DHCPv6, was: Re: IPv6 Finally gets off the ground

Mon Apr 16 23:21:20 UTC 2007

Thus spake "Jeroen Massar" <jeroen at unfix.org>
> Fred Heutte wrote:
> > I spent a couple hours in a hotel recently trying to untangle why
> > using the DSL system I could see the net but couldn't get to any
> > sites other than a few I tried at random like the BBC, Yahoo
> > and Google.
> >
> > That's because they are among the few that apparently have
> > IPv6 enabled web systems.
>
> They don't have "IPv6 enabled web systems", a lot of people
> wished that they did. What your problem most likely was, was
> a broken DNS server, which, when queried for an AAAA simply
> doesn't respond.

In fact, it's one particular vendor (whose name I haven't been able to 
discover) of pay-for-Internet transparent proxy/NAT devices, such as those 
commonly used in hotels and at hotspots, that's messing the whole thing up. 
They return an address of 0.0.0.1 in response to any DNS query from an 
IPv6-capable client, and they've decided to train their service providers' 
tech support departments to tell customers to turn off v6 rather than fix 
what should be a very simple bug.

(Granted that's a passable workaround for a few months while a vendor 
prepares a patch, but this issue has been around for _years_.)

> I know it is always fun to blame M$ but really it isn't true.

Agreed.  MS is sending a proper query, and every other DNS server on the 
face of the planet responds correctly.  There are a few random apps that 
still bomb when both ends have IPv6 and there's only a v4 path between them 
(though most have been fixed over the last few years), but the OS is working 
correctly.

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov 