Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

For those of you who are privy to networking and as a friendly reminder, June 8th is World IPv6 day! During this time, dozens of providers (including Google) will be providing their services via IPv6 for a limited time to test support and raise awareness.

IPv6 is the next generation protocol supporting a new addressing scheme for the underlying network infrastructure of the Internet. The current system, IPv4, is limited to 2^32 addresses (4.2 billion), about 40+ million of which are not directly addressable due to various standards that provide reserved ranges for private networks, localhost, and other uses; tens of millions more have been assigned to organizations and universities that registered their ranges during the early days and will likely never use them. Did you know that the Ford Motor Company was assigned the entire range of 19.0.0.0/8 (that's 19.0.0.0-19.255.255.255 or 16.7 million addresses)?

IPv6 has a maximum theoretical limit of 3.4x10^38 (that's a 3 followed by 38 zeros) addresses. Most of these won't be assigned due in part to various stipulations in the protocol for managing things like 6to4 or link local addresses. While that limits us to around 10^30 addresses, I think it's safe to wager that we won't run out for a long time.

For more information on IPv6, please visit:

The IPv6 Wikipedia page
Why you want IPv6
The Living with IPv6 Blog
Verizon has rolled out IPv6 on their LTE network
Visit Hurricane Electric's Tunnelbroker.net if you're technically inclined and would like to set up an IPv6 tunnel.

[Zancarius]

World IPv6 day has started as of two hours ago (UTC 00:00)!

[Zancarius]

Looks like quite a few major sites had fun with IPv6 day, including Cisco. Some that were surprisingly absent were all of the OSDN-related sites and others including Slashdot, Thinkgeek, and Sourceforge. Others that did not recognize IPv6 day included MSN (but see below), Gizmodo, and Techcrunch, along with Amazon, Newegg, and likely most other online retailers.

Of the sites I checked that had IPv6 access, many of them had fun with it since IPv6 addresses are represented in colon-separated hexadecimal (0-9, a-f). The most notable of them were:

Cisco:

cisco.v6day.akadns.net. 220 IN AAAA 2001:420:80:1:c:15c0:d06:f00d

Notice "dog food" in the address.

Facebook:

www.facebook.com. 18 IN AAAA 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:1

Nothing like marketing yourself.

The BBC:

www.bbc.net.uk. 300 IN AAAA 2001:4b10:bbc::1

It is most assuredly their address.

According to one Slashdotter, another UK site had a rather interesting IP, which I did not independently verify:

www.luns.net.uk has IPv6 address 2a01:8900:0:1::b00b:1e5

That pretty much sums up the Internet.

I didn't have time to check all those I would have liked since it seemed to be such a short 24-hour period (and ending at midnight, UTC didn't help--6PM MDT). But, here is a list of those I did check with output directly from dig, so I apologize for the extra noise (look for the AAAA lines in the answer sections to find the IPv6 address):

Code: Select all

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.google.com.                        IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.google.com.         264004  IN      CNAME   http://www.l.google.com.
http://www.l.google.com.       119     IN      AAAA    2001:4860:4001:803::1012

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.cisco.com.                 IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.cisco.com.          220     IN      CNAME   v6day.cisco.com.akadns.net.
v6day.cisco.com.akadns.net. 221 IN      CNAME   geo-v6day.cisco.com.akadns.net.
geo-v6day.cisco.com.akadns.net. 221 IN  CNAME   cisco-redir.v6day.akadns.net.
cisco-redir.v6day.akadns.net. 221 IN    CNAME   cisco.v6day.akadns.net.
cisco.v6day.akadns.net. 220     IN      AAAA    2001:420:80:1:c:15c0:d06:f00d

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.gentoo.org.                        IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.gentoo.org.         1736    IN      CNAME   www-bytemark-v4v6.gentoo.org.
www-bytemark-v4v6.gentoo.org. 836 IN    AAAA    2001:41c8:0:936:fdfe::134

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.cnn.com.                   IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.cnn.com.            78      IN      CNAME   v4v6.cnn.com.
v4v6.cnn.com.           1292    IN      AAAA    2620:100:e000:2000::1
v4v6.cnn.com.           1292    IN      AAAA    2620:100:e000:8000::1

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.yahoo.com.                 IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.yahoo.com.          28      IN      CNAME   fpfd.wa1.b.yahoo.com.
fpfd.wa1.b.yahoo.com.   60      IN      AAAA    2001:4998:f011:1fe::3000
fpfd.wa1.b.yahoo.com.   60      IN      AAAA    2001:4998:f011:1fe::3001

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.bing.com.                  IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.bing.com.           243     IN      CNAME   ipv6.search.ms.com.edgesuite.net.
ipv6.search.ms.com.edgesuite.net. 186 IN CNAME  a1877.dscb.akamai.net.
a1877.dscb.akamai.net.  20      IN      AAAA    2001:590:1:601::4516:96a9
a1877.dscb.akamai.net.  20      IN      AAAA    2001:590:1:601::4516:96c1

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.microsoft.com.             IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.microsoft.com.      1188    IN      CNAME   toggle.www.ms.akadns.net.
toggle.www.ms.akadns.net. 145   IN      CNAME   g.www.ms.akadns.net.
g.www.ms.akadns.net.    145     IN      CNAME   ipv6-selector.www.ms.akadns.net.
ipv6-selector.www.ms.akadns.net. 241 IN AAAA    2a01:111:200a:1::13
ipv6-selector.www.ms.akadns.net. 241 IN AAAA    2a01:111:200a:1::14
ipv6-selector.www.ms.akadns.net. 241 IN AAAA    2a01:111:200a:1::15

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.xbox.com.                  IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.xbox.com.           276     IN      CNAME   http://www.gtm.xbox.com.
http://www.gtm.xbox.com.       6       IN      CNAME   msxbwsd.vo.llnwd.net.
msxbwsd.vo.llnwd.net.   326     IN      AAAA    2607:f4e8:100:11:230:48ff:fe8a:603c
msxbwsd.vo.llnwd.net.   326     IN      AAAA    2607:f4e8:100:11:230:48ff:fe93:a164

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.mozilla.org.               IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.mozilla.org.        33      IN      CNAME   www-mozilla-org.geo.mozilla.com.
www-mozilla-org.geo.mozilla.com. 32 IN  CNAME   www-mozilla-org.glb.mozilla.net.
www-mozilla-org.glb.mozilla.net. 129 IN AAAA    2620:101:8001:5::2:4

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.bbc.co.uk.                 IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.bbc.co.uk.          158     IN      CNAME   http://www.bbc.net.uk.
http://www.bbc.net.uk.         300     IN      AAAA    2001:4b10:bbc::1

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;xkcd.com.                      IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
xkcd.com.               600     IN      AAAA    2001:48c8:1:d:0:23:5482:d026

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.freebsd.org.               IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.freebsd.org.        300     IN      CNAME   red.freebsd.org.
red.freebsd.org.        3600    IN      AAAA    2001:4f8:fff6::22

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;freebsd.org.                   IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
freebsd.org.            3600    IN      AAAA    2001:4f8:fff6::28

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.facebook.com.              IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.facebook.com.       18      IN      AAAA    2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:1

---

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.youtube.com.               IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
http://www.youtube.com.        23704   IN      CNAME   youtube-ui.l.google.com.
youtube-ui.l.google.com. 300    IN      AAAA    2001:4860:b006::5d


As far as I know, XKCD is still accessible via IPv6 as of 9:30PM.