May 2012 archive

May 24

World IPv6 Launch – Should Apple iPad/iPhone/Mac Owners Worry?

The quick answer is “No, IPv6 should ‘just work’,” but the longer answer is more nuanced, as Iljitsch van Beijnum outlines in his excellent piece at Ars Technica, “The future is forever: the state of IPv6 in the Apple world.” In the very detailed piece, van Beijnum covers:

  • the basics of IPv6 support in Apple devices
  • the use of “happy eyeballs” to deal with IPv4/IPv6 transition issues, and some of the issues that can cause
  • privacy addresses in IPv6
  • DHCPv6
  • IPv6 in iOS devices
  • IPv6 in the Airport Extreme base station
  • Firewall issues
  • Airport Utility 6.0 and the missing IPv6 piece

There is also a lengthy stream of comments (81 at the time of this post) that make for interesting reading as well.

The article is an excellent writeup about the status of IPv6 in Apple devices and it would be great to see such articles published for other operating systems and device ecosystems. (If you know of such articles, please feel free to leave links as comments.) Meanwhile, Apple owners should be glad to know that overall they are in very good shape for the impending transition happening with World IPv6 Launch in just over 12 days!

 

May 23

Please Send Us Your IPv6 Memes! (Or Deal With OUR Sense Of Humor…)

IPv6 On All The ThingsAs we mentioned on Friday, we’d like to have a little bit of fun with IPv6 in the midst of all the serious stuff we’re posting… so we figure that on the two remaining Friday afternoons before World IPv6 Launch we’d like to post some of the various memes floating around the Internet, tailored to IPv6, of course!

But to make this more interesting, we’re asking you all…

PLEASE SEND US YOUR IPv6 MEMES!

Otherwise, we’re going to come up with them on our own… and we’re pretty much going to guarantee that some of you will be way more creative than we are!

Please just send them to us at:

deploy360@isoc.org

And as to creating them, a  search on “meme generator” will show you a whole range of sites that let you do this with various characters.

We ask only this – please include “www.worldipv6launch.org” in the text somehow. Well, and we’d prefer no profanity as we are trying to keep this site “safe for work”.

We’ve already got a couple of ideas in for this Friday but we’d like to have a few more.   We’ll post the best ones and circulate them through our social networks.

Thanks… and we’re looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

May 23

2 Weeks To World IPv6 Launch – The Countdown Is On!

If you have looked at the World IPv6 Launch website recently, you’ll notice a new addition – yes, indeed, we’re counting down the seconds!

How are YOU planning to get involved?

If you operate your own website, look at our steps for content providers to enable IPv6 for suggestions about how to get started. In particular, look at content delivery networks as a way you might easily IPv6-enable your content.  Then, if you think you will be able to get your content IPv6-enabled before June 6th, register as a participant of World IPv6 Launch (NOTE: you need to register by May 30 to be listed as a participant on the site, although the IPv6 connectivity doesn’t need to be in place until June 6.)

If you are a network operator / ISP, read about what’s involved with becoming part of World IPv6 Launch and sign up if you are able to meet the commitments.  If you are a home router vendor, odds are that if you haven’t started the process it’s going to be quite tough to hit the deadline to be listed as a launch participant, but you can read about the requirements on the World IPv6 Launch site.

Of course, registering on the website as a participant is just one way that you can participate and World IPv6 Launch is just the start of the new era of the IPv6-enabled Internet… so if you don’t think you’ll be able to meet the June 6 “deadline”, don’t worry… just get started! Even if it takes you a bit longer you’ll still be part of the new era!

And if you don’t fit in those categories but are a passionate supporter of IPv6, please do help us spread the word! Add a logo to your website… retweet our tweets… spread the links… join the movement!

World IPv6 Launch – this time it’s for real!

