Google and IPv6

[Steve Wilcox]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 3:46 AM, Erik Kline <ek at google.com> wrote:

> 2008/3/16 Kevin Day <toasty at dragondata.com>:
> >
> >  On Mar 16, 2008, at 9:34 PM, Erik Kline wrote:
> >  > Speaking personally, I have seen analysis of neither client behaviour
> >  > nor connectivity in the IPv6 Internet today.  Are things really as
> bad
> >  > as folks say or is it partly a kind of "urban legend of horribleness"
> >  > that persists from earlier tests with less-mature operating systems
> >  > and less reliable connectivity?  I  just have 6to4 at home and my
> Mac,
> >  > Linux, and XP boxes all seem to work just fine.
> >
> >  Every few months I've performed this test on a rather high traffic
> >  (but probably tiny compared to what you're used to) website that's
> >  comprised mostly of completely non-technically savvy users. The reason
> >  I feel the "non-technical users" part is important is because if one
> >  of us realizes that we can't reach www.ripe.net, we go fix it - most
> >  users think "oh, the internet is broken" and move on to something
> >  else. This results in problems going unresolved. :)
> >
> >  On one page of this site, we put two 1x1.gif images.
> >
> >  ipv4.gif is on a hostname that has only a v4 A record. This gets a
> >  baseline of how many people loaded the images on the site at all.
> >  4or6.gif is on a hostname that has both AAAA and A records.
> >
> >  The order the two images appeared on the page was randomized on every
> >  page load to try to reduce any bias there. I measured how many times
> >  each image was loaded after a few hours. Results from the last time I
> >  attempted this, after removing duplicate IPs:
> >
> >  ipv4.gif was loaded 278821 times.
> >  4or6.gif was loaded 278704 times. (191 hits were on the v6 IP, 278513
> >  on the v4 IP)
> >
> >  The good news is that 0.069% of our viewership was able to load an
> >  image on the v6 IP of an AAAA record. Nearly all of these were 6to4
> >  addresses, with a few Teredo. I only saw 2 IPs that looked like native
> >  v6.
> >
> >  The bad news is that the image on the AAAA record was loaded 0.042%
> >  less than the one on the A record. This meant that by publishing an
> >  AAAA record, your site would appear broken to almost as many users as
> >  would benefit from having the v6 connectivity.
> >
> >  I did some troubleshooting with as many users as I could that were
> >  willing to look at why they weren't able to access the host on the
> >  AAAA record, but didn't get very far with most of them before they
> >  lost interest with troubleshooting. In most cases it seemed like users
> >  had ended up with v6 activated/configured when they had no v6
> >  connectivity. None of the problems appeared to be broken v6
> >  connectivity exclusive to our site - if the user couldn't reach our
> >  site on an AAAA record, they couldn't reach any AAAA hostnames.
> >
> >  -- Kevin
> >
> >
>
> That's actually fairly promising, it would seem, as a measure of
> successful connectivity and good client behaviour.  Thanks!


I guess the question is if that figure is increasing over time as clients
more and more are purchased 'v6 enabled' ?

Kevin - do you have any time based data on that?

Steve


> An additional concern would, of course, be performance (i.e. latency).
>  If a client can cope appropriately with a AAAA record and it takes
> advantage of its IPv6 connectivity but suddenly finds itself going
> through tunnels or across continents to the "nearset" 192.88.99.1 6to4
> relay the overall user experience could, theoretically, be much, much
> poorer.  And poor performance obvious has a direct impact on user
> happiness.
>


-- 
Global Infrastructure
Google Inc.
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