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 Amsterdam cluster has rich IPv6 connectivity with over 100 IPv6 peers, and 5 IPv6 transit links.
• The Tampa cluster now has IPv6 connectivity via 2 transit connections as well.

IPv6 production testing at Wikimedia

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

Fully IPv6 enabled services at Wikimedia

• lists.wikimedia.org (as well as the Wikimedia MXes). SSL does not work, however (bugzilla:22028)
• download.wikimedia.org
• svn.wikimedia.org
• bugzilla.wikimedia.org
• toolserver.org

IPv6 services for white-listed resolvers

Those services are reachable via participating networks, like SixXS

• upload.wikimedia.org

Known outstanding technical issues

• Interaction of broken dual-stack clients and AAAA records.
• Squid 2 IPv6 client support. (Avoidable by simply using another proxy in front of squid for v6) Squid 3.1 has full IPv6 support, however.
• 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.