World IPv6 Launch

 

May 23

The Cable Show in Boston Featuring an IPv6 Workshop

The Cable ShowThis afternoon at The Cable Show conference in Boston, MA, Comcast and Time Warner Cable together with the sponsorship of Cisco have coordinated a 2.5-hour event called “IPv6 Workshop: Status Update on the Global Transition“. The session will include speakers on topics:

  • Addressed for Success: Implications of the IPv6 Transition
  • 3…2…1…Liftoff: Closing in on the World IPv6 Launch
  • Keeping Tabs: Measurement and Benchmarking IPv6

With World IPv6 Launch only 14 days away, this workshop will help cable providers understand the implications of the move to IPv6 and how they start the transition if they have not already begun.

Kudos to Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cisco, all of whom are big World IPv6 Launch supporters and participants, for organizing this session. We look forward to hearing how it goes and hearing of more cable providers moving to IPv6!

P.S. The Deploy360 Programme’s Richard Jimmerson is there on-site at the event, along with the Internet Society’s Phil Roberts. If you are there at the event, please do say hello to them!

 

 

May 23

When Was The Last Time You TOLD A Story?

Bedtime StoriesIt's bed time... you go upstairs to the bedroom with your child and watch or help as he/she gets ready for bed. Once they are nestled in, a typical next step is a bedtime story.

But how often have you told a story? Not read a story, but TOLD one from memory?

It's an interesting question and points to a fact that we have as a culture lost a significant amount of the "oral tradition" that dates back to the dawn of history. People have always told stories. In words, songs, poems, etc. It was long the role of the bard, the troubadour, the storyteller to relay those stories and tell the tales. It was that way for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.

With the invention of the printing press, though, we started to write down those stories and capture them in "books". And that is a truly wonderful thing because it preserved so many of the stories that might otherwise have been lost to the ages.

But the other side of it is that it seems to me that in general we no longer tell but instead read stories.

I was certainly this way. "Pick out a book", I said to our daughters, "and I'll read it to you." And so I did and continue to do so to this day.

But I have also injected telling the occasional story. Just starting with basic timeless stories like "The Princess and the Frog", "Goldilocks", "Little Red Riding Hood", etc. It's been an interesting experiment, really. Partly to see if I can actually remember them (I can) and partly in how you express the story and make it fun and interesting.

As I started telling more stories, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I found that like the storytellers of old I began to embellish and add to the stories as I told them. Each time it may be slightly different. (Although the girls sometime catch me on that and point it out!)

Over the years I've gone the next step of creating stories set in their own world with their own characters. The challenging part, of course, is when our 10-year-old wants me to tell our 3-yr-old one of those stories I made up and told her 5 or 6 years ago... and I hardly remember it! (The delightful part, though, was when the 10-yr-old recently made up such a story to tell the 3-yr-old!)

I have to say it's turned out to be something rather fun to do... and has been much enjoyed by our daughters.

When was the last time YOU told a story? To kids? To family? To friends? To an audience?

Image credit: claylarsen on Flickr

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May 23

New Nmap Version 6 Provides Full IPv6 Support, Useful IPv6 Tools

NmapThe big news this week out of The Nmap Project was the release of Nmap 6, “the product of almost three years of work, 3,924 code commits, and more than a dozen point releases since the big Nmap 5 release in July 2009.” The big addition of interest to us, of course, was the deep support for IPv6, detailed in a lengthy section at:

http://nmap.org/6/#changes-ipv6

Nmap (“Network mapper”) is a free utility for scanning networks that has been available since 1997 and is a key tool for network and systems administrators, not just for security but also for managing networks. Nmap has had support for IPv6 since 2002, but just in time for World IPv6 Launch the appropriately named Nmap 6 provides full IPv6 support, including:

  • easy usage by just adding “-6” to the command line
  • raw IPv6 port scanning
  • IPv6 operating system detection system
  • a range of IPv6 host discovery techniques (given that brute-force scanning of IPv6 address space is problematic)
  • IPv6 Neighbor Discovery ping
  • an IPv6-only scanning test sitePlus the various websites associated with Nmap have been dual-stacked so that they can be reached over IPv4 or IPv6.

And, as a bonus for the old-skool crowd, this gem could be found later in the release notes:

Nmap now supports the old-school Gopher protocol thanks to our handy gopher-ls NSE script. We even support Gopher over IPv6!

So for all of you out there with gopher servers running on IPv6, nmap will work for you!

