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US Has More IPv6 Eyeballs Than Asia, Because of Apple
An anonymous reader writes "Google has been checking to see who's using IPv6. According to the company's tracking, half of all IPv6-capable systems seen by Google are Macs, helping the US land in fifth place in percentage of IPv6 users world wide, ahead of China and Japan."
Apple has a far greater market share than Linux desktops, but you can't completely ignore that Linux has been pushing IPv6 for some time.
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IPv6 Eyeballs! Run!!!!
OK, so I have 7 computers in my house. They all run either Linux or Vista. (Some both as two are dual boot). They are all IPv6 capable. However, my Linksys NATing router is not. So unless my machines find an ISATAP server somewhere, there is going to be no information that Google gets showing that all my machines could do it if I just sprung for a new router. I would imagine there are a lot of people in the same situation. I guess if they are trying to find out how many homes are capable - then maybe this is the right way. But if they are trying to just see how many COMPUTERS - then it isn't going to be correct.
I have 4 machines at home, all run Linux and do are IPV6 capable. Most mac users have one mac though. I'm guessing they are only checking the external facing router?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Google modified their home page to try to load a URL over IPv6; if it works then the client supports IPv6.
I don't believe any US ISPs have begun providing IPv6 connections yet, have they? So, does this statistic reflect that not only are Macs IPv6 capabable, but all of them are automatically setting up an IPv6 tunnel over their IPv4 connections? If so, what tunnel broker are they using as an endpoint (is Apple itself providing a tunnel broker service for them)?
Or, instead of using a tunnel, are they using the technology (don't remember the name, maybe 4to6?) where an IPv6 address is automatically generated from the public IPv4 address, and then IPv6 packets are sent to an IPv4 anycast address which automatically routes them to the nearest 'public' 4ot6 gateway? Unfortunately, I don't believe the latter solution works well behind NATted connections, which I think would dramatically reduce these statistics, so the sheer size of the Mac IPv6 'population' suggests to me that tunnels are being used instead?
I've recently been playing with IPv6 via Hexago Freenet6, but truth be told, there's really not much use for IPv6 yet, since very few apps (like IM clients [skype: I'm looking at you], network games, etc) or websites actually support IPv6 on the other end yet. I've also noticed a problem with packet loss and high latency with Freenet6, so I'm thinking I'm going to try to find a different tunnel broker.
From the article, I picked up the reason for this result (but not until after posting a similar question, I must confess). Most home computer users, regardless of their platform, tend to connect to the internet through some sort of router device. Most of these routers use IPv4 only, and use NAT to share the Internet connection.
Many Mac users, instead of using some 'generic' WiFi access point, instead use Apple's Airport Extreme router. Per the article, Airport Extreme's have support for IPv6 built right into the router, and the router will *automatically* route IPv6 traffic using the 6to4 standard (which basically tunnels the traffic over the IPv4 connection from the ISP).
I suspect that if you connected your Ubuntu computer (or Vista, or XP if you installed IPv6 manually) to the Internet using an Airport Extreme, then IPv6 would work fine under Ubuntu too. That is, I think the 'magic' here that makes IPv6 "just work" is in the router, not in the OS.
The fact that according to this chart, the country in Africa most adapted to IPv6 is Nigeria. Guess those scamsters are getting more sophisticated daily, or maybe the 400k this woman gave them upgraded a few routers.
...in bed
IPv6 is enabled on all OS X installs as the default. Few, if any, users -either at home or in a corporate setting- turn it off. At my site, IPv6 is not enabled on the network so all Macs have it disabled in all system images.
Sig this!
What... the... fuck?
Many Mac users, instead of using some 'generic' WiFi access point, instead use Apple's Airport Extreme router. Per the article, Airport Extreme's have support for IPv6 built right into the router, and the router will *automatically* route IPv6 traffic using the 6to4 standard (which basically tunnels the traffic over the IPv4 connection from the ISP).
Indeed. I was quite impressed to read about that. I have been thinking for quite a while that router makes should be doing exactly that, so it's good to see that at least one of them does.
