IPv6

[justpassing]

Hi,

I always try to use the latest technologies even before they become standard. However, there is something I kept delaying, this is support for IPv6. My host and severs, are IPv6 ready, but not my sites. So it's something I need to look more seriously now.

My first question is, is there real visitors (humans + robots) which are IPv6 only? And if so, it means that they can't access my site, isn't it?

Sorry if it sounds silly, but this is something I already tried to avoid working at :)

Regards,

[lammert]

My websites have been both IPv4 and IPv6 for some years now. As far as I know there are not many good guys IPv6 only, but some bad bots/hackers specifically target IPv6 because firewall configurations for dual protocol sites are often less sophisticated for the IPv6 part than for IPv4.

Also special features like DDOS protection, DNS IP fail-over etc is often only offered for IPv4.

[lucy24]

is there real visitors (humans + robots) which are IPv6 only?

If there aren’t already, there will be very soon, as RIPE's last remaining IPv4 space is all but gone. If your visitors are primarily from Africa and Latin America, you can sit back for another few decades.

[iamlost]

The numbers/percentages have been rising with increasing rapidity the past couple of years. That said the following is the Akamai percentage of web connections that is IPv6 by country; note that Google's current numbers broadly tend to be ~10% lower - make of that what you will.
* over 50%: India.
* over 40%: USA, Belgium.
* over 30%: Malaysia, Greece, Germany.
* over 20%: France, Estonia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Canada, UK, Luxembourg, Finland, Switzerland, Uruguay, Japan, Brazil.

I haven't seen a breakout of human or bot - as with much else I suspect it varies widely. IMO the greatest uptake is in IoT devices and distributed data although newer routers are dual IPv4/6.

IMO it isn't yet critical for many/most sites to be able to handle IPv6 it is currently critical to understand and test how each and all your systems handle it. Because the velocity of uptake has been increasing substantially the past couple years I expect criticality for webdevs knowledge/understanding to be one to two years out. Or now, if you want to forego last minute panic. :)

[lammert]

Many of those IPv6 connections are in fact from dual stack clients. My laptop is dual stack running Windows 7 and it always tries to connect IPv6 first, and switches back to IPv4 when IPv6 is not available. 50% connections over IPv6 in India is therefore different from 50% IPv6 only clients. Even clients which are IPv6 only can often connect seamlessly to IPv4 services through IPv6/IPv4 bridges at the ISP level.

[lucy24]

Does that “over 50% India” figure refer to direct internet connections from desktop computers--which has got to be a very small percentage of India’s total internet access--or to data connections processed through cell phone carriers?

:: wandering off to study aggregated logs ::

[keyplyr]

The problem is, the two protocols are not designed to be interoperable, complicating the transition to IPv6.

However, several IPv6 transition mechanisms [en.m.wikipedia.org] have been devised to permit communication between IPv4 and IPv6 hosts.

Most all shared hosting companies that offer IPv6 employ transition mechanisms. If managing a dedicated server, these should be installed prior to flipping the switch to IPv6.

There's nothing you need to do at the document (webpage) level. This is between the requesting agent and the server. DNS, if handled at a 3rd party, may also need to be updated for your domain name to be pointed at the new IP address.

[justpassing]

Thanks all for your comments.

A second question, if a "site" which is IPv6 "only" (the DNS resolve to an IPv6 only, without IPv4 at all). Does it mean that only visitors with IPv6 can access it, or does ISP also have some kind of translation bridge for this too ?

[keyplyr]

justpassing - the ISP just picks up a cache from the DNS about every 72 hours and resolves domain requests to those associated IP addresses; whether IPv4 or IPv6 is irrelevant.

Major browsers and many (most?) newer agents & bots can access an IPv6 address.

However, for a smooth transition, you should consider installing one of the many transition mechanisms available for your server.

One issue may be if you use any external HTTP connections to IPv4 hosts. Another *could* be from backlinks that don't resolve, or older link checkers if you have and existing IPv4 site transitioning to IPv6.