Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Transmission Bittorrent client: 1.50 (with IPv6 support) in Beta 3

As said earlier, the Transmission bittorrent client for Linux and Mac OS X will have IPv6 support in version 1.50. The Beta 3 of version 1.50 is available:

About 1.50: 1.50 doesn't have many visual changes, but has lots of improvements under the hood, including IPv6 support, better management of peers, trackers, and local files, and lots of bug fixes.

Hopefully Ubuntu 9.04 will use TransmissionBT 1.50. Together with miredo (teredo implementation) this should raise the number of IPv6 enabled peers.

Monday, January 26, 2009

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.




Monday, January 12, 2009

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.


Sunday, January 11, 2009

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.