Speaking of Standards

And so begins World IPv6 Day… technically it was to start at 00:00 UTC … which was 2 hours 40 minutes ago as I write this at 10:40pm US Eastern time.

And indeed, a dig aaaa www.google.com gives this result:

www.google.com.         558723  IN      CNAME   www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com.       300     IN      AAAA    2001:4860:800c::67

and a dig aaaa www.facebook.com gives this result:

www.facebook.com.       30      IN      AAAA    2620::1c08:4000:face:b00c:0:3

The team at Facebook gets bonus points for being very creative in the IPv6 address they assigned to their site!

So we’re live!

Google and Facebook are both returning both A and AAAA records for IPv4 and IPv6…

… and so the experiment begins!

“World IPv6 Day” is tomorrow, June 8, 2011. Are you ready to participate?

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and hundreds of other sites are preparing to enable IPv6 on their main websites. For 24 hours, the main websites of those organizations will be accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6, rather than requiring a separate domain name like “ipv6.google.com” or “www.v6.facebook.com“.

The day will be a day to test out how well various websites work using IPv6… and what experiences users have in connecting over IPv6.

Would you like to join in the testing and experimentation?

To do so, you need to have IPv6 connectivity, naturally. You can go to either of these sites to see if you currently have IPv6 connectivity:

• www.test-ipv6.com
• www.ipv6-test.com

If you do have IPv6 connectivity, then you are all set to participate and will have no problem connecting to sites using IPv6.

If you do not, but would like to join in the experiment, here are two articles I wrote about how you can easily configure a home network to use IPv6 using the free service available at Tunnelbroker.net:

• HOW TO Configure IPv6 On Your Home Network Using an Apple AirPort or Time Capsule
• HOW TO Configure IPv6 On Your Home Network Using Tunnelbroker.net

I also have other information available on our IPv6 Resource Page including tutorials, videos, and more.

With World IPv6 Day coming up on June 8th, 2011, it’s only appropriate that the site for the big day have its own URL. Previously it was hanging off of the Internet Society’s isoc.org but now it is at the brilliantly simple:

http://www.worldipv6day.org/

ISOC has also set up a specific Twitter account at @World_IPv6_Day and seems to be encouraging the use of the hashtag “#v6day”.

As an advocate for IPv6, it’s great to see all the attention and buzz happening around “World IPv6 Day”… and kudos to the folks at ISOC and their partners for putting together both the day itself and also this website with supporting materials.
 

With World IPv6 Day fast approaching on June 8th, I have found it interesting that there are two separate IPv6 test sites that I’ve seen people recommending: ipv6-test.com and test-ipv6.com.

ipv6-test.com

IPv6-test.com was the first of the two sites I personally came across and wrote about here back in January. The site has evolved quite a bit since that time and offers additional services beyond the simple IPv6 test:

• a speed test that will test your speed on both IPv4 and IPv6 (predictably for me IPv6 is slower as I use a tunnel over IPv4)
• a ping test that will test the ping latency of both your IPv4 and IPv6 connections
• a website test to validate that a website can be seen over IPv6
• an IPv6 test widget that you can add to your website or blog
• statistics about IPv6 usage based on people using the site and now some forums for IPv6 discussion

All in all some interesting additions to the site:

It’s not clear exactly who is behind the site other than the domain being registered to a company in France, but the site is offering a great service for people wanting to test out their IPv6 connectivity.

P.S. They are looking for more people to host the software for their speed tests. Currently they have only their one server in France.

test-ipv6.com

Test-ipv6.com I learned about through the Internet Society’s World IPv6 Day page where they prominently list the site as a way to test our IPv6 connectivity. Like IPv6-test.com, the tests start right away and you wind up with a report telling you how you did:

The site does a nice job with then showing you the tests that were run … and diving into deeper technical detail about what was done in each of the tests:

You can then tweet out your the page or Like the site’s Facebook page.

The site indicates it is the personal website of Jason Fesler who on his Twitter account indicates that by day he is a “IPv6 guy at Yahoo!” He also posts a mission statement and a FAQ for the site. There is a long list of mirrors and the code being used is available from Google Project Hosting as “falling sky”. (He also seems to have created the simpler http://omgipv6day.com/ site.)

Regardless of which site you use – or if, like me, you use them both – they are great tools to help understand what level of IPv6 connectivity you have available to you.

Thanks to both groups for hosting the sites and having the services available.

With World IPv6 Day fast approaching on June 8, 2011, an Internet-Draft you may find helpful is the aptly titled:

World IPv6 Day Call To Arms

As the abstract states:

The Internet Society (ISOC) has declared that June 8th 2011 will be World IPv6 Day, on which some major organisations are going to make their content available over IPv6. With the likes of Google and Facebook providing IPv6 access to their production services and domains, it is very likely we will see more IPv6 traffic flowing across the Internet than has ever been seen before. With this in mind, it seems timely to issue a call to arms for systems and network administrators to review their organisation’s IPv6 capabilities in order to mitigate common causes of IPv6 connectivity problems in advance of the day. The increased traffic on World IPv6 Day should also create an excellent opportunity to observe the behaviour and performance of IPv6; it is thus very desirable to have appropriate measurement tools in place in advance. We discuss some appropriate tools from the network and application perspective.

A paragraph in the Introduction outlines the goal of the document:

The purpose of this document is two-fold. One is to discuss common IPv6 connectivity issues that are likely to arise on June 8th, with a focus on dual-stack networking (which is likely to be how the vast majority of sites take part). Most of the issues discussed in this text are those that would affect an end site or enterprise network running IPv6, but may be applicable elsewhere. Highlighting the issues should help raise awareness of those problems and possible mitigations. The other purpose is to encourage organisations to think about how they might get useful instrumentation in place to observe what happens in and to/from their networks on the day, both from the network and application perspective. Such measurement tools are likely to be useful in the longer term, so once deployed they could be left in place beyond June 8th.

The document then succinctly lays out connectivity issues that users may face on World IPv6 Day and strategies for dealing with those issues.

All in all a useful document and one that is worth checking out if you are planning to participate in the World IPv6 Day activity.

Today AOL announced that they would be joining in the World IPv6 Day event on June 8, 2011. This is great to see given the large amount of content published by AOL on a daily basis.

Now, not all AOL properties will be participating in World IPv6 Day. The announcement makes it clear that only these sites will be involved:

• AOL Homepage – http://www.aol.com
• AOL Search – http://search.aol.com
• Mapquest – http://www.mapquest.com
• Engadget – http://www.engadget.com

The Huffington Post and other AOL sites will not be part of the experiment. Still, it’s great to see a large content provider like this participate.

The key point of World IPv6 Day is that the main websites of sites like these will be available over both IPv6 and IPv4. If you are on IPv6, you won’t have to go to a separate site (like “www.ipv6.example.com”) but will instead just go to the main website of the company or organization. Hopefully folks out there will learn some good lessons with IPv6 interop and we’ll be able to move the needle on IPv6 adoption.