Connectivity to an IPv6-only site

Steve Bertrand steve at ibctech.ca
Fri Apr 23 08:26:41 UTC 2010


On 2010.04.23 03:35, Larry Sheldon wrote:

>>From my PC at home (Cox in Omaha) I can't even get a nameserver that
> knows the site.

Larry... let me explain why. Although you might not understand, others
will, and you may remember this as something when you do use IPv6.

Believe me, nobody can remember everything, and what I'm trying to
achieve here is isolating easy-to-document issues.

It may be above your head at this time, but my objective is to find out
the rough edges, that net ops will be able to identify quickly when
problems arise... much like looking for reckless filtering of ICMP on an
IPv6 network.

Why you can't get a name server... because this is how the domain is
configured:

- in WHOIS, I have ns1 and ns2.onlyv6.com listed as the authoritative
name servers

- both of these servers *only* have IPv6 addresses

- the domain registry translates my authoritative name server names into
IPv6 addresses, so:

   Domain servers in listed order:
      NS1.ONLYV6.COM
      NS2.ONLYV6.COM

- effectively is:

ns1.onlyv6.com.         172602  IN      AAAA    2607:f118:8c0:800::64
ns2.onlyv6.com.         172591  IN      AAAA    2001:470:b086:1::53

- there is absolutely no way that these servers can be contacted over
v4. There is no v4 A record available...anywhere.

There are two obvious causes of why you can't see me:

- you (your ISP) is not v6 enabled
- the DNS box that you use for recursion is not properly v6 connected

There is a middle ground that I've seen that I believe is as scary as
not having IPv6 at all. I've been in environments where an ISP is
claiming to be v6 enabled, but only have it geared up toward their
clients and to the Internet. Their DNS servers (and other services) are
not v6 enabled, so the access clients run into a situation eerily
similar to one that I'm trying to document.

This is a personal research project, in which I want to learn about the
health of connectivity, and about other situations that causes breakage
that I haven't considered before.

I'd be absolutely pleased to provide IPv6 learning resources, and
discuss this further with you off list.

Steve




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