Mac OS X Problem Puts Up a Block To IPv6

An anonymous reader lets us know of an experiment conducted in Norway to determine real-world problems in using IPv6 today (Google translation; Norwegian original). "According to a Norwegian article in digi.no, Redpill Linpro did an experiment with regard to IPv6 on one of the largest online newspapers there (www.vg.no). They added a hidden iframe that pointed to an IPv6-enabled domain to test real-life problems about the reported IPv6 holes. The result was that mainly Mac OS X, older versions of Opera, and a few Linux distributions exhibited problems. For Mac OS X it took 75 seconds to time out before failing back to IPv4." From the consultant's report: "Mac OS X has a problem in that it will prefer 6to4-based IPv6 over IPv4-based connectivity, at least if its local IPv4 address is an RFC 1918-based private address as commonly found in NAT-ed home network environments. This is unfortunate, as 6to4 has shown itself to be much less reliable than IPv4."

IPv6 resolution with NTP

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a bug in NTP on 10.6 that causes it to not fall back on IPv4 resolution if it can resolve over IPv6, even if IPv6 is disabled on the machine. So while not an IPv6 hurdle, it is a bug in IPv6 implementation.

RADAR bug is: 6736177

Re:Not so simple

[klapaucjusz]

This presents a reason to avoid IPv6 entirely until it's fixed.

No. It's a reason to avoid (host-based) 6to4, which is too unreliable to be useful.

Re:Not so simple

[XanC]

No. If I'm hosting a Web site, for example, this is a reason to avoid IPv6 entirely, since I can't expect all my n00b users to turn off 6to4 on their Macs.

Problems with connecting to flash media server

[NoSleepDemon]

I ran into this problem a few months ago when trying to connect to a flash media server owned by a client - the media player running on the Mac would take over a minute to connect, and would fail at least once. The client insisted it was a bug in my code (I was the third programmer to be assigned the project after 2 others bailed), but my colleague and I uncovered similar horror stories with Mac OS 10.5, after my version of the player indicated a problem with the connection attempt timing out. The first two programmers couldn't prove this because their error trapping was non existent, so their players simply looked like they were crashing. Ah the joys of cross platform development!

Re:Help me understand this.

[ceoyoyo]

The problem is, no website is going to ONLY serve over IPv6, so there's no incentive for ISPs to support it. The incentive HAS to come from something new. That can either be new websites (or ISP subscribers) that can't get an IPv4 address, in which case we have a crisis, or some new client-side application that people would like to use.

A nice regulation requiring that ISPs serve unique IP addresses to any subscriber device that asks for one would get them to switch to IPv6 in a hurry, and we'd all have easy remote access to all our machines.

Re:Chicago

[dr. chuck bunsen]

Nope, no iPhone here, Android. And even then I think that WebOS has the best mobile interface by far, just shitty hardware and no community. But I did leave my Linux desktop collecting dust ever since the OS X public beta disc arrived in my mailbox. But please, bash Apple all you want. The more they start to slowly ignore OS X in favor of fucking around with these silly mobile distractions, the less I like them. In fact, I was never what you would consider a fanboy, no iPod, iPhone, iAnything...I simply recognized the beauty of their nix offering and made the switch on merit alone. I did get excited when they released the Xserve line and the Xserve RAID. Had they followed through with that opportunity I feel like it could have been huge, but they ignored it, and it was never more than poop in a box. Of course, they had a huge obstacle trying to build a better server OS than Linux, as the GUI means nothing in that world. They probably recognized they couldn't win the server market with a bad ass GUI, and left it at that. Anyway, to be on topic, this isn't exactly news. It's already been documented, and can easily be fixed, and will work properly in a future update out of the box. I mean fuck, really? It's 2010, does the fucktards really think they are the first ones to do this, and that they've uncovered some major fuck up that is going to ruin the future of the internet. I doubt it. I think some asshole massaged a summary of a non-news story to get a bunch of fucktards like me to waste their time discussing it. At least they've supported IPv6 for a long while now, unlike some other OS companies... Quick, mod me down for not playing along!

Re:Why would /. focus on OSX problems?...

[dr. chuck bunsen]

If you leave corporate america out of those stats OS X is doing rather well. And they dominate the notebook market. I love OS X, I really do. But I dream of the day that Linux gets a really great GUI, and the Adobe Suite. I'd be a desktop Linux user in a second. I was pretty stoked about KDE4. But I tried it. Still just not there. Oh, add a full featured stable DAW, and video editor to that as well. I'll pay for pro apps on Linux, no problem.

Give me Adobe, Logic Pro/Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro, and KDE 12, and I'll switch in a heartbeat.

Re:Chicago

[nine-times]

At least they've supported IPv6 for a long while now, unlike some other OS companies.

Yeah, I was surprised when I read the summary. It made it sound like Apple was refusing the implement IPv6, or worse: maybe they were doing something crazy to black IPv6?

I was surprised because I kept seeing IPv6 settings in Apple products for several years now. I remember being surprised the first time I saw IPv6 settings in OSX; I don't remember when it was, but it was a while ago. I thought, "Huh, neat that they have that. Too bad I can't do anything with it." Apple has even had IPv6 support in their home routers for years, so it's weird that they'd be blocking progress.

From reading other comments here, it sounds more like there might some kind of a bug in Apple's implementation that hasn't been found up until now because nobody is actually using IPv6. The bug causes timeouts in some situations.

IPv6 isn't being blocked or slowed by Apple. Apple was an early adopter.