Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Sep 02
Lifehacker: Disabling IPv6 Will NOT Speed Up Your Internet Connection
IPv6 is not exactly a topic we would normally expect to see on the hugely popular Lifehacker website, but there it was on Friday in a story by Patrick Allan, “Why Disabling IPv6 Won’t Speed Up Your Internet Connection“. In the article, Patrick references an earlier article on How-To Geek that aims to dispel the idea that disabling IPv6 would somehow speed up your Internet access.
In both articles, the authors make the point that earlier versions of web browsers would sometimes have significant delays in connecting to web sites if IPv6 was involved. For example, if a website had a AAAA record with an IPv6 address a browser would sometimes try and try… and try… to connect to the site over IPv6… even if the computer itself had no IPv6 connection!
Thankfully, in 2014 almost all web browsers now use some variation of the “Happy Eyeballs” algorithm defined in RFC 6555 where they try to connect over both IPv6 and IPv4 and use whichever connection works best and so these web browser problems are now a thing of the past.
As both articles note, you may do more damage to your computer by disabling IPv6 these days, simply because we are running out of IPv4 addresses and many sites and networks are already well underway with their transitions to IPv6 (or have already completed those transitions).
We’re very pleased to see Lifehacker pointing this out… and look forward to more such articles as the IPv6 transition is happening rapidly around us!
If you would like to make the transition to IPv6, please see our Start Here page to find resources that will help you out!
Sep 02
Can You Please Help The Ottawa Linux Symposium?
If you have ever used the Linux operating system, could you please help out the Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS)? For many years OLS has been one of the key events that has helped bring together people from all across the Linux community, and the connections made at OLS have helped to make the Linux operating system that much more powerful and useful. But… as organizer Andrew Hutton recounts on the OLS Indiegogo page, the event has fallen in a bit of a financial crunch and it is now not clear if there will be an OLS in 2015… or ever again.
Could you spare $10? $25? or even $50 or $100? (Or more?)
If so, please help fund OLS on the IndieGogo page!
I first attended OLS back in the early 2000s when I was living right there in Ottawa and working for first a startup called e-smith and then subsequently Mitel Networks. In looking at my list of presentations I can see that I spoke there several times… and the topics I covered take me back to a much different time:
- 2004 OLS – Tutorial: Introduction to OpenPGP, GnuPG and the Web of Trust
- 2002 OLS – Tutorial – Single Source Publishing Using DocBook XML
- 2001 OLS – Maximizing Your Use of CVS
I still remember OLS as the incredibly passionate place where people connected…. and where I made so many connections and learned an amazing amount about Linux.
If OLS was ever important to you… or if Linux has been important to you… please consider donating to help the OLS organization get out of its financial hole and get moving ahead in future years. Organizer Andrew Hutton has poured his heart and soul – and personal money – into making OLS the incredible event it has been… now it would be great if we all can help him! Please consider donating!
Here are a few other viewpoints on the importance of OLS:
- Jon “maddog” Hall: “Ottawa Linux Symposium: May get by with a little help from its friends”
- Matt Domsch: “Ottawa Linux Symposium needs your help”
Please do donate if you can! THANK YOU!
Sep 02
50% Off All O’Reilly Ebooks Through Sept 9, 2014
Want to buy “Migrating Applications to IPv6” at 50% off? (in ebook form) Or any of 8,000 other ebooks and videos?
The folks at O’Reilly are having a “Back to (Tech) School Sale” that is in effect until 5:00pm U.S. Pacific Daylight Time on September 9, 2014. All you need to do is use the discount code “B2S4″ when you are checking out.
I would STRONGLY encourage you to buy my book directly through O’Reilly when you can because you get:
- DRM-free – you can put it on as many devices as you want, and it’s yours.
- As many formats as you want – EPUB, Mobi, PDF, whatever…
- Notification of (free) updates – whenever I post updates to the book, you will be notified.
It’s definitely worth it… I’m buying my tech ebooks directly from O’Reilly whenever I can now, simply because of these three points!
Thank you for considering the purchase of this book – and please do let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback to help make it better. The entire point of the book was to help application developers be able to make their application work over IPv6… so I want to hear from you about how this book can help!
Sep 01
FIR #771 – 9/1/14 – For Immediate Release
Shel's solo today; Quick News: Google ends Authorship, LinkedIn pages as company websites, Ditto scans for brands in shared photos, organic search beats social media for driving traffic, Facebook lets user search old posts, ALSA tries to trademark Ice Bucket Challenge; Ragan promo; News That Fits: US congressman slams employee communication effort, there's a growing demand for communication skills, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, Dan York's Tech Report, listener comments, the last week on the FIR Podcast Network, Igloo Software promo, social media and the spiral of silence; music from Trigger Hippy; and more.
