Ipv6 for the content provider

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Wed Jan 26 18:46:31 UTC 2011


> 
> Do I just need to assign ip addresses to my servers, add AAAA records to
> my DNS server and that's it? I'm running PowerDNS for DNS, Apache for
> WWW. Postfix for SMTP.
> 
It might be that simple, it might not. Depends on your application.

For the DNS and Mail, it should be pretty much that simple. I don't know
about the state of Postfix (don't use it), but, sendmail has been IPv6
ready for years and I'm running with it no problem.

As to the web, Apache is fully IPv6 ready and that's easy. It will
take IPv6 addresses in all the same places you would configure
IPv4 addresses. You do need to enclose the address portion
in brackets with the port number outside the brackets.

e.g.: 2620:0:930::400:7 on port 80 = [2620:0:930::400:7]:80

Other considerations that may be important:

	1.	Load balancers
	2.	Log parsers
	3.	UI stuff that accepts or reports IP addresses
			Application
			Site Administration
			CMS
	4.	Databases that contain IP address(es)
	5.	Other tools, files, etc. that may interact with IP addresses

All of those things will need additional attention as you add IPv6
capabilities to your site. Some sites have to worry about all 5.
Some sites don't have to worry about any of these things.

I was able to do all the web sites I host at home just by adding
the appropriate Apache configs and putting in the AAAA
records next to the A records. Took me about an hour for a
couple dozen sites.

I've received exactly zero user complaints since the IPv6
implementation.

More complex environments may take considerably more effort.

Owen





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