20 Mar

IPv6 only segments not really working (mostly)

I’ve been playing a little with IPv6 when I was preparing WLAN infrastructure for PLNOG 6 conference in Warsaw last week. Here are few discoveries:
1) Most operating systems (including latest Windows and MacOS X) does not like when network is IPv6-only. All of the systems reported limited network access, even tho they had Internet access via IPv6 network.
2) Most operating system were having problems acquiring DNS server information via DHCPv6. MacOS X does not support DHCPv6 at all, Windows, especially when additional antivirus or firewall software were present, wouldn’t work with DHCPv6 either.
3) We really need statefull NAT64 on routers. On ASR1000 stateless NAT64 is available, but it does not solve lack of IPv4 addresses problem. Statefull NAT64 is expected in Q2 or Q3 this year. NAT-PT on ISR routers is not really a solution because you have to disable CEF for IPv6 to make it work.

One thought on “IPv6 only segments not really working (mostly)

  1. Was this Win7 SP1? I found that 6-only was very unreliable on Win7 but things improved markedly after the update to SP1. As for Mac OS X: Single-stack IPv6 has been almost entirely unusable since 10.6.0: http://openradar.appspot.com/7333104 http://lists.apple.com/archives/ipv6-dev/2009/Sep/msg00007.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/ipv6-dev/2010/Feb/msg00003.html Apple staff and supporters seem to be rather peculiar about this issue. The usual progression is "There is no such bug!" "This bug isn't really a bug even if it breaks almost everything." "What kind of doofus would want to use single-stack IPv6 anyway...NAT6-who?" "Hey! Look over there, isn't that Paris Hilton?" *footsteps recede into the distance* *door slams*

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