Yesterday (June 6th) was World IPv6 launch day. For most of you, this probably won't mean anything unless you remember the days of managing port forwarding and all the headaches that entailed. If you do--well--those days will eventually be coming to a close as IPv6 rolls out (although you'll still have to configure the firewall on your router). Ideally, if your provider isn't terribly tight-fisted with their addresses (and there's no need to be with IPv6), you should have at least a few thousand assigned to your network. What this means: You'll eventually be able to have unique addresses assigned to all of your devices, none of which will be private, and all will be directly accessible. Well, depending on your router's firewall, of course.
In short, World IPv6 Launch Day is (err, was) the day when most major providers switched over to permanently enabling IPv6 access to their networks. You can test your connection for IPv6 access (most of you won't have this for a while) or have a brief look at the sorts of addresses you'll be seeing once IPv6 comes to your neighborhood below:
- Code: Select all
[gridlock:~]$ hosts=( google.com gmail.com facebook.com www.bing.com www.yahoo.com ); for host in $hosts ; do ping6 -n -c 1 $host ; echo "" ; done
PING google.com(2607:f8b0:4007:800::1008) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4007:800::1008: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=46.0 ms
--- google.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.072/46.072/46.072/0.000 ms
PING gmail.com(2607:f8b0:4007:800::1016) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2607:f8b0:4007:800::1016: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=46.2 ms
--- gmail.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.237/46.237/46.237/0.000 ms
PING facebook.com(2a03:2880:2110:3f01:face:b00c::) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a03:2880:2110:3f01:face:b00c::: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=110 ms
--- facebook.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 110.667/110.667/110.667/0.000 ms
PING www.bing.com(2001:590:1:300::451f:4d93) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2001:590:1:300::451f:4d93: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=108 ms
--- www.bing.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 108.408/108.408/108.408/0.000 ms
PING www.yahoo.com(2001:4998:f011:1fe::3000) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2001:4998:f011:1fe::3000: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=46.2 ms
--- www.yahoo.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.211/46.211/46.211/0.000 ms
Now, the thing that's going to suck for most of you is that you probably won't get IPv6 access until 2013 at the earliest unless your provider is forward-thinking. Very few of the big boys haven't rolled it out yet, so those of you on smaller providers might have an advantage here. However, there's one caveat: Your router might not support it either, and depending on the hardware, firmware updates aren't always sufficient either. If you have a 4-5+ year old router, it'd be a good idea to consider buying a new one soon--and check the box for IPv6. Josh just had his crap out a few months back and purchased a new one, and as far as I understand it, the box advertised IPv6 support. Generally speaking, if you buy a router that's supported by the DD-WRT replacement firmware, it'll probably support IPv6 out of the box (no, you don't need DD-WRT, but if the router has decent enough hardware to support DD-WRT, the manufacturer usually has added some support for it to the firmware).
Besides using this site, you can check your IPv6 address with the ipconfig tool (ipconfig /all from a command prompt) or similar (ifconfig/ip addr on *nix). Be aware that if you have an address that starts with 2001:0 (2001:0::/32 more specifically), you don't have a native IPv6 connection and are using the Teredo tunneling protocol instead. The same goes for anything starting with fe80 or "link local" addresses, typically used for router discovery.
Post here if you've got IPv6!
