IPv6 deployment

IPv6 is a new version of the Internet protocol with a greatly enlarged address space. Deployment of IPv6 on the public Internet is ongoing.

The success of IPv6 is important for the preservation of the any-to-any internet, a technical characteristic of the Internet which is important to Wikimedia's mission and other decentralized or peer-to-peer information services.

For Wikimedia IPv6 deployment is relatively straight-forward as the majority of the software infrastructure already has solid IPv6 support, but a fairly large number of small technical details must be resolved before full IPv6 support can be realized.

Current IPv6 Deployment status

IPv6 network status at Wikimedia

• The Kennisnet cluster has rich IPv6 connectivity with over 80 IPv6 peers.
• The Tampa cluster has basic IPv6 connectivity via a tunnel at an upstream provider. As of June 2008 there are near term plans to improve this.
• There is no IPv6 connectivity for Wikimedia at the Yahoo cluster currently.

IPv6 production testing at Wikimedia

• Ongoing testing for clients with broken IPv6 support using client side scripting on English Wikipedia.

Fully IPv6 enabled services at Wikimedia

• lists.wikimedia.org (as well as the Wikimedia MXes)
• download.wikimedia.org
• svn.wikimedia.org
• bugzilla.wikimedia.org
• toolserver.org

Known outstanding technical issues

• Interaction of broken dual-stack clients and AAAA records.
• Squid IPv6 client support. (Avoidable by simply using another proxy in front of squid for v6)
• Mediawiki user blocking support.

Useful IPv6 enhancements

• Wikimedia should run local 6to4 and Teredo gateways to avoid the use of third party gateways which are occasionally unreliable, at least for the larger outbound direction. Mark has done some testing/evaluation for running a 6to4 gateway.