IPv6 vs IPv4 (Re: Sprint NOC? Are you awake now?)

Tue Sep 2 22:48:03 UTC 2003

Nenad Pudar wrote:

> Again my point is that your site (or any other that use the same dns for 
> ipv4 and 6) may be "blackholed" by ipv6 (it is not the question primary 
> about the quality ipv6 connction it is the fact that your ipv4 
> connection which may be excelant is blackholed with your ipv6 connection 
> which may not be good and to me the most obvious solution is not to use 
> the same dns name for both) for the people coming through 6bone or even 
> for the majority of people   not peering with Verio.
> 
It's a valid point, except that IPv4 could just as easily have had a 
problem. Network connectivity issues happen. Whether one uses IPv4 or 
IPv6 in the connection is not decided by the server, but by the client. 
If an IPv6 path is really bad, the client should switch to an IPv4 path 
and vice versa. If the software in use by the client does not make this 
easy, it is not the fault of the server.

Perhaps a better solution than different DNS names for IP versions 
should be better client abilities. Is it unreasonable for the client 
system to detect that the IPv6 path seems unreasonable and quickly check 
to see if there is a better IPv4 path? Or perhaps the software utilizing 
the IP stack should allow the user to specify which method they'd like 
to utilize at that moment in time (ie, web-browser; view site with 
IPv4|IPv6).

This would solve the problem you are indicating and not overcomplicate 
the server side which is working fine. People don't want to learn to 
type www.ipv6.example.com and www.ipv4.example.com. It makes much more 
sense to just change the software to choose which method it wants. Not 
that software vendors would incorporate such features.

-Jack

> This the trace from 6 bone looking glass
> 
> traceroute6 to 2001:418:3f4:0:2a0:24ff:fe83:53d8 
> (2001:418:3f4:0:2a0:24ff:fe83:53d8) from 2001:6b8::204, 30 hops max, 12 
> byte packets
> 1  6bone-gw4  0.749 ms  0.537 ms  0.506 ms
> 2  gw1-bk1  1.103 ms  1.101 ms  1.046 ms
> 3  tu-16.r00.plalca01.us.b6.verio.net  186.424 ms  186.129 ms  187.344 ms
> 4  tu-800.r00.asbnva01.us.b6.verio.net  246.76 ms  246.798 ms  246.759 ms
> 5  t2914.nnn-7202.nether.net  458.76 ms  446.925 ms  496.061 ms
> 6  2001:418:3f4:0:2a0:24ff:fe83:53d8  450.172 ms  477.296 ms  453.895 ms
> 