The Pirate Bay on IPv6

The Pirate Bay has announced they have started introducing IPv6. See here.

The nice thing: on their front page they announce how much IPv6 is involved. At this moment (26 jan 2009) the statistics are:

IPv4 22.616.475 peers (10.033.680 seeders + 12.582.795 leechers) in 1.631.921 torrents on tracker.
IPv6 16.087 peers (6.522 seeders + 9.565 leechers) in 13.058 torrents on tracker.

So: about 0.07% of the peers is connected via IPv6. Probably better to speak in parts-per-million, which is here around 700. In other words: of each 1.000.000 PirateBay peers, 700 have an IPv6 connection to the PirateBay.

My own measurements: the IPv6 HTTP connection to the tracker is very slow (45 s = 45.000 ms), whereas the ping6 is fast (50-60 ms):

sander@flappie:~$ time wget -6 http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/
--18:34:09--  http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/
           => `index.html'
Resolving tracker.thepiratebay.org... 2a01:298:3:1::2
Connecting to tracker.thepiratebay.org|2a01:298:3:1::2|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
18:34:54 ERROR 404: Not Found.


real    0m45.137s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.008s

sander@flappie:~$ ping6 -c 5 tracker.thepiratebay.org
PING tracker.thepiratebay.org(2a01:298:3:1::2) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a01:298:3:1::2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=60.5 ms
64 bytes from 2a01:298:3:1::2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=50 time=72.4 ms
64 bytes from 2a01:298:3:1::2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=50 time=51.6 ms
64 bytes from 2a01:298:3:1::2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=50 time=52.6 ms
64 bytes from 2a01:298:3:1::2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=50 time=52.3 ms

--- tracker.thepiratebay.org ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 51.694/57.922/72.424/7.940 ms
sander@flappie:~$

The IPv4 connection is very fast:

sander@flappie:~$ time wget -4 http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/
--18:34:07--  http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/
           => `index.html'
Resolving tracker.thepiratebay.org... 77.247.176.134, 77.247.176.132, 77.247.176.153, ...
Connecting to tracker.thepiratebay.org|77.247.176.134|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
18:34:07 ERROR 404: Not Found.


real    0m0.084s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.008s

I guess the HTTP speed will get normal.

DIY: Google IPv6 Trusted Tester program

Google has a "IPv6 Trusted Tester program". It means selected IPv6 users can get IPv6 access to Google services. To get selected, Google must trust your ISP and your ISP's IPv6. See here (IPv6) or here (IPv4). Xs4all is a trusted ISP. See here (Dutch!).

What if your ISP is not "trusted" by Google, but your IPv6 is working perfectly, for example via Sixxs or Teredo/Miredo?

No problem: fill out this in your /etc/hosts file:

2001:4860:0:1001::53 googlemail.l.google.com
2001:4860:0:1001::53 mail.google.com

2001:4860:0:1001::68 www.google.com
2001:4860:0:1001::68 www.l.google.com
2001:4860:0:1001::68 www.google.nl

(That last line with .nl is needed for me because www.google.com redirects to www.google.nl.)

Then restart your browser. Go to mail.google.com and it will be over IPv6. You can proof that with tcpdump/wireshark, or get a good feeling with the firefox plugin ShowIP

See included screendump: right bottom corner shows a green IPv6 address.

Old Trick: this blog via IPv6

You can view this website via IPv6 by using the URL http://ipv6-or-no-ipv6.blogspot.com.ipv6.sixxs.org/

It's an old trick, provided by the people from Sixxs: just fill out "ipv6.sixxs.org" at the end of (the FQDN part) of an URL. Examples:

http://www.cnn.com.ipv6.sixxs.org/
http://geenstijl.nl.ipv6.sixxs.org/

The other way around is possible too: Make an IPv6 site accessible site via IPv4. So: you --- IPv4 --- sixxs --- IPv6 --- website. Example:

http://www.whatismyipv6.net.ipv4.sixxs.org/
http://www.ipv6.surfnet.nl.ipv4.sixxs.org/

Just for fun.

Teredo or no Teredo: that's the question

Grrrrrrrrrr. Suddenly Eva's laptop (the great Dell Studio Laptop: real great machine) hasn't got IPv6 connectivity anymore. And thus news.ipv6.eweka.nl downloads are not working anymore.

Result of ipconfig:

C:\>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lokaal
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::79da:502b:44bc:ff82%12
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.36
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 6:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 7:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lokaal

C:\>


What's going on? The only thing that has changed, is a reboot of the Linksys access point. So let's check what happens when I connect the laptop via a wire to the Linksys:

C:\>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lokaal

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lokaal
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::8478:8ade:811f:2838%11
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.34
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 7:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:d5c7:a2ca:248b:9277:ad55:e84b
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::248b:9277:ad55:e84b%10
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lokaal

C:\>

Teredo's back!

That's good news. The bad news:

• Teredo didn't work when connected via wireless, for no clear reason
  
• Windows Vista wasn't saying why there was no Teredo connectivity

Does anybody know if there is any logging about Teredo? Maybe I should have used

C:\>netsh interface teredo show state
Teredo Parameters
---------------------------------------------
Type                    : default
Server Name             : teredo.ipv6.microsoft.com.
Client Refresh Interval : 30 seconds
Client Port             : unspecified


C:\>

Comments please!

Transmission bittorrent client successful with IPv6

Cool: as of December 15 2008, the bittorrent client "Transmission" has IPv6 implemented in the development version. I think it will become public with transmission version 1.5.

I couldn't wait for that, so I activated the "nightly build" on my Ubuntu by add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/transmissionbt-nightly/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/transmissionbt-nightly/ubuntu hardy main

I then installed and started Transmission. Version is 1.42+, FWIW.

Result:Transmission works with IPv6. It's connected to other IPv6 peers (using torrent "FreeBSD 7.0-Release i386 CD1" from sixxs IPV6 tracker), both BitTornado and utorrent. And ... over my teredo / miredo connection.

Cool!

uTorrent with Teredo IPv6 on Windows XP ... works!

See the included screenshots: uTorrent with Teredo IPv6 on Windows XP SP3 ... works!

Just install and start uTorrent.
Then, under Options -> Preferences ( -> General) click "Install IPv6/Teredo".

To check the IPv6 functionality, from http://www.sixxs.net/tools/tracker/catalog/ select an active download, for example FreeBSD 7.0-Release i386 CD1


Please note:
1) you need (at least) SP3.
2) it should work on Windows Vista too. A Teredo is activated on Vista by default, I think you won't need to "Install IPv6/Teredo".

Windows Vista Teredo status: "general system failure"

A friend's Windows Vista machine is showing an ugly Teredo status: "general system failure". Needless to say: Teredo is not working. There's even no 2001:0: address. There is, however, strangely enough, a 6to4 2002:-address ...

I don't know what the cause is. It might be related to his firewall. He's not behind NAT.

Comments / tips welcome.


C:\Users\Alain>netsh interface teredo show

The following commands are available:

Commands in this context:
show state     - Shows Teredo state.

C:\Users\Alain>netsh interface teredo show state
Teredo Parameters
---------------------------------------------

Type                    : default
Server Name             : teredo.ipv6.microsoft.com.
Client Refresh Interval : 30 seconds
Client Port             : unspecified
State                   : offline
Error                   : general system failure


C:\Users\Alain>


C:\Users\Alain>ping 2001:4de0:1::1:1

Pinging 2001:4de0:1::1:1 from 2002:5ed1:bd57::5ed1:bd57 with 32 bytes of data:
General failure.
General failure.
General failure.
General failure.

Ping statistics for 2001:4de0:1::1:1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Users\Alain>