Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
May 23
The Cable Show in Boston Featuring an IPv6 Workshop
This 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?
It'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
The 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:
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
How 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:
- Get buy-in at the CIO level
- Choose an architecture/design
- Assess the IPv6 readiness of network hardware, software, service providers and applications
- Perform required upgrades
- Enhance network monitoring software
- Provide training on IPv6 to all employees
- 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)
With 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:
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
May 18
Deploy360 To Present On Accelerating DNSSEC Deployment at ENOG3 in Odessa, Ukraine, Next Week
Will you be at the third meeting of the Eurasia Network Operators Group (ENOG) on May 22-23, 2012, in Odessa, Ukraine?
If so, you’ll get to hear me (Dan York) speaking about “Key Steps to Accelerating DNSSEC Deployment“. The abstract of my session is:
Everyone wants a more secure Internet and DNSSEC provides a level of additional security that allows a web browser to make sure the DNS information is correct and unmodified. So why is it taking so long to get DNSSEC deployed?
What needs to be done to get more domains signed with DNSSEC? How can DNSSEC validation be built into more applications? Are there technical issues or are the issues more of communication and awareness? How can we as a community address these challenges to increase the usage and availability of DNSSEC?
In this session, Dan York will explain some key deployment challenges and offer suggestions for how to overcome them, including more education for consumers, businesses, developers and network operators, and steps registrars can take to make the process of signing domains easier for the end-user. In addition, Dan will facilitate an audience discussion on what other resources are needed to help move the DNSSEC deployment needle.
Over 80 top-level domains (TLDs) and thousands of second- and third-level domains have now been signed with DNSSEC. The Internet Society Deploy360 Programme plans to build on this success and expand DNSSEC deployment by providing detailed, technical how-to resources and educational articles, case studies, and other in-depth information to help organizations of all sizes.
I’m very much looking forward to attending the session and meeting with the network operators from around the region. The ENOG 3 program agenda looks quite excellent and the attendee list already shows 275 people! This is a regional meeting for the RIPE NCC and is the first time that an ENOG meeting has been held in the Ukraine.
My colleague Andrei Robachevsky will also be presenting on the topic of World IPv6 Launch and I’m looking forward to meeting up with him as well, given that he’s based in Amsterdam and I’m here in New Hampshire in the USA.
It will be interesting for me on a personal level, too, as the conference is in both English and Russian (with simultaneous translation) and my ability with the Russian language sadly doesn’t go much beyond “Nyet“! I’m looking forward to being there and perhaps learning a few phrases along the way. Getting to Odessa, though, turns out to be a bit entertaining for me… I’m flying Boston -> London -> Istanbul -> Odessa and basically losing Monday and Thursday to travel! If you don’t see any blog posts from me on next Friday, you’ll know I’m caught somewhere in the air transport system!
Anyway, if any of you are going to be at ENOG 3 next week I look forward to meeting with you!
May 18
Can You Add A World IPv6 Launch Badge/Banner To Your Blog Or Website?
World IPv6 Launch is only 19 days away – can you help us promote the event and get more people aware of the impending change to the Internet?
If you have a blog or website, and it would be appropriate for your audience or content, can you add one of our 3 different badges to a sidebar (as we’ve done on this site), footer or other appropriate location?
Even if your site/blog doesn’t yet support IPv6, putting the badge on your site can help raise awareness around the need for IPv6. We’d like to get as many people as possible aware of the upcoming event… and the fact that this time it’s for real! IPv6 will not be turned off on June 7th. This year it is all about permanently enabling IPv6 wherever possible.
If you go to the World IPv6 Launch downloads page at:
you’ll see that we have a variety of options with either a transparent or velvet background. The badges are also available in widths of 128, 256 or 512 pixels – and the transparent background images have SVG vector files as well.
Those 3 images with transparent backgrounds also have easy embed codes for the 128px images. For instance, here’s the code for the “Launch Badge”:
<a href=”http://www.worldipv6launch.org” ><img title=”WORLD IPV6 LAUNCH is 6 June 2012 – The Future is Forever” src=”http://www.worldipv6launch.org/wp-content/themes/ipv6/downloads/World_IPv6_launch_badge_128.png” alt=”WORLD IPV6 LAUNCH is 6 June 2012 – The Future is Forever” width=”128″ height=”128″ /></a>
Just copy that code, drop it on a web page, in a blog post or article, or in a sidebar widget and… ta da… you’ll have a World IPv6 Launch image! As in the embeddable code, we’d obviously love it if all the images can link back to:
so that more people can learn about the event and learn how they can participate.
Note, too, that the World IPv6 Launch badges/logos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, so you can remix/re-use/resize the images to fit whatever dimensions you need.
If you have a web site and have a spare moment today, this weekend, or anytime soon to add a World IPv6 Launch badge or logo to your web site it would definitely help us get the world out!
On June 6, the Internet is changing and IPv6 will be turned on for real! Please help us spread the word!