On the quite opposite hand, there's Vista. While the article pointed out that Vista sets up 6to4 automatically when it has a globally routable IPv4 address (which is a good thing, of course), there's an annoying other side to that coin. See, Vista announces that it routes through its 6to4 address, but then in actual fact doesn't (it just drops the packets silently). It has been annoying me quite some times when I've connected to a public WiFi access point at my university, only to see every IPv6-enabled site (including my own!) fail miserably since my Linux laptop will try to route through one of these Vista black holes. That's Microsoft for you...
> Without a NAT, how does a "NoNAT router" know what public IP range to give via DHCP (or other means) to Joe User's WinXP/Mac box, BEFORE it manages to get that public IP range from the ISP?
Before it connects to the ISP you'll be using link-local addresses. The router will then get a prefix from the ISP via DHCP prefix delegation and begin sending router advertisements so internal computers can configure themselves with public addresses (though they retain their link-local addresses).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I don't know about anyone else's definition, but I would consider distros marking themselves as Phase 2 Certified as one way you could define "pushing IPv6". Another might be to enable IPv6 by default in the kernel (since we're talking about IPv6 capability in the article, rather than usage), or to use IPv6 by default on all connections where it is supported at the kernel and application level, whether or not it is genuinely supported end-to-end. Far as I can see, very few distros are certified for IPv6 (I can't honestly remember seeing the logo anywhere), those that provide it don't take advantage of it, and those that do don't make it easy to take advantage of it (Ubuntu provides some IPv6 tunneling software, but nothing that works with any of the IPv6 gateways I'm using, and network administration using IPv6 under Ubuntu is a pain -- and it's by far the best distro I've used in this regard).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Uh, because you tell it which set of IP addresses is your local subnet? Firewalls aren't magic, people have been using them for years and years now. In the worst case scenario, there's a port labeled "WAN" and it has the firewall. In fact that's how most home routers work already!
I read the internet for the articles.
Can we get a list of home wireless routers that will support this?
I didn't see it in any Belkins or D-Links I purchased in the last 2 years, though IPv6 was somewhat of a hot topic.
So I have to ask. In this age of "Now supporting Draft N!!!" and "MIMO ANTENNAE ARE GOOD FOR YOUR MULTIMEDIA HOME!" "I'M TWICE AS FAST AS G ROUTERS IF YOU BUY MY SAME BRAND G-RECEIVER!" With all the excuses to upgrade your router, where are all the much wanted "NOW WITH IPV6! FUTURE PROOF YOUR HOME LAN SO YOU'LL NEVAARR RUN OUT OF IP ADDRESSES" (wink)
I know cash is hard to come by these days, but geeks in the US are slaves to gadgets.
What's the problem with passing the DHCP request when needed?
Sonic.net will, if requested, deliver IPv6 packets to their DSL subscribers. Unfortunately, their upstream connections are IPv4, so they're just offering tunneling at their end.
So either you'll keep getting router advertisements on your network indefinitely, or your computers will have to keep requesting for it (instead of eventually giving up- which is what happens now).
Next question: What url does Joe Public enter on his browser to get to the router config page, so that he can enter the username and password in order to get access to the ISP's network?
"because you tell it which set of IP addresses is your local subnet? Firewalls aren't magic..."
Wrong answer.
With the current NAT router+ISP stuff, Joe Public at the most needs to provide the username+password. And in some ISP configs, Joe doesn't even need to provide that- they just plug it in and it works "like magic" - and the sort of magic that Joe Public barely notices.
That's why it's far from "almost the same thing".
In order for Joe Public's PC to talk to other computers on the Internet, it needs an address.
Joe's ISP's routers all have addresses of their own which are fairly fixed in practice. The ISP can't just change them and automatically expect the rest of the Internet to still be able to reach them.
Without NAT, Joe's PC needs addresses that belongs to Joe's ISP before it can talk to the rest of the Internet.
BUT before Joe's router is connected to the ISP, how does his router or PC know what address they should be using?
With the popular NAT stuff, Joe's PC can be given important stuff like DNS server, default gateway, IP address - all using RFC1918 addresses, way before Joe's router connects to the ISP.
