Troubleshooting problems related to World IPv6 Day

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Q&A

What is IPv6?
What is World IPv6 Day?
Will I be affected? How can I test myself before and during the day?
Who is participating in the day?
What might happen during the day?
What should I do?
How can I ensure my network will not cause problems during the day?
Where can I find more information from the participating sites?
How can I get IPv6 connectivity from Claranet?

1. What is IPv6?

IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol (IP) address standard intended to supplement, and eventually replace, the IPv4 protocol most Internet services use today. To help ensure the continued rapid growth of the Internet as a platform for innovation, IPv6 tackles some of IPv4's shortcomings, most notably a limited amount of remaining addresses. While the techncial foundations of IPv6 are well established, significant work remains to deploy and begin using IPv6 capabilities.

2. What is World IPv6 Day?

World IPv6 day is a trial period where a number of major web sites will provide their content on both IPv4 and IPv6. This is being led by the Internet Society (ISOC). more information is posted on their World IPv6 Day page.

The day is scheduled for 8 June 2011, on it major web companies and other industry players will come together to enable IPv6 on their main websites for 24 hours. The goal is to motivate organisations across the industry, Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 address space runs out.

3. Will I be affected? How can I test myself before and during the day?

You may be affected if we provide you with internet access and your systems are configured for IPv6 but we do not provide it directly to you, many modern systems are configured for IPv6 support by default.

You can visit test-ipv6.com to see if your system will have issues during the day, a low score may indicate problems.

4. Who is participating in the day?

Many large sites such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft Xbox, a full list of participants can be found on the ISOC participants page

5. What might happen during the day?

When visiting participating sites, affected systems may hang or fail to connect when connecting to a participating site, some participating sites may load but may appear broken and may have missing images.

6. What should I do?

I'm a Microsoft Windows User

Ensure your operating system is up-to-date, visit WindowsUpdate to ensure that you have downloaded and applied all required updates for your operating system.
Ensure your browser is up-to-date:
- If using Internet Explorer, you should be able to update it with WindowsUpdate if supported
- Firefox is normally updated automatically, but you can easily check. In Firefox, click Help, then Check for Updates. Get the New Version, then Restart Firefox.
- With Chrome, If a wrench icon appears on the browser toolbar, click it. Select "Update Google Chrome" then Restart.
- Opera can be updated by visiting here to get the latest version, and following the prompts.

If you have tried all of this and you are still experiencing issues, visit this Microsoft Support Article which should provide a link to a simple automated temporary fix which may be able to easily remedy your issue, the fix will revert itself after June 10th.

You must be able to change the settings of your computer in order to use this fix, if you are not able to do so, please see your Systems/IT Administrator.

If this fix does not remedy the situation, this Microsoft Support Article contains an alternate set of fixes which are permanent and should be approached with care, the "Use IPv4 instead of IPv6 in prefix policies" fix , followed by the "Disable tunnel IPv6 interfaces" fixes from this site are the safest and most preferable fixes to be considered.

I'm a Macintosh OSX User

Ensure your operating system is up-to-date, go to the Apple menu, choose Software Update, and apply all available updates
Ensure your browser is up-to-date:
- Safari should be updated automatically with the operating system, go to the Apple menu, choose Software Update, and apply all available updates.
- Firefox is normally updated automatically, but you can easily check. In Firefox, click Help, then Check for Updates. Get the New Version, then Restart Firefox.
- With Chrome, If a wrench icon appears on the browser toolbar, click it. Select "Update Google Chrome" then Restart.

If you can not upgrade you may have to disable IPv6 functionality, Go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences, then Network (make sure Built-In Ethernet is selected) and choose Advanced, TCP/IP, then Configure IPv6 and select "off." Then choose OK and Apply.

I'm a Linux User

Disable automatic tunnelling:
- Ensure you are not using 6to4, you may have interfaces named tun6to4 or sit0 ensure these are not present or shut down.
- Do not use the Miredo client (which is a client of the Teredo protocol) ensure that it is stopped.
- If you still have to maintain tunnelled connectivity, verify your iptables ruleset does not filter IP Protocol 41 or UDP port 3544.

7. How can I ensure my network will not cause problems during the day?

You should ensure your firewalls do not filter IP Protocol 41 or UDP port 3544 traffic unintentionally if you plan to continue using tunnelling services.
If you have any computers on your network which run Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing service, this can cause your network to try and use IPv6 where it does not have the capability, applying any of the microsoft fixes or disabling Internet Connection Sharing on this computer should remedy the issue.
If you have an Apple Airport and Time Capsule wireless base station, these can cause IPv6 related disruption on the network until their firmware is upgraded to version 7.5.2 you can find some instructions on how to upgrade your device here.
Some AVM/FRITZ!BOX models are configured by default in a way which can cause IPv6 related issues, you can rectify this configuration by setting Settings->Internet->Account Information->IPv6->Do not assign unique local addresses (ULA) to on.
Apple iPhones running iOS unfortunately do not have any apple supplied workarounds at present, iOS users may experience sites hanging and only reporting unreachability after 60 seconds.
Users of the Cisco/Linksys WRVS4400N should not enable IPv6 directly on their devices at all as it can cause broken connectivity, Ensure the router is operating in IPv4-only mode. This setting is found under Setup->IP Versions in its web interface.
For all other makes/models of router, ensure the firmware is a up-to-date as it can be.

8. Where can I find more information from the participating sites?

9. How can I get IPv6 connectivity from Claranet?

You may be able to get IPv6 connectivity if your product supports it, please contact your account manager (business customers) or contact support for more information.