last weekend more than 11% of Google users [google.com] were using IPv6. It's higher at the weekends because IPv6 is coming much faster to residential broadband and mobile, with corporate networks migrating more slowly.
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Not from Canada. All the big ISPs are in the "we are thinking about considering starting to propose a meeting to plan a test rollout".
They think they made progress on IPv6 day by making their home page [and only that page] accessible via IPv6. And, of course, virtually nobody in Canada could access it via IPv6.
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Canada is at 8.9%. I know Roger's made the switch, I just don't know when exactly since they didn't announce it. I only noticed when I was showing one friend another one's website and it was erroring out, Turns out the issue was that the website had ipv6 configured in DNS but no ipv6 VHOPST entry. It was a weird one and my friend had no idea he even had Ipv6 enabled. I think Telus has it enabled on landline infrastructure as well.
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VHOST even.. man I can't type when I wake up in the morning.
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I am with you except for the part where you say it "requires literally no effort to enable it". Where I live getting an IPv6 address requires calling up the ISP and requesting specifically an IPv6 address, which is available on the more expensive plans. Many VPS/dedicated hosts require the user to purchase IPv6 addresses and default to IPv4 only.
Depending on how services were configured (like web servers, FTP, etc) sometimes extra tweaks are required on the server side. That is assuming the daemon you are r
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But most end users won't care about any of that. It either works or it doesn't. I had IPv6 at home from TWC for several weeks before I finally realized my router's IPv6 address was actually routable (I had enabled IPv6 years ago, it self-assigned one for all that time)
Yes, on the business side, in the US at least, IPv6 may require some extra steps but unless you're a service provider or a network admin, you don't need to worry about it. Cheap VPS will probably go in the direction of dual stack or even IPv6-
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Yeah, because everyone knows tech doesn't change hardly at all in 2 years.
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Many VPS/dedicated hosts require the user to purchase IPv6 addresses and default to IPv4 only.
And then on the other hand, there is at least *one* VPS vendor who defaults to ipv6 and charges a LOT more for an ipv4 address.
I have a 256mb Linux vps hosted in Holland that provides one ipv6 address at $3.99US/YEAR... If you need/want an ipv4 address, the
vps price goes up to $27US/Year.. This is kind of how I'd expect things to work based on the fact that v4 addresses are getting scarce...
I use the vps simply as a "playground" and if you're curious, the vps vendor is vds6.net, and they offer hosts in Roma
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I'm guessing that vds6.net is https://vds6.net/ [vds6.net]. You may also be interested in http://www.lowendspirit.com/ [lowendspirit.com], who are only a few bucks per year as well.
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Apple's Bonjour stack defaults to using the IPv6. Although it is possible that it resolves to v4 only, all printers and other devices so far have resolved to v6
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Not just Apple - every Windows version since Vista has had IPv6 as its native IP: Windows 7 home networking uses IPv6, rather than IPv4.
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In the UK, none of the mobile providers support ipv6, neither do most of the big ISPs... There are a few smaller niche isps that do, and even then you have to explicitly request it.
Re:IPv6 is a failed technology (Score:5, Insightful)
BT and Sky are in the process of introducing IPv6. Google are now showing over 11% UK connections via IPv6, compared to something like 2% at the start of the year.
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You can include Cox Communications on the majority of their areas. I'd been using a Hurricane Electric Tunnelbroker 6to4 tunnel for ipv6 support, but went with the native dual-stack that Cox provides..
Re: IPv6 is a failed technology (Score:2)
Do share your deep insights at http://ipv6excuses.com/ [ipv6excuses.com]
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Compact disks took 20 years from invention to mass market. In that light IPv6 isn't doing too badly. To say it has failed is narrow minded and doesn't consider that like a snowball it is slow to start and like a snowball if you don't get on board you'll just be hurting yourself once it really gets moving.
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Everybody should be using it, but nobody does.
Not nobody but certainly a lot less than is desirable.
This has been the steady state for what, 20 years?
Unfortunately people don't do stuff until there is real pressure to do so. As the IPv4 crunch has started to bite harder providers have started to take IPv6 more seriously. Theres still a long way to go but there has been a real increase in adoption over the past few years. https://www.google.com/intl/en... [google.com]
We probably should re-do the thing and skip to IPv9 with a less grandiose than this second system but a nice and functional third.
Yes the IPv6 proponents had some grandiose but half-baked ideas. To name a few Heirachical routing, abandonment of NAT, mandatory IPsec, site local a
IPv6 is a failed technology (Score:2)
Everybody should be using it, but nobody does. This has been the steady state for what, 20 years? We probably should re-do the thing and skip to IPv9 witha less grandiose than this second system but a nice and functional third. Perhaps with a different crew this time. That'd be nice.