Seriously, though, the IPv6 support found in Nmap 6 will go a long way in helping network administrators understand what IPv6 devices are running on their network. Available for download for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or in source form, Nmap 6 is a tool you’ll want to have. I’ve already installed it on my systems and look forward to trying out these new options!

May 23

Cisco Outlines How They Prepared For World IPv6 Launch

Cisco blog post about World IPv6 LaunchHow did Cisco prepare to participate in World IPv6 Launch? What did they have to do internally? What testing did they do?

With the big event only 2 weeks from today on June 6th, 2012, Jon Woolwine explained on the “Inside Cisco IT” blog what they did in an article entitled “Preparing for World IPv6 Launch“. Notice their steps:

  1. Get buy-in at the CIO level
  2. Choose an architecture/design
  3. Assess the IPv6 readiness of network hardware, software, service providers and applications
  4. Perform required upgrades
  5. Enhance network monitoring software
  6. Provide training on IPv6 to all employees
  7. Test, test, test…

It’s great to see Cisco providing a view into what they’ve done… and we look forward to connecting to their sites over IPv6 in two weeks!

May 22

Facebook Now Available Over IPv6 (Two Weeks Early)

Facebook logoWith two weeks to go until World IPv6 Launch, word started circulating today in social networks that Facebook had enabled IPv6 for their site two weeks early. A quick use of “dig aaaa www.facebook.com” shows that yes, indeed, Facebook is now publishing the quad-A record for IPv6:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.facebook.com.    9    IN    AAAA    2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c::25

 

If you have an IPv6 connection and want to test it directly, you can simply go to this URL:

http://[2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c::25]

and you’ll be looking at the standard Facebook screen.

Kudos to the Facebook team for making their site live over IPv6 two weeks prior to World IPv6 Launch – and they certainly get bonus points for figuring out how to add their branding into their IPv6 address! ;-)

P.S. Have you registered your website to join World IPv6 Launch?

(Hat tip to @zajdee on Twitter where I first saw news of the change.)

UPDATE: A commenter on Hacker News pointed out that right now Facebook’s IPv6 address simply redirects to the IPv4 website, meaning that if you were on an IPv6-only network you couldn’t get to the site. So it would seem my celebration was a bit premature and Facebook is still in the process of getting everything set for World IPv6 Launch. Regardless, it’s great to see the IPv6 support happening!

May 22

Video/Slidecast: What Is World IPv6 Launch All About? How Can You Participate?

What is World IPv6 Launch all about? What does it mean for IPv6 to be “the new normal”? How can you participate in World IPv6 Launch?

In this short video, the Internet Society’s Phil Roberts explains what is happening on June 6, 2012, what it means to the industry and how to get involved. (NOTE: After watching, please do head over to www.worldipv6launch.org to learn more and sign up to participate!)

May 18

Friday IPv6 Meme Image: IPv6 On All The Things!

It’s late on a Friday afternoon… we’re all a little silly and ready for an insanely busy work week to wind down… so a colleague goes to memegenerator.net and in a minute or two passes around an image:

IPv6 On All The Things

We laughed… and a few others were admittedly created.  :-)

And then we got to thinking… in the midst of all this serious promotion we’re doing for World IPv6 Launch, why not have a little fun with it?  So we thought we’d ask you all:

SEND US YOUR IPv6 MEMES!

I’m sure with all the creative potential out there – and the many different meme image generation sites – surely you all can come up with some better or more creative ones than we have!

Please send them to us at deploy360@isoc.org – or leave links as comments to this post – and what we’ll do is run the best submissions we see on the next couple of Fridays before the big Launch.  We ask only two things:

  • Please include “www.worldipv6launch.org” somewhere on the image.
  • Please don’t use profanity.

Well… feel free to to send us ones with profanity if you want to make us smile, but given that we try to keep this site “Safe For Work” we probably won’t be publishing any of those ;-)

So please… send us your kittens!  Send us your LOLcats!  Send us your very serious person images… or whatever else.

Let’s have a little bit of fun with this, eh?

P.S. And feel free to pass along the image we have here, too :-)