And then stuff can work for Joe almost immediately after connection.
Joe would not have to wait for "dhcp renewal time" seconds, or "some other public IP update period" seconds, before his PC realizes that "Oh I'm supposed to be using this public IP address and this gateway".
In short, with the NAT system when Joe sees the "Internet" LED lit on his router, he knows that PCs connected to the router should be able to access the Internet - if they can't there is a problem somewhere.
With the "public IP" system, when Joe sees the "Internet" LED lit, if the PCs can't access the internet it doesn't mean there is a problem or there isn't a problem. He has to wait a few minutes first (timeouts, renewals etc). Go ask an ISP call center manager how much a few minutes of waiting costs.
Maybe to you that's "almost the same thing", but to me it's not.
This may be the answer
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/19/apples_secret_back_to_my_mac_push_behind_ipv6.html
What the hell are you talking about? You're using link-locals till the route gets a real IP, then it advertises the new route, the clients get new IPs and everything functions just as normal the whole time.
And the URL Joe Public types in is the same as now. "http://name.your.router", supplied by the manual, provided by the DNS server in the router, the same as he does now. You don't think he types in cryptic ip adresses, do you?
I'm curious - how long would it take for the clients to get new IPs?
.here for free private use just like RFC1918.
Secondly "router." isn't a reserved TLD. So what RFC compliant TLD should be used?
Many years ago I personally tried convincing ICANN etc to reserve
But they didn't listen - maybe it's because I didn't give them lots of $$$.
Without a NAT, how does a "NoNAT router" know what public IP range to give via DHCP (or other means) to Joe User's WinXP/Mac box, BEFORE it manages to get that public IP range from the ISP?
Well, the IPv6 subnet to be handed out can be configured automatically, and with IPv4 the common method is to simply have one ISP-level DHCP server that hands out IP addresses to all hosts (since there is no pesky NAT to screw things up).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
So either you'll keep getting router advertisements on your network indefinitely, or your computers will have to keep requesting for it (instead of eventually giving up- which is what happens now).
Ok, you clearly should never be put in charge of any ISP's backbone.
Next question: What url does Joe Public enter on his browser to get to the router config page, so that he can enter the username and password in order to get access to the ISP's network?
Well, there are lots of ways of solving this, the first option (which is commonly used in europe) is to simply not require a username and password for the connection (what's the point if it's an always-on connection anyway?
Also, why would joe user even need a router? A transparent packet filtering firewall could work just as well. But I'm assuming you want to be able to have a machine act as the default gateway, well in that case the IP address of the default gateway will be known when the clients are auto-configured.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Ding ding ding We have a winner.
Perfectly valid for ipv4. Ipv6 is a different story. Go read up on how it works. Ipv6 needs no dhcp server.
Are there any real costs or difficulties in the way, or is it just that they cannot be bothered to do until customers actually demand it.
BUT before Joe's router is connected to the ISP, how does his router or PC know what address they should be using?
This is actually a topic of debate on IPv6 lists right now. There are basically two camps: One says that Joe's router should give out unique local addresses, the other says that a LAN only needs link locals. Both sides are, as far as I can tell, supporting their stance with really good arguments.
Joe would not have to wait for "dhcp renewal time" seconds, or "some other public IP update period" seconds, before his PC realizes that "Oh I'm supposed to be using this public IP address and this gateway".
That's not how IPv6 works. Joe's computer gets a Router Advertisement message as soon as the Internet LED lights up and everything instantly works.
Like most criticism of IPv6 on Slashdot, your criticism is founded on ignorance.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Next question: What url does Joe Public enter on his browser to get to the router config page, so that he can enter the username and password in order to get access to the ISP's network?
Another topic of debate on IPv6 lists. Apple believes that mDNS+a special configuration program is the solution here. Others have talked about reserving an IP address for this purpose. I believe that mDNS advertising something like router.local or linksys.local will be the most common method.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
According to Wikipedia, roughly 78% of the entire Russian population lives in European Russia.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
!PASA 6vPI tuo yrt ot enoyreve egaruocne ylgnorts I .smelborp yna deciton t'nevah I dna pu tes ot hguone ysae demees tI .yppah yllaer neeb ev'I dna ,won thgir 6vPI gnisu m'I
I think it's more likely due to the fact that Apple has typically had an advantage in educational institutions. Most residential ISPs still don't provide IPv6 support, but I would not be surprised if nearly every college and university in the U.S. supported IPv6 to the end user.
