Category: IPv6

We were troubleshooting DNS for a customer who has the domains hosted over at DNS Exit over the last couple of days and couldn’t seem to nail down why we here at Rollernet couldn’t resolve their DNS reliably, if at all. After much extended testing, we eventually tested from a site that was IPv4 only and discovered this:

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.dnsexit.com.        28800   IN      A       69.57.160.118
ns1.dnsexit.com.        28800   IN      AAAA    ::1
ns2.dnsexit.com.        59400   IN      A       64.182.102.188
ns2.dnsexit.com.        59400   IN      AAAA    ::1
ns3.dnsexit.com.        57600   IN      A       67.214.175.73
ns3.dnsexit.com.        57600   IN      AAAA    ::1
ns4.dnsexit.com.        57600   IN      A       67.214.161.154
ns4.dnsexit.com.        57600   IN      AAAA    ::1

There’s the problem: delegations to the IPv6 loopback address. This is not something we would ever expect to see. It can, in fact, be damaging because an IPv6 resolver may try to query itself (localhost). As such, we are strongly recommending to all of our customers (plus anyone in general who is interested in working with IPv6 or may use an IPv6 network) to stay clear of DNS Exit at this time.

We try not to recommend one provider over another, but in this instance the localhost AAAA delegations are too egregious of an error to ignore. As far as we are aware only DNS Exit does this, so any of their competitors should be a suitable replacement.

From the ARIN-announce mailing list:

ARIN has been allocating IPv6 addresses since 1999 and has been actively advocating the need to deploy IPv6. In 2007, the ARIN Board of Trustees resolved to educate and inform the Internet community regarding IPv4 depletion and the increasing need to adopt IPv6. This resolution became part of a larger IPv6 outreach campaign to encourage those currently running IPv4 to begin adopting IPv6. In April of 2009, ARIN contacted, by certified letter, the CEOs of organizations that currently hold IPv4 resources in its region to raise executive awareness of IPv4 depletion and IPv6 adoption. To keep up with ARIN’s current outreach activities and locations, please visit http://www.teamARIN.net/calendar.

Without IPv6, the Internet’s expansion and innovation could be limited. Delaying IPv6 deployment may strain the work of Internet operators, application developers, and end users everywhere. Furthermore, organizations whose business model is dependent on availability of IP addresses may find their growth limited without adopting production IPv6.

There are many ways to make your organization’s services available using IPv6, depending on your network setup and the services you have deployed. ARIN hosts an IPv6 Wiki to facilitate discussion and information sharing on IPv6 adoption topics and issues, which can be found at http://www.getipv6.info. If you have not already, now is the time to determine how your services will grow and be maintained using IPv6 addresses.

Regards,

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

Roller Network offers standard IPv6 enabled colocation and hosting services for the next generation internet, today. If your provider does not support IPv6, consider switching to one that does.

If you’ve been following our Verizon story, you know by now that we’ve been trying to get them to turn up a dual-stack circuit for over a year now. Last year on June 7, 2009, we signed an agreement for Verizon to deliver fiber to our premises. This allows us to offer our customers a facility with diverse fiber entrances and diverse physical carriers. Our colocation customers can also order circuits directly to our muxes (AT&T or VZB) if they choose. Although the equipment was installed a few months later, it’s been stuck in some sort of engineering delay for an abnormally long time. As we can’t wait forever, we have to file it away as a lost cause at this point.

But all is not lost in the end. The Verizon fiber facilities are still installed, fully functional, (we left the order open in the hope that one day it would be delivered) and Global Crossing is able to utilize it for their local loop to us. It’s been a long and ugly ride, from denial, through anger, and finally acceptance of the situation. It’s caused us delays beyond our control and cost far too much money from being forced on standby since the move in October 2009. But we’re still here and we look forward to the future.

We will be announcing some promotions and referral programs in the near future so stay tuned!