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The Internet Software Linux

Deep Space 6 Publishes New IPv6 Status Pages 95

Mauro Tortonesi writes "The Deep Space 6 initiative publishes the first of the new IPv6 Status Pages: Current Status of IPv6 Support for Networking Applications. The IPv6 Status Pages are a survey of the current status of IPv6 support for the Linux networking stack, system libraries and networking applications. At the moment there is only one page concerning the IPv6 support of Linux networking applications, but we are planning to publish more pages soon and to extend our target to other important UNIX-derived OSes (e.g. *BSD) too."
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Deep Space 6 Publishes New IPv6 Status Pages

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  • Useful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dimmu ( 214039 ) * on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:41PM (#6373293) Homepage Journal
    It's a pretty useful list for UNIX users, however I don't see any Windows program that actually is doing IPv6 (for example Putty). It would be nice to also have such a list as I personally see IPv6 Win32 applications as the real breaktrough for IPv6.
    • putty (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gavin Rogers ( 301715 ) <grogers@vk6hgr.echidna.id.au> on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:51PM (#6373337) Homepage
      There is an IPv6 capable putty client available at unfix.org [unfix.org].

      It works well but it doesn't seem to like connecting to '4 hosts. (yet...) I renamed the IPv6 version to putty6.exe to get around that problem :-)

      • Re:putty (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DMDx86 ( 17373 ) on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:57PM (#6373358) Journal
        geez, as soon as I try to visit that website, I get return port scans from them. How nice (NOT)!
        • Thank some nice person posting pornographic and other disturbing pictures to the Smoelenboek part of the site.

          The results are cached for some time.

          By the way if you really 'hate' it, then you shouldn't connect to port 80 of that box.
          You connect to mine, I connect to yours.
          • no don't worry, I've iptables'd you out
      • Re:putty (Score:3, Informative)

        by fuzzel ( 18438 )
        Psst... that's my oops;

        If you have a host which only has a A record it will still try to connect to it as being an IPv6 address. You can avoid this problem by selecting the IPv4 protocol from the "Connection" tab in the Options/Settings menu.

        Then it does work. As I've been pre-occupied by some better thing in live, which unfortunatly suddenly ended, I didn't have any time to fix it but expect a fixed version this month.

        I'll quite prolly get forced to fix it at Megabit [megabit.nl] (July 21st-27th, Ede in .nl) by a cr
    • Re:Useful (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is Slashdot; Windows doesn't matter, you fool!
    • Speaking of Windows IPv6 programs...

      Does anyone know why Mozilla under Linux (etc) systems supports IPv6 but Mozilla under Windows doesn't?

      I'm really torn having to use Internet Explorer to visit IPv6 websites on my Windows computer :-)

      • I know it's not a great solution, but I use an ipv6-enabled squid proxy when browsing with mozilla.

      • Something to do with Winsock2's broken implementation of 4-to-6 addressing. If you search the Mozilla dev list, you'll find the explaination. It's the OS's fault, in other words.

        "Mozilla supports IPv6 on FreeBSD and Linux, but not for Windows. This is apparently because Windows XP doesn't support IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses"

        Google for "mozilla ipv6 support windows" and you'll find a PPT which you can "view as HTML" to see what I'm quoting from.

    • Why? In the great scheme of the internet Windows is an irrelevance. There needs to be support in serious server platforms _now_ to ensure that hardware deployed today will be able to talk IPv6 in 5-10 years time. The client platforms (windows etc) probably don't need to roll over to IP6 for another 2-3 years, as very little consumer equipment (or even Windows servers) will still be around in a recognisable configuration by then.
      • If there is no support on the Windows (Client) platform most manufacturers of non-standardized software will not modify there software to support IPv6 (i'm think kazaa, msn, etc). One of the benefits I see in Windows XP (besides all the cons) is that they have a working IPv6 stack inside (not enabled by default however). This approach by Microsoft will be eventually good for the IPv6 community as it will make it easier for software producers to test there application in an IPv6 enviroment. Remember that ser
  • by Gavin Rogers ( 301715 ) <grogers@vk6hgr.echidna.id.au> on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:43PM (#6373304) Homepage
    It's great to see that a list is being kept of the programs that are IPv6 capable... that run under Unix systems.

    Any such lists for programs that run under other IPv6 operating systems? Like Windows? (yes, it has IPv6 support!)

    Any other mainstream OSes have IPv6 support? (MacOS?)

    • Mac OS X has also IPv6 support, but however it's UNIX derived. I'm not sure about older Mac OS versions but I think they lack IPv6 support.
    • Windows programs use the Winsock API for network access. This means that since Winsock is IPV6 enabled, all the Windows applications are also IPV6 enabled. The only issues are going to be things like apps that require an IPV4 address be entered into a four octet field. Obviously an IPV6 address will not fit in such a field but the app could still work, depoending on what it does with the address. If the app relies in a DNS name in the field rather than the actual four octets, the it will work seemlessly thr
      • Re:Winsock (Score:2, Informative)

        by dimmu ( 214039 ) *
        That would not be entirely true. Internet Explorer for example won't work this way. It also needs an update of the inetinfo.dll to work correctly. And if I remember correctly (this was years ago) the structures for WinSock do specific length things concerning IP addresses. The Windows 2000 IPv6 Beta patch does not only patch the winsock libraries but also all sorts of programs including inetinfo.dll.