Doesn't matter if your router supports IPv6 if your ISP does not.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Dell Axiom Palm tops had IPV6 capabilities.. if I recall.. Let me dig one out of the "Freebie" bin at the thrift store and find out.. Stay here.. wait for me ..
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
That's exactly right. To get IPv6 working on my system at home, I just set up the router. My Powerbook, my Ubuntu machines, and my wife's Windows Vista machine, all automatically picked up IPv6 and can all connect to http://ipv6.google.com/
For those rolling their own router boxes, you can see what I did here (caution - it's my blog and this is a tag that brings up a bunch of articles, start reading at the bottom...) I used 6to4 as well. It's worth getting a static IP address if you plan to use 6to4, and it's also worth noting that some ISPs, notable BellSouth/AT&T FastAccess, actually block use of 6to4, for reasons I don't really understand. Before wasting any time on it, try to ping 192.88.99.1 from a machine directly connected to the Internet. If you get responses, you can do 6to4. If you don't, you're going to have to try one of the IPv6 tunnel brokers, which is a supremely inefficient way of doing everything and makes you dependent upon the goodwill of a third party.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I don't think you understand how a default IPv6 set up works and I don't think the guy who's insulting you is being terribly helpful.
With IPv6, you get a huge block of addresses (as high as 2^80, approximately, though 2^64 is generally what people actually use and is often the limit for tunnel broker negotiated links) allocated to each network (that is, if your router is responsible for connecting to the Internet, then right now when it connects it gets 1 IPv4 address. But if it supports IPv6, it'll get, via 6to4 or a tunnel broker or a PPP-negotiated setup, a BLOCK of between 2^64 and 2^80 addresses. It can grab any of these for itself.)
That's your home network with all those IPv6 addresses. Your router accepts configuration requests by prepending the network prefix (the first 48 or 64 bits of your network's address) to a mangled version of the client's MAC address. It can then talk to the outside world. It has a globally routeable address. Any traffic with the first 48 bits of your client's IPv6 address will be routed to your router, and your router will send it to the client machine.
It's actually SIMPLER than your average NAT+DHCP router.
This isn't theory BTW, this is what I use at home. I have a bog-standard Earthlink DSL connection. Earthlink doesn't currently support IPv6. It doesn't do anything other than route IPv4 packets. The only block is does is on outgoing port 25 connections. That's it. It's your basic ISP.
My router understands 6to4 (I built it myself.) It turns the IPv4 address I get from Earthlink into a 6to4 network block. It tells every computer on my network what that computer's IPv6 address(es - yeah, more than one is allowed) are and that it does all the routing. Those addresses are static. They are ALL globally routeable, that is, they're real IP addresses, not equivalents of 10.x.x.x. My firewall set-up decides which machines should be allowed to receive incoming connections from the outside world. I have forward and reverse DNS set up for the IPv6 addresses.
My Powerbook, Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Thinkpad, Ubuntu VMs, and my wife's Vista machine are all connected and do not have any problems using it, and they "just worked" - I didn't have to configure them. I've noticed the Wii has an address but doesn't use it. My Dish Network box and HD DVD player do not ask for IPv6 addresses, so aren't routeable (though they do the IPv4 thing with NAT and 10.x.x.x.), my Nokia N800 also doesn't have any inbuilt IPv6 support though it's apparently a third party firmware update away from doing so.
This is what the situation is now. It's a working system. It doesn't use DHCPD, it uses RADVD. The router has lots of IPv6 addresses, it knows how to give them out, and the computers on my network that know IPv6 can get those addresses.
Does that help?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
So either you'll keep getting router advertisements on your network indefinitely, or your computers will have to keep requesting for it (instead of eventually giving up- which is what happens now).
