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DistroWatch Finally Adds Support For IPv6 (distrowatch.com)

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."

22 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. IPv6 is a failed technology by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  2. Speaking of embarrassing... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, 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?

    1. Re:Speaking of embarrassing... by steffann · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apparently they are: https://www.facebook.com/group...

      The interesting bit:

      One colleague was on a webinar with AWS yesterday and sent me this choice quote: "We are making a big announcement about IPv6 next week. Watch our blog and you'll see a lot of support."

  3. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 3, Informative

    Plenty of people are using IPv6

    Especially at the weekend. Last weekend more than 11% of Google users 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.

  4. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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 running even supports IPv6.

    Then the firewall way need to have its rules updated in same cases to allow/block IPv6 traffic.

    Depending on which domain registrar/nameserver provider you use, some extra steps may be required to enable IPv6.

    It is surprisingly how many steps can be required to get services to support IPv6. There is no one big hurdle, but a lot of little ones. It's no wonder many companies/websites still don't support IPv6.

  5. And Slashdot...? by KiloByte · · Score: 3, 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...

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  6. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by guruevi · · Score: 2

    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-only as the v4 pool actually gets exhausted, once that starts happening you'll see more of a push for everyone to implement v6.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  7. Re:IPv6 -- Just Say No ! by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    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....

  8. Re: IPv6 is a failed technology by Strykar · · Score: 2

    Do share your deep insights at http://ipv6excuses.com/

  9. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by LVSlushdat · · Score: 2

    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..

    --
    THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
  10. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  11. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    According to the statistics available here, https://www.google.ca/intl/en/... 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 DOS.

    I would not discount the possibility of a properly backward compatible variant of IPv4 emerging, to address the very real needs of popular web servers that have no economically viable choice other than maintaining compatibility with IPv4 far into the future.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  12. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Rising+Ape · · Score: 4, 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.

  13. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not just Apple - every Windows version since Vista has had IPv6 as its native IP: Windows 7 home networking uses IPv6, rather than IPv4.

  14. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by guruevi · · Score: 2

    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

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  15. Random is the DEFAULT (which may be silly) by raymorris · · 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.

  16. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by davester666 · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  17. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Yaztromo · · Score: 2

    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 makes routing significantly easier. Routing an IPv6 packet requires less processing overhead, permitting routers to be much more efficient.

    Please leave protocol design to the experts.

    Yaz

  18. IPv6 by ledow · · Score: 2

    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.

  19. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, 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:

    • - Simplified packet processing: there are a variety of features in the IPv6 packet header that simplifies processing by routers. Included here are:
      • - Fixed header size: unlike IPv4, IPv6 has a fixed packet size of 40 octets, whereas IPv4 packets can vary between 20 and 60 octets,
      • - Lack of header checksum: IPv6 has no header checksum (thus removing the need to either compute or verify the checksum). This is actually pretty big, as each router hop needs to recompute the checksum as the TTL value is decremented in order to remain valid,
      • - TTL replaced by Hop Limit: this one is a bit complex. In IPv4, Time-to-Live is specified in the header as the total number of seconds the packet should be routed before it is dropped. This is tricky to compute, so even in IPv4 many nodes simply decrement it by one regardless of how long it has taken to process. In IPv6, this is changed to be a straight hop count; the value in the header basically specifies how many times a packet can hit a router before it is dropped.
      • - Gets rid of unused fields: IPv6 gets rid of a lot of header fields present in IPv4, such as the IHL, DSCP, ECN, and everything related to fragmentation.
      • - Lack of fragmentation: IPv6 packets can't be fragmented. Routers don't have to fragment or defragment packets. This can also mean fewer overall packets, and also means the router doesn't have to parse or generate a pile of fragmentation fields and information from the packets being sent/received.
    • - Traffic Class header field: IPv6 has a field that can be used to differentiate services, and can be used for QoS, allowing the router to more easily prioritize and arrange traffic.
    • - Flow labelling: IPv6 has a header field for flow labelling, that can be used to do things such as ensure stable routes for packets, such that packets aren't received out-of-order at a destination. This is intended to make streaming data (such as video) more stable, and can replace custom heuristic algorithms at the router layer with something much simpler,
    • - Jumbogram support: IPv6 packets can be up to (2**32)-1 octets in size (1 byte less than 4GB). While not practical today on the public internet, bigger packets can mean fewer (albeit bigger) packets that need routing,
    • - CIDR and smarter address allocation: CIDR was invented for IPv4 of course, however IPv4 didn't use CIDR until ten years after Flag Day. Pre-CIDR address allocations were ad-hoc; address blocks were classful (A, B, C). Many of these classful allocations still exist, however because of they way they were assigned, it was (and is) difficult to aggregate these routes. IPv6 came about long after these lessons were learned the hard way, and thus the IANA is being much smarter about what addresses are allocated where in order to better aggregate routes. 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. IPv4 also works this way, but with the much bigger address space (and the lack of legacy pre-CIDR allocations), and with smarter allocation policies in place, route aggregation will make the possible mess that is the current state of the IPv4 routing tables significantly saner. From a processing perspective, this means that next hop lookups should be significantly quicker and easier. IPv4 currently has over 610000 prefixes; way more than should be needed. This is partly due to, as addresses have run out, large CIDR blocks being broken up into smaller blocks
  20. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by rl117 · · Score: 2

    https://www.google.com/intl/en...

    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 three years now.

  21. Re:IPv6 is a failed technology by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

    Yeah, because everyone knows tech doesn't change hardly at all in 2 years.