Youtube over IPv6 for non-whitelist users?

Tim Chown tjc at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Mon Jun 20 10:59:07 CEST 2011


On 20 Jun 2011, at 07:05, Ben Jencks wrote:

> I just noticed that I'm getting Youtube content (just the movie streams, not the web pages -- still no AAAA on www.youtube.com) over IPv6, despite not using a whitelisted resolver. I'm guessing the Flash player is doing some quick connectivity checks and serving over IPv6 if available. Anyone else seeing this? Has Google publicly stated that they're doing this? Is it new since v6 day?
> 
> Since the movies are the bulk of the traffic to Youtube, this means that from a traffic volume perspective, Youtube essentially left v6 on after v6 day. I'd love to see some IPv6-enabled eyeball ISP traffic graphs before, during, and after v6 day.
> 
> FWIW I'm on Comcast using their 6rd deployment (which they're turning off at the end of the month, boo!).

The ongoing YouTube access is enough to keep the IPv6 traffic levels reported for JANET up to close to the W6D levels.   Rob Evans' blog shows this quite nicely:
http://webmedia.company.ja.net/edlabblogs/developmenteye/2011/06/13/world-ipv6-day-damp-squib-or-roaring-success/

While the numbers are still relatively small, esp. compared to Free.fr, the sustained traffic is nice to see.  It gives Google a higher volume of IPv6 performance/connectivity intelligence too, which is surely good :)   Facebook left their developers.facebook.com site on v6 too, as did MS with www.xbox.com, so it seems the bigger players are leaving more content up to get more measurements/experience.

My informal tests suggest the YouTube 'commercial' (TV series) content is IPv4-only, while user-contributed video is dual-stack.

Tim


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