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Classic mistake. You declared it dead and propose to superseed it with something that doesn't fundamentally address the issue of IPv6's low adoption.
As for being dead sign up for internet in the Netherlands and you'll be greeted with a fully public IPv6 address, and carrier grade NATing on your shared IPv4 address. We've only just run out of IPv4 addresses. It takes a conundrum for people to upgrade infrastructure. No one wants to maintain money on the status quo, call it human nature.
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I read what you write and almost everything the opposite is true.
"With IPv4, NAT was normal." No, NAT was a kludge designed to deal with the fact that we were quickly running out of IPv4 addresses. If it wasn't for NAT we would have run out of IPv4 addresses more than a decade ago.
"But that means most users will use protocols which transmit their IPv6 address(es), including the local part, inside the protocol payload." All modern IPv6 implementations use temporary "privacy addresses." The local part is
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Privacy addresses don't overflow your ARP tables. And in any case, you don't need privacy addresses to keep your MAC out of your address; RFC 7217 [ietf.org] is a thing and Windows 7+ use it (or something very similar) by default out of the box, or you can use DHCPv6 or even just manually pick an address.
And I can't seriously believe that you're arguing that we want an address shortage. We don't.
(In a similar vein, we don't want to pay tons of money to deal with NAT forever, which is why people are telling you that us
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No. It has not endorsed NAT. In fact is explicitly discouraged. RFC 6296 is
a experimental (not standards track) RFC which says DO NOT DO THIS
but if you do this is a least worst way.
For reasons discussed in [RFC2993] and Section 5, the IETF does not
recommend the use of Network Address Translation technology for IPv6.
Where translation is implemented, however, this specification
provides a mechanism that has fewer architectural problems than
merely implementing a traditional stateful Network Address Translator
in an IPv6 environment. It also provides a useful alternative to the
complexities and costs imposed by multihoming using provider-
independent addressing and the routing and network management issues
of overlaid ISP address space. Some problems remain, however. The
reader should consider the alternatives suggested in [RFC4864] and
the considerations of [RFC5902] for improved approaches.
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What does Link Local mean? Simple fact is everyone hates IPv6 because absolutely no one knows what that even means save for a few professionals.
We don't know what's a fe80:: or 2001: address either, following from the first point.
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You don't need to know either of those. v6 is simple enough that your grandmother can use it.
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I have a vps hosted in Holland, $3.99US/Year and it comes with one ipv6 address and zero ipv4 ones.. If you want/need a v4 address, the vps now costs $27US/Year..
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According to the statistics available here, https://www.google.ca/intl/en/... [google.ca] IPv6 is well on it's way.
Eleven percent adoption hardly constitutes "well on its way", it's more like "finally getting some traction". In the sense of resource wastage and slow adoption, there is no question at this point that IPv6 is one of the great failures of technology history. While IPv6 did not die, what it has failed to do is replace IPv4, and at this point, it quite possibly never will. If IPv6 had been well designed it would be handling 90% of internet traffic long ago and IPv4 would be well on its way to being as dead as
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It's really difficult to be backwards compatible with v4 though, at least in the way you're probably envisioning. There's only 32 bits available in the v4 header for the src/dest address, and the pidgeonhole principle [wikipedia.org] isn't exactly something you can just ignore. How would a v4 computer specify which address to send a packet to if there isn't enough space in the header field to do it?
There's a reason you can't send packets directly between v4 and v6 endpoints, and it's not because v6 is badly designed. It's
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Dual stack is already backwards compatible with v4 in some awkward way, so it's an existence proof. The object of the exercise would be to do it less awkwardly, in a single protocol. Clearly, an extended protocol, say, v4x, must tuck away some more address bits in the already crowded header. To reliably identify extended addresses on v4x aware hosts and to make them fail on v4x unaware host, it would be enough to change the protocol number. (There happens to be a good candidate available for historical reas
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Funnily enough, what you've described there is basically IPv6. If you think that NAT is the way to go about connecting to legacy v4-only hosts, then what's wrong with NAT64 in IPv6, which does exactly that?
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Funnily enough, what you've described there is basically IPv6.
In some wildly theoretical sense, it is something like IPv6, but then it isn't at all. Do you even know what an IPv6 header looks like?
If you think that NAT is the way to go about connecting to legacy v4-only hosts, then what's wrong with NAT64 in IPv6, which does exactly that?
Nothing wrong with the technique, but there's something wrong with IPv6, namely not the slightest attempt to retain backward compatibility with IPv4 at the protocol level.
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Yeah? It's not fundamentally any different to a v4 header. It's got a new protocol number and more of it is dedicated to storing addresses. Yes, it's 2x the size, but that's because the src+dst addresses are already 32 bytes to v4's 20 bytes total.