        The Trumpet Winsock IPv6 implementation (for 9x) does some kind of proxying for IPv6 which enables almost a
        • Re:Winsock (Score:3, Informative)

          by CoolVibe ( 11466 )
          There's another niggle.

          Since the Winsock emulates the BSD calling interface (with some WSA_* handwaving in advance), the problem is apps using ipv4-only functions like gethostbyname, gethostbyaddr and using PF_INET. The solution is having the apps use getaddrinfo and PF_UNSPEC and let the resolver figure out itself what is best.

          Using the addrinfo structures to hold resolver data breeds apps that can do both ipv4 _and_ ipv6. As far as I know, winsock groks the addrinfo stuff. People just need to use it.

    • by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@ p h roggy.com> on Saturday July 05, 2003 @04:44PM (#6373565) Homepage
      Any other mainstream OSes have IPv6 support? (MacOS?)

      Mac OS X currently has IPv6 support un the underlying OS (Darwin), but there's no GUI front-end for it. That should be coming in 10.3 this September. I don't expect to see support for classic Mac OS. Actually I'd say that'd be about as likely as support for IPv6 in Windows 95/98/ME: might be possible with third-party hacks, but Microsoft won't do it.

      • Mac OS X currently has IPv6 support un the underlying OS (Darwin), but there's no GUI front-end for it. That should be coming in 10.3 this September.

        Indeed, a GUI is there in the build released at WWDC. Maybe you know that and that's what you were implying, but I'll come right out and say it.
  • by Mas3 ( 620769 ) on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:47PM (#6373318) Homepage
    Oh Boy! don't Mix up your IP with you GPG-Sig :)

    --
    Stefan

    DevCounter [berlios.de] - An open, free & independent developer pool
    created to help developers find other developers, help, testers and new project members.
  • by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:49PM (#6373328)
    at this point in time IPv6 is not useful for anything other than reverse DNS for those people that aren't allowed to have reverse DNS (cable modem dynamic, etc).

    No one has ipv6 that doesn't have ipv4 servers, there are few (if any) residential networking hardware manu's that distribute IPv6 enabled devices (for good reason, ipv6 will eliminate the need for NAT).

    Win2k/XP is a PAIN IN THE ASS to setup for ipv6, I didn't even bother (I use it on the Linux side for reverse DNS on IRC) but the documentation available is near nothing for XP.

    Someday it might come around and be useful, as of now, no.
  • by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot&spamgoeshere,calum,org> on Saturday July 05, 2003 @03:50PM (#6373333) Homepage
    Slashdot - put your money where your mouth is, and implement IPv6 here. Run 6 over 4 if you don't want to get native IPv6 connectivity.

    The same goes for all site owners here.

  • This will speed up the takeover of decimal by hexadecimal. Disagree? Tell me in a web page--using your favorite color (ha ha).
  • Apache 1.3 & Opera (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Saturday July 05, 2003 @04:14PM (#6373430)
    Apache 1.3 & Opera are the only ones listed that do not cuurently support IPV6 adequately. So what?!? This will be an issue when, 2010???? IPV6 is still far from wide spread implementation. When the time comes Opera will be updated with the necessary support. As for Apache. Well, hopefully by 2010 everyone will have stepped up to 2.x or maybe even 3.x.

    It is possible to roll out IPV6 right now, the infrastructure and applications are all "capable". But it will require a great deal of effort and there is NO motivating factor, right now, to make everyone put forth the effort.

    When the time comes that everyone HAS to implement IPV6 for some reason, they will. For now, the reason still isn't there and almost no one will.
  • When I try to connect to that site with Mozilla, I get an empty page back and their server is making connections back to the web server on my LAN.
  • Matrix reloaded. When Trinity typed:
    ssh 10.0.0.2
    I realised that IPv6 is doomed.
    • But she was inside the Matrix, the emulated 20th century. You know when IPv6 wasn't at it's peak moment.
    • Ah, but if you remember that The Matrix is a computer simulation of "the height of your time", ie 1999 - 2001 approximately, then it is not necessarily doomed.

      Plus it was undoubtedly easier for the machines to program a neural simulation that contained IPv4. ;)
    • by iiioxx ( 610652 ) <iiioxx@gmail.com> on Saturday July 05, 2003 @04:52PM (#6373594)
      Matrix reloaded. When Trinity typed:
      ssh 10.0.0.2
      I realised that IPv6 is doomed.


