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Re: IPv6 traffic distribution

2011-07-28 00:32:25
On Jul 27, 2011, at 11:12 PM, Michel Py wrote:

According to this:
http://www.pam2010.ethz.ch/papers/full-length/15.pdf
Slightly less than 50% of IPv6 traffic comes from a MacOS client (fig
3); about 90% MacOS hits is 6to4, which possibly means (to me) that this
piece of 6to4 MacOS software of yours represents a third of global IPv6
traffic.

Would you care to comment on the numbers?

p1.  Those numbers are badly outdated.

p2.  Hits originating from Mac OS X hosts with their 6to4 tunnels disabled 
probably account for much of that traffic when it was measured.  At that time, 
Apple's operating systems were the most commonly deployed implementations with 
IPv6 stacks enabled and running in the stock install.  That isn't true any more.

p3.  Recent measurements of hits originating from Mac OS X hosts on 6to4 
prefixed networks are dramatically smaller than when those measurements were 
taken, because Apple has updated Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 with significantly 
different behavior that will avoid using broken or underperforming 6to4 links.

p4.  Yes, older gear remains in the field, and some of it doesn't even have a 
software upgrade path.  That gear, no doubt, accounts for a substantial portion 
of admittedly not very large flows through public 6to4 relays at present.  I 
think the measurements we've all seen at the technical plenary show that 6to4 
is a small percentage of the total world IPv6 traffic now, which again is an 
embarrassingly small fraction of global Internet traffic.

p5.  We should all be mindful that we're talking about a very small, and as far 
as I can tell, a not very critical segment of anybody's user base.  Which, 
nevertheless, is still somehow to blame for holding up the global roll-out of 
IPv6 content.  (I'm not sure even the legendary Gnomes of Zürich could do that.)

What else is there to say?  Oh, I remember now.  Those of you 6to4-haters with 
Lion installed now.  Please open a Terminal.app window and type this command:

  $ sudo sysctl -w net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_accept_6to4=0

That will make the IPv6 stack treat all Prefix Information Options with 
2002::/16 prefixed addresses in them as if the A bit is always zero.  The 
system will not auto-configure any 6to4 addresses on any interfaces, even a stf 
interface.

Oh, you want that all the time?  Add a line to /etc/sysctl.conf.  Done.  No 
more 6to4 for you.  Anywhere.  Let me know if that changes anything noticeably 
to the better for you.  (On the plus side, it should spare you from suffering 
any indignity at the hands of a 6to4-PMT service.)


--
james woodyatt <jhw(_at_)apple(_dot_)com>
member of technical staff, core os networking



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