Presumably you were suggesting to do the same thing, because there's no way to fit a pair of 128-bit addresses into the v4 header without making it bigger.
Nothing wrong with the technique, but there's something wrong with IPv6, namely not the slightest attempt to retain backward compatibility with IPv4 at the protocol level.
Well, there's that version number in the header, which allows the two to coexist. But more to the point: how
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Yeah? It's not fundamentally any different to a v4 header. It's got a new protocol number and more of it is dedicated to storing addresses. Yes, it's 2x the size, but that's because the src+dst addresses are already 32 bytes to v4's 20 bytes total.
Presumably you were suggesting to do the same thing, because there's no way to fit a pair of 128-bit addresses into the v4 header without making it bigger.
(Ab)using the version field (not the protocol field!) is not the only way to extend IPv4, probably not even a good way, however that is a red herring. The point is, there is no such thing as an IPv6 packet that looks like IPv4, even when the source and destination addresses permit it. That is the big gaping flaw of IPv6 that lead to the adoption fiasco.
Nothing wrong with the technique, but there's something wrong with IPv6, namely not the slightest attempt to retain backward compatibility with IPv4 at the protocol level.
Well, there's that version number in the header, which allows the two to coexist.
Not only as separate protocols, but separate infrastructures. IPv6 has its own home rolled approach to multicast for example, which nobody uses as opposed to
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Ah, fair point on my version/protocol mixup.
The point is, there is no such thing as an IPv6 packet that looks like IPv4, even when the source and destination addresses permit it. That is the big gaping flaw of IPv6 that lead to the adoption fiasco.
The thing is... there is! 6to4 is roughly that. It's hardly a big gaping flaw in v6 if it's something that v6 already did.
(6to4 sends a v6 packet between two v4 hosts by setting the protocol header to 41 and putting the v6 packet inside the v4 one. Those packets look like any other v4 packets.)
Everything that could possibly be made different about IPv6 was made different.
I disagree with this. v6 is actually very similar to v4. Routing, subnetting etc works in exactly the same way as it does in v4, and it runs over the same L2 links in the sa
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In some wildly theoretical sense, it is something like IPv6, but then it isn't at all. Do you even know what an IPv6 header looks like?
Yes, it's worse than IPv6. All of the same issues, but wait, there's more! When someone doesn't understand the problem, they always have a simple solution that no one else has thought of.
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You can with NAT64/DNS64. This is used where a purely IPv6 network needs to access the old IPv4 network. My ISP even offers it as a service to those wanting to go v6 only (I haven't tried it though, I'm happy dual stacked for now).
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There is no possibility for a "properly backward compatible variant of IPv4." Any change to the protocol in which the goal is to increase the address space, which is the mean impetus for all of this, required a re-write which means no backward compatibility.
You seem to be unclear on the definition of backward compatibility. This means that the old protocol is a subset of the new one. There are countless examples where protocol backward compatibility has been achieved in a useful way. Unfortunately, IPv6 is not one of them.
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You seem to be unclear on the definition of backward compatibility. This means that the old protocol is a subset of the new one. There are countless examples where protocol backward compatibility has been achieved in a useful way. Unfortunately, IPv6 is not one of them.
What everyone like you who thinks you can create a backwards compatible IPvX always forgets is when it comes to addressing, it's about more than addressing bits, but routability.
I have yet to see a single IPv4 successor proposal that features backwards compatibility that is actually routable. One of the major problems on the Internet today is the routing system is a complete mess. And every "backward compatible" IPv4 successor people like you have proposed only make the situation 100 times worse .
IPv6 ma [wikipedia.org]
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Since you consider yourself an expert, would you care to explain why you think that IPv6 is especially routable? (Hint: don't bother parroting the lame handwaving from wikipedia)
Second thing is, have you seen any IPv4 successor proposals? Link please.
Re:IPv6 is a failed technology (Score:5, Informative)
Since you consider yourself an expert, would you care to explain why you think that IPv6 is especially routable?
Sure. There are a lot of things that will make IPv6 easier to route:
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Thus, a given /32 will be doled out only to a single RIR, who can break it up into smaller units to LIR's, to eventually be broken into /48, /64, and /56's for destination routers.
RIRs get allocated blocks much bigger than a /32 which they then split up into /32 (or sometimes larger) blocks to allocate to LIRs (LIRs are normally ISPs, hosting providers etc). The RIRs also allocate provider independent /48 blocks to end networks. Each of those LIRs and each of those networks with PI space will advertise it's addresses into the global routing table.
There were proposals for a more heirachical allocation and routing scheme but they never really worked out because the internet is NOT a he
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Sorry I was wrong about table sizes, the IPv4 table is currently about 20 times the size of the IPv6 one, not twice the size.
