IPv6 Hour at NANOG

I’m attending NANOG in San Jose this week (and in fact am listening to a panel discussion on 100G Ethernet as I’m writing this).

During the last NANOG in October, there was a heavy emphasis on practical IPv6 implementation experience. For this NANOG, they’re starting an interesting experiment: Throughout the event, we have a choice between a dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 wireless LAN and an IPv6-only wireless LAN. This second LAN connects to the wider IPv4 world through a protocol translator (NAT-PT).

So anytime during the conference, we can connect to the IPv6-only LAN, disable IPv4 on our computers, and see how things go. I’ve had IPv4 turned off on my MAC throughout most of the conference and find that web browsing and e-mail work just fine – in fact when I post this article to the Network World page in a few minutes, it will be from the IPv6 LAN.

The only hitch for me – and it’s one of the few, longtime complaints I’ve had about MAC OS X – is that the OS doesn’t support DHCPv6. So the IPv6 addresses of the DNS servers must be manually entered. From what I’ve read, there appear to be no plans to add DHCPv6 in the near future. Disappointing.

Anyway, later today we will have an “IPv6 hour” during which the IPv4 LAN will be turned off and all attendees will connect to the IPv6-only LAN. Experiences will be shared and noted, and reported on tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.