Correct. New computers can use router solicitations to get this information immediately, router advertisements can be used once the initial prefix delegation is complete (eg, the public prefix to use is know) and periodically thereafter to prevent autoconfig addresses for expiring.
I'm curious why you seem to regard this as a big deal.
Next question: What url does Joe Public enter on his browser to get to the router config page, so that he can enter the username and password in order to get access to the ISP's network?
I like the mDNS method personally.
Reserved by RFC or not, .local is sufficiently common for mDNS that it's basically unusable for any other purpose.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Have the security issues (i.e. the fact that it makes it trivial to forge addresses) with 6to4 been fixed yet? If not, enabling 6to4 by default is not a great idea...
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Unless you are looking at a fairly strange cross-section of consumer routers, most of them do not run Linux. Only a handful of the ones offered by Linksys, D-Link, etc. do. The majority run VxWorks, I believe.
A few years back there were actually more Linux-based routers but as cost pressures and competition have increased the manufacturers seem to have moved away in order to reduce the parts count. Broadband routers are the only pieces of equipment I've seen where the hardware specs have actually fallen, year over year, for comparable pieces of gear.
Anyway, if you do happen to get a real Linux router (like the Linksys WRT54GL, or early *G editions) and reflash the firmware to DD-WRT, you can enable IPv6. I don't think it does automatic 6to4 (at least it doesn't in the version I'm running) so it's not quite as slick as the Apple routers, but the capability is definitely there if you're running a decent load of software. I don't know if the capability is actually been removed from the kernel in stock firmwares or just not enabled.
I don't know what VxWorks' support for v6 is like, so I'm not sure how trivial it is for manufacturers to enable it, if they wanted to.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They've offered IPv6 for years now:
http://www.sonic.net/features/ipv6/
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Have the security issues (i.e. the fact that it makes it trivial to forge addresses) with 6to4 been fixed yet? If not, enabling 6to4 by default is not a great idea...
Oh right because I forgot that it's very hard to forge addresses with ipv4...
FYI, for those running routers that can run DD-WRT:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/IPv6#6to4_Setup
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Doesn't matter if your router supports IPv6 if your ISP does not.
Sure it does. The whole point, and what makes it so cool, is that the AirPort sets up 6-to-4 tunnelling automatically. So you *can* have IPv6 connectivity even if your ISP doesn't provide it.
noah
I would be. Maybe some of the leading high-tech universities, but almost certainly the minority rather than the majority. Most educational institutions aren't going to spring for more expensive IPv6 equipment at this juncture.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
More expensive IPv6 equipment? You'd be hard pressed to find any contemporary, decent quality networking equipment without support for IPv6. The majority of this gear is even IPv6 capable with basic software licenses.
Universities have little reason to move to IPv6 beyond novelty. They generally have huge IPv4 blocks already.
You assume that people are going to spring for new equipment just so they can get IPv6? Not likely. Perhaps in five more years the equipment of today will be making up a significant portion of equipment in use.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
It's your hypothesis. Not mine.
Thanks for the explanation, I have probably not seen enough to see a representative sample, and several of them would have been old, so more likely to be Linux.
Have you ever heard of Internet2? There's quite a large number of schools that are involved with I2, and I'm 90% certain that I2 requires IPv6 capability.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah, I am aware of the I2 project. According to them IPv4, IPv6, and others are supported. Also, their list of 213 participating universities would make that about 5% of the total number of universities. It also begs the question of what subset of the participants are actually running IPv6?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Maybe so.
But the Internet is currently IPv4, and doesn't look like it's moving to IPv6 in a hurry.
Currently it's hard to get an IPv6 only client to talk with an IPv4 only server. AFAIK you need an proxy/NAT with an IPv4 address in between.
And the last I checked there are lots of very popular servers that are IPv4 only. I'd be surprised if they all start supporting IPv6 before 2013 and more importantly are _reachable_ via IPv6 through major ISPs around the world.
Ironically what appears to be more likely is that there will be more use/abuse of NAT. Whether IPv4-IPv4 or IPv6-IPv4 NAT.
As it is IPv6 networks are as much part of the Internet as Novell IPX networks that are tunnelled through the Internet.