Aug 28
Watch LIVE Now! AfPIF Lightning Talks On IXP Toolkit, Deploy360, More
Right NOW in Dakar, Senegal, the last session of the African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) 2014 is happening. As we wrote previously, our Chris Grundemann is there – and he will actually be speaking during this “Lightning Talk” session about what we are doing here with Deploy360 in general and in particular with our Best Current Operational Practices (BCOP) efforts. You can watch live at:
http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/AfPIF2014Day3
It will also be archived for later viewing.
Right now our Internet Society colleague Jane Coffin is talking about the IXP Toolkit that has been developed to help with the creation of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) (see our IXP page for our resources to help).
The list of speakers will be:
- IXP Toolkit (Jane Coffin, ISOC)
- IPv6 Webinars (Kevin Chege, ISOC)
- Peering in Kenya (Barry Macharia, KIXP)
- The successful implementation of an IXP and its evolution (Adelard Kenese, Burundix)
- DO Base (Chris Grunderman, ISOC)
- Business Intelligence Application (Elaud Kutiwa)
Each is to do a short 5-10 minute presentation.
If you want to see more, you can watch live RIGHT NOW! :-)
Aug 26
African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) Streaming Live This Week From Dakar, Senegal (Featured Blog)
The 5th African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) gets underway today, August 26, 2014, in Dakar, Senegal, with a packed agenda full of sessions focused on the future of peering and interconnection in Africa. There are sessions targeted at Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), infrastructure providers, content creators and policy makers and regulators. The event goes through Thursday, August 28, 2014. More...
Aug 25
TDYR #170 – SoundCloud Launches Ads With “On SoundCloud” Partner Platform
TDYR #170 - SoundCloud Launches Ads With "On SoundCloud" Partner Platform by Dan York
Aug 25
MPAA: Need To Move To IPv6 For Improved Video Viewing Experience
Want an improved video streaming experience? Want faster delivery of higher resolution HD and 4K videos? Move to using IPv6! That’s essentially the message from Alex Deacon of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in a recent blog post, “Delivering An Enhanced Video Experience With IPv6“. He begins:
As the popularity of video streaming services continues to grow across the globe so do the requirements for efficient and high-speed network infrastructure used to deliver them. While much work is happening in this regard, one area of focus is the global deployment of IPv6 (Internet Protocol v6).
He then explores a number of the critical aspects of network infrastructure that are solved by the move to IPv6 including potentially removing the added latency that will come with deployment of Large-Scale NAT(LSN) / Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN). He also mentions the potential for faster routing and improved multicasting, both of which can make the delivery of video faster. His key quote to me is this (my emphasis added to the latter part):
The continued deployment and use of IPv6, and the many network efficiencies it brings, is key to the continued ability for our industry to deliver high quality, high speed and high definition content to users. This will minimize video start-up wait times, reduce video buffering and enable the delivery of HD and 4K content.
As someone who consumes video content primarily through video streaming services, I very much want to have faster start-up times and reduced video buffering. It is great to see an organization such as the MPAA promoting this as a benefit of the move to IPv6.
The article is definitely worth a read … and if you are a provider of video streaming services, we would encourage you to visit our “IPv6 for Content Providers” page to learn more about how you can get started!
P.S. And if you are not a provider of video streaming services, you may want to visit our “Start Here” page to find resources to help you get started with IPv6.
The post MPAA: Need To Move To IPv6 For Improved Video Viewing Experience appeared first on Internet Society.
Aug 25
MPAA: Need To Move To IPv6 For Improved Video Viewing Experience
Want an improved video streaming experience? Want faster delivery of higher resolution HD and 4K videos? Move to using IPv6! That’s essentially the message from Alex Deacon of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in a recent blog post, “Delivering An Enhanced Video Experience With IPv6“. He begins:
As the popularity of video streaming services continues to grow across the globe so do the requirements for efficient and high-speed network infrastructure used to deliver them. While much work is happening in this regard, one area of focus is the global deployment of IPv6 (Internet Protocol v6).
He then explores a number of the critical aspects of network infrastructure that are solved by the move to IPv6 including potentially removing the added latency that will come with deployment of Large-Scale NAT(LSN) / Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN). He also mentions the potential for faster routing and improved multicasting, both of which can make the delivery of video faster. His key quote to me is this (my emphasis added to the latter part):
The continued deployment and use of IPv6, and the many network efficiencies it brings, is key to the continued ability for our industry to deliver high quality, high speed and high definition content to users. This will minimize video start-up wait times, reduce video buffering and enable the delivery of HD and 4K content.
As someone who consumes video content primarily through video streaming services, I very much want to have faster start-up times and reduced video buffering. It is great to see an organization such as the MPAA promoting this as a benefit of the move to IPv6.
The article is definitely worth a read … and if you are a provider of video streaming services, we would encourage you to visit our “IPv6 for Content Providers” page to learn more about how you can get started!
P.S. And if you are not a provider of video streaming services, you may want to visit our “Start Here” page to find resources to help you get started with IPv6.
