Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

Jeanb — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:38:19 GMT

What do you think of this article ?

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1953087056;fp;2;fpid;1

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

jordi — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:45:53 GMT

People blame the most easy thing. For sysadmins that don't did their work correctly (read learning about IPv6 and getting ready up-front), the easier thing is to blame IPv6 when something doesn't work.

There are many factors that may explain why this printer doesn't work if IPv6 is enabled, and that doesn't neccesarily mean an IPv6 problem. It may be a bad interaction of the printer driver, and again, the fault is not IPv6 is the printer driver or something else !

The only way to know the reality is to be hands-on at the non-working scenario and know about IPv6, not just blame it !

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

David Holder — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:34:16 GMT

This is the same article that appeared inNetwork World (see http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/060707-microsoft-vista-ipv6-incompatible.html). The article has received a lot of negative comments. I have reproduced my own comment on below:

At Erion we have been using IPv6 for many years. This includes using Vista with IPv6 since the early betas of Vista. We have had very few problems. Non of the problems we have experienced have been related to faults in the IPv6 stack.

The article doesn't provide enough detail to be able to analyse the alleged problems with Vista and IPv6. However, I suspect that they are not really problems with Vista or IPv6. As another comment has observed the author is 24 orders-of-magnitude out in the difference between the number of IPv4 addresses and the number of IPv6 addresses. This does not instill confidence in the accuracy of the rest of the article.

Regarding the printer problems, it is extremely unlikely that these are caused by IPv6. As any IT administrator knows there are many reasons why printing can go wrong. If the corruption was caused by IPv6 then it wouldn't just affect printing, it would affect all other network services too.

The ICMP issue described in the article does not make sense. ICMPv6 is IPv6's version of ICMP. It carries out the functions that ICMP carries out in IPv4 plus many new functions only found in IPv6. Applications interface to ICMP (and IP) using the socket API. The way in which applications use the socket API is largely the same for IPv4 and IPv6. Not only this but the socket API is almost identical across all operating systems supporting IPv6, not just Vista. This means that ICMP errors are exposed to applications through the socket API. It is hard to understand what the author means here.

I hope my comments above make it clear why I suspect that the conclusions drawn in the article are wrong.

At Erion we have a lot of experience of implementing IPv6. We have found that IPv6 is reliable and stable across many platforms. Indeed, it is in widespread use around the world. We have found that problems with IPv6 are more often to do with misconfiguration of naming services, routing and transition mechanisms than anything to do with IPv6 itself. We always recommend that anyone interested in implementing IPv6 undertakes IPv6 training. For further information see http://www.ipv6training.com and http://www.ipv6consultancy.com. On the subject of IPv6 and Vista I gave a recent presentation at SambaXP on this subject. You can find that at http://www.ipv6consultancy.com/ipv6blog/?p=8.

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

microcompspec — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:28:04 GMT

Let me enlighten you a moment...

I have used and tested Vista since Beta 1, my ultimate issue is this..

I work for a support center, Vista with IPv4 and IPv6 active causes an "Unidentified Network"

When IPv4 & IPv6 are disabled...the network is Identified...Once IPv4 is turned on....the network is Unidentified once again. Me and several techs belive IPv6 is causing this error...How do we prevent IPv6 from interfering with IPv4 or how do we fix the "Unidentified Network" issue?

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

SeanSiler — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:37:13 GMT

Well, that shouldn't be happening! Send me an email via the email link at the top left corner of the page, and I will be happy to follow up with you and see if we can figure it out!

Best Regards,

Sean Siler

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

jgurtz — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:08:30 GMT

David's comments are good (except for the gratuitous links!). So often I see "professional" IT related magazines publish articles that are clearly nothing more than mechanisms to drive page views and garner more "interested/interesting readers" for their ad partners.

Although much of their content is ok, CMP is one of the biggest offenders here and the practice seems to be slowly becoming more widespread.

It is a pretty tough and continuous job to ascertain valid and unbiased sources for news. I am saddened that I seem to be a member of a vanishingly small group of people who read in a critical way. Everyone else takes these crap articles at face value. This skill should be taught in elementary school!

People looking for more information on IPv6 might find this link a good jumping off point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

tangqiping — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:44:35 GMT

能不能介绍本关于IPV6学习的书?

Could you tell me some useful books for IPV6 learning? Email:tangqiping@aol.com

re: Vista and IPv6 = Problems?

gauravgulati81 — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:23:44 GMT

you might find a lot of ur ansewrs at the following sites:

http://ipv6-tips.blogspot.com/

http://more-vista.blogspot.com