      What's more, she did ssh -l root 10.0.0.2 and used *password* authentication. "The Architect" doesn't know shit about security. Allowing root access and not using public key authentication?? It's no wonder the Matrix keeps getting hacked. Forget about Agents, let's install a Kerberos realm and implement IPSec before "The Boss" fires "The Architect", "The Oracle" (btw, is she the DBA?), and the rest of the IT staff ("The Helpdesk")...
  • With a name like Deep Space 6, they should really be using Cisco routers...

    graspee

  • by dmeranda ( 120061 ) on Saturday July 05, 2003 @04:43PM (#6373556) Homepage

    As a software programmer who has written IPv6 enabled applications what I'd really like to see is a similar report of the kernel support for IPv6 in addition to common applications, and for multiple operating systems.

    For instance I took advantage of the superior multicasting capability of IPv6, but when porting to different Unixes I found varying level of support. Some just didn't do it, while others were missing some important APIs which made it easier. And some just have messed up C header files rather than faulting the kernel. IPv6 is supposed to have a whole new set of APIs which allow your application to do things like enumerate the various network adapters (important to know when multicasting). Name resolution is also done differently, and with more sane APIs.

    The IETF IPv6 Working Group [ietf.org] has been busy developing a lot of standards, and for the developer the two most important are RFC2553 [ietf.org] for the basic sockets API, and RFC3542 [ietf.org] for advanced sockets API. But many Unix vendors aren't up to the latest standard and still implement the older RFC's 2133 and 2292 respectively.

    Oh, and on the applications side, many network administrative tools are missing from their list. What about netfilter (aka, iptables and iptables6), or tcpdump, nc, ping/ping6, or X Window? Also what about language support for those languages which have "super" libraries. Python's support for IPv6 is getting pretty strong, but I've found Java's support to be superficial (it only exposes say 10% of IPv6 functionality). Not to complain too much though, this as list is the most complete I've seen so far.

    • This is the problem being an early adopter. The mainstream won't see the point of throwing many resources at IPv6 until they are using it. You most likely won't have good support for IPv6 until a few years after the mainstream really starts to adopt it. Do any ISPs for home users even support IPv6 in any way? Do many businesses use IPv6 at all? Until the answer is yes, most developers / system administrators / & etc won't care much about IPv6.

      Writing programs which use IPv6 is good, but don't expect i

  • by Xeth ( 614132 )
    I figured IPV6 was more like Deep Space Nine, neither one's going anywhere...
  • if you've got images turned off (or use links, lynx or w3m) the 'IPv6 Status Page' linked in the post is not going to make much sense.

    Classic webmasturbator move, from folks who otherwise seem very together.

    And all it needs is an alt attribute in the <img> tags.

  • The fact that IPv6 support is still seen as optional may be part of the problem, the other part is that you can't actually send an IPv6 packet anywhere except by faking it over IPv4.

    Porting an application to full IPv6 support shouldn't take more then a few hours, unless you were doing multicast in which case maybe a long day.

    Then converting the backbone, and all the hardware, and all the ISP's, and all the DSL/cable modems, and all the operating systems... Yea right, THAT is gonna happen.

    IPv6 is great fo
  • by molo ( 94384 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:07AM (#6375338) Journal
    Debian is assessing *ALL* of its packages for IPv6 support. This is a huge task.

    See this page for details:

    http://debian.fabbione.net/stat/ [fabbione.net]

    If you want to go right to the package status/statistics, go here:

    http://debdev.fabbione.net/cgi-bin/getstats [fabbione.net]

    -molo
  • I am working in the network (Siegmund, why did I just type "notwork"? Any other psychologist here who can enlighten me on this?) department of a company, which very much relies on its international network. And I would be very happy, if I could advise my CIO to make an IPv6-Rollout on our network. But I can't.

    This list is showing us, that there are a lot of open source applications already supporting IPv6. Fine, that means I can do test installations in a lab. But in normal business there will be many year
  • imho it was extremely stupid to not embed the ipv4 into the ipv6 address space.

    the way ipv6 was designed it requires _simultaneous_ upgrades on both ends, which is very unlikely to happen.

    if ipv4 was simply part of the ipv6 address space and namespace, one could use an ipv6 client to connect to "legacy" (non-ipv6) hosts, without all the quirkiness and error-proneness of bolted-on ipv4.

    what's now happening is that servers are supposed to get upgraded first. guess what, it doesnt happen. now if microsoft m
    • In IPv6 one can use the following address syntax to communicate with IPv4 hosts: ::ffff:192.168.1.2

      Note that some application somewhere, probably an ALG will need to translate that IPv6 packet into an IPv4 packet though as the IPv4 only host doesn't know how to deal with IPv6. Yup that is somewhat a NAT or more a proxy.

      The IPv6-only host will simply have a route to the IPv4 address space with the NAT/proxy/ALG translating it.

      The transition path between IPv4 and IPv6 will take a lot of time because there

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