nanog mailing list archives

Re: Hotels/Airports with IPv6


From: Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 15:20:35 +0000

I've done fairly extensive testing, and IPv6 support, while pretty solid on the carrier side, is still iffy on WiFi. 
Both iOS and Android have various reliability problems with IPv6 and WiFi, mostly related to acquiring a DNS address or 
maintaining a connection while roaming. Combine that with less-than-fully-baked IPv6 on some enterprise WiFi platforms, 
and it's easy to see that deploying WiFi IPv6 today is at least a challenge, and definitely a risk. 

Android, for example, doesn't yet support DHCPv6 on WiFi (it's not needed on the carrier side, which does DNS 
intercept), and intermittently looses its unicast address on some hardware devices (notably tablets, in my experience). 
Even when android gets DHCPv6, or these hardware problems get solved, there will be several years of legacy devices in 
the field to contend with.  

 -mel beckman

On Jul 13, 2015, at 7:05 AM, Lee Howard <Lee () asgard org> wrote:



On 7/9/15, 11:04 AM, "NANOG on behalf of Mel Beckman"
<nanog-bounces () nanog org on behalf of mel () beckman org> wrote:

I working on a large airport WiFi deployment right now. IPv6 is "allowed
for in the future" but not configured in the short term. With less than
10,000 ephemeral users, we don't expect users to demand IPv6 until most
mobile devices and apps come ready to use IPv6 by default.

I didn¹t see anybody point out that most mobile devices and apps come
ready to use IPv6 by default.
At least, all Android and iOS devices do, and Apple recently announced
that IPv6 support will be mandatory in future apps.
Plus, Facebook, at least, says IPv6 is faster over mobile. Don¹t know how
it does over Wi-Fi.

Lee




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