FreeBSD, IPv6 and World IPv6 Day

[Bjoern A. Zeeb]

On Jun 7, 2011, at 6:06 PM, Bjoern A. Zeeb wrote:

Hi everyone,

> a couple of us are hanging out on EFNet in #freebsd-w6d for the next 30 hours or so (as we are awake;).  The main idea is to share experience of FreeBSD and IPv6 during World IPv6 Day and to try to help people in case of immediate problems. We'll also try to closely monitor this freebsd-net mailing list in case you'll post here.

first of all thank you to those replied and contacted us or me in private.
Thanks to everyone who was around on IRC and made the "uneventful" event
more interesting.

Given some feedback I have read  I want to start pointing out that IPv6 in
FreeBSD is not single person effort.  There are other developers working on
IPv6 as well, people running the clusters and services who helped, people
providing review, Kris Moore doing PC-BSD snapshot builds for the v6only
project, the Foundation (you can always consider a donation to them to
support FreeBSD) and ixSystems supporting it.  So if you thank me, do not
forget to thank all of them as well.  Last but not least, it's you, the users
and consumers of what we develop and your feedback helping to improve IPv6
in FreeBSD.   A thank you to everyone from me!


World IPv6 Day and FreeBSD
--------------------------

The day went very smooth and quiet.  We had a couple of questions, that
I spotted:

1) pf and frag6 support - we don't have it, it's unclear to me how much
   OpenBSD in their latest version really has.  It's on the list.

2) ipfw and frag6 support - need to get the changes from the PR in to
   unbreak some cases biting users.  Had two requests about that.

3) how to configure and use RFC 4941 privacy extensions with SLAAC on
   FreeBSD and a general conclusion that the Handbook section needs an
   update.  Patches or just text is always welcome.

4) I had a private question on v4-mapped addresses and traceroute (as
   in on the wire), which FreeBSD drops in ip6_input().  See
   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-itojun-v6ops-v4mapped-harmful-02
   for more information on why.

We had a single report of a real problem on IRC, a panic on 7.4, which
we couldn't get enough debugging information from unfortunately  (if you
read this, please drop me a private email).

I've have generated some (uneventful) graphs of v6 and v4 vs. v6 hits per
minute on www.freebsd.org, which you can find here:
    http://www.freebsd.org/ipv6/w6d-www-stats.html
You can possibly spot when Europe, US East and US West woke up, if looking
carefully;)

Otherwise the day, as I was told, was more "business as usual" for most.

If you have any other feedback or comments, let us know.  The IRC
channel is still alive, though mostly chatty (on v6 related things still).


"FreeBSD is initiating IPv6-only validation work"  (Cameron Byrne on nanog)
-------------------------------------------------

As much as I could find out, we already had a number of downloads of the
IPv6only snapshots, though I'd have hoped that more of them would actually
be over IPv6;)

If you are a developer or just curious, if you are doing QA on network
related thing or if you are building a v6 product, I'd like to encourage
you to try them (or build a v6only kernel yourself and validate).

Thanks to Sato-san we now also mirror them in Asia/Japan in addition to
America/California and Europe/Germany.

If you want to try a desktop variant, PC-BSD is also providing IPv6-only
snapshots in CA.US (and mirrored in DE) and I know people have been
downloading those as well and I got some feedback here already.

For FreeBSD you can find more information (how to build your own kernel,
how to netinstall, ..) at:
     http://www.freebsd.org/ipv6/ipv6only.html
 and http://wiki.freebsd.org/IPv6Only

PC-BSD has download links and information at:
     http://www.pcbsd.org/IPv6
 and http://blog.pcbsd.org/2011/06/ipv6-only-version-of-pc-bsd-9-0-available-for-world-ipv6-day/


I am planning to provide further IPv6-only snapshots (at least for FreeBSD)
and we'll keep you updated on that.  You may want to check

     http://www.freebsd.org/ipv6/

once in a while for updates.

In any case please let us know about how things went for you.  We want to
hear any good or bad feedback - either in public or drop me a private email.
If you have further ideas on how to extend this project in the future I
am also curious to learn about that.

Thanks again and have a pleasant IPv6 experience!

Bjoern

-- 
Bjoern A. Zeeb                                 You have to have visions!
         Stop bit received. Insert coin for new address family.