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https://www.google.com/intl/en... [google.com]
The growth curve is clearly showing exponential growth here, and we're now well into the rapid adoption phase. Yes, the absolute value is 11% (now 12). but it will continue to grow with increasing speed. It *is* coming. It took a while, but it's a juggernaught which can't be stopped now. We'll all be using it in a couple of years at this rate. All the major ISPs have committed to do this, and network effects will drag the rest along in time.
I've been on native v6 for th
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Everybody should be using it, but nobody does. This has been the steady state for what, 20 years? We probably should re-do the thing and skip to IPv9 witha less grandiose than this second system but a nice and functional third. Perhaps with a different crew this time. That'd be nice.
What non-breaking technological solutions are you proposing?
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Speaking of embarrassing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Partly it was because it is a little embarrassing (in 2016) to have a technology focused website that is not making use of IPv6."
Amazon AWS, are you listening?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently they are: https://www.facebook.com/group... [facebook.com]
The interesting bit:
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They shouldn't care what the underlying infrastructure is, as long as it gets then there. At the same time IPv6 support does provide some geek cred and one less unknown to deal with.
IPv6 -- Just Say No ! (Score:2, Flamebait)
IPv6 would change the Internet fundamentally as it ends privacy and anonymity. Your 128-bit address most often will contain your device's 48-bit hardware MAC directly in the lower 64 bits (split by FE:FE). That MAC can track you across networks. Cookies become superfluous except as session variable holders (shopping cart). And for everything IP (incl UDP), not just HTTP[S].
Yes, I'm aware that DHCPv6 servers might anonymize the interface address, locally translating (hiding) the MAC as NATv4 currently does.
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You can enable IPv6 privacy extensions in Network Manager. Any conspiracy powerful enough to prevent you doing this would have outlawed IPv4 long ago.
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Yes, it can be done by those knowledgeable or motivated enough. What percent of users? 1%?
I didn't have to do anything, and my PC started using privacy extensions for IPv6.
.
Please take your tin-foil hat somewhere else....
Random is the DEFAULT (which may be silly) (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it's the default setting for the operating systems favored by those "less knowledgeable", so that pretty much covers that, doesn't it. Android (the world's most popular OS), Windows (your grandparents most popular OS), and iOS (hipsters most popular OS) all randomize the address by default.
Whether or not that's a GOOD idea is certainly debateable, but it's what you wanted.
So the less knowledgeable, people who don't even know what IPv6 is, get a randomized address. People even less knowledgeable than that make panicky, mis-informed posts on Slashdot about OMG I'll be tracked.
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In the Netherlands, 99% of the people have a fixed IPv4 address. For anonymity it doesn't really matter if your IPv4 address is fixed or your IPv6 address is fixed. And in both cases your ISP can both you IP address to a name/address. In any case, IP address != person.
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Privacy extensions are implemented on the end host, not the router. But a router can always see the MAC addresses of directly-connected machines anyway regardless of IP address. That's the case even in a completely v4-only network.
And Slashdot...? (Score:4, Interesting)
it was because it is a little embarrassing (in 2016) to have a technology focused website that is not making use of IPv6
Hmm... then let's see the aaaa records for slashdot.org...
IPv6 (Score:3)
You can use the sarcastic "finally" in the headline when you publish a single AAAA record, Slashdot, that "news for nerds" who can't be nerdy enough to turn on IPv6 themselves but are happy to report on it all the time.
How are we doing @home Slashdot ?? (Score:1)
potomac:~ carlos$ host slashdot.org
slashdot.org has address 216.34.181.45
slashdot.org mail is handled by 10 mx.sourceforge.net.
potomac:~ carlos$ host www.slashdot.org
www.slashdot.org has address 216.34.181.48
potomac:~ carlos$
Where are your quad-A records ?
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While I wouldn't argue the need for better firewall software (something that does per-application firewalling on Linux, please?), you're not actually a sitting duck on v6. Your router's firewall will prevent any inbound connections, and the sheer size of a v6 /64 means that it's hard to even find a functioning IP to attempt connect to (although you shouldn't rely on that obscurity).
If you're going to disable anything, you're better off disabling v4.
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No, just the v4 part of it. That's where most of the nasties will come from, and disabling v4 will help a lot more on that front than disabling v6 will.
Windows 10 is completely orthogonal here. "Don't use Win10" is another thing I won't argue with, but it has nothing to do with v6.
Re: (Score:2)
$ host distrowatch.com
distrowatch.com has address 82.103.136.226
distrowatch.com has IPv6 address 2a00:9080:1:20c::1
Not quite sure where you're going with this, but there you go.