World IPv6 Day - Coders View

The beginning of this week I met Markos , one of the ice-Addis  guys and he told me about the world IPv6 Day coming on June 8th. He told me his idea of having a session at the ice just to be part of the event. The next morning I met Fitsum , who works with me in the office, also told me same thing. I am not a network guy but it took my attention. One of the first being the application I build two years before using Windows communication foundation (WCF). It is a client-server system where the client connects and sends requests. I remember I used an IP address to find the server, just like http://192.168.0.2/ kind of url. I started wondering what the effect of this IPv6 would be on my application.

I looked at all the possible posts and books to see what the effect of IPv6 is on my application and the way WCF works in general. Luckily enough I did it in the era of WCF not dot net remoting, the changes will be minimal. It doesn’t even need a modification in the code but only the configuration file. However, I came across different issues that are interesting for me and liked to share it with you. I told you am not a network guy so I will all be talking about from the application side.

The first one is the things that need to be looked at to see if your application is ‘IPv6 Compliant’ (that’s not the way the call it thou). These include

• The data structure that are used to hold IP’s, say array length the like
• Function call, special if you are using Microsoft technologies there are added functions to support IPv6
• Hardcoded IPv4 addresses , just what I have found… but not in my code thou
• User Interfaces, where you ask the user to enter ip address
• The underlying protocol used are some of the issues to look at and you can find details here.

There is also a tool Checkv4.exe which you can use to port your IPv4 dependent application to an IPv6. You can check the tool from here.

There are different scenarios that might lead you to using a utility function in your application which translates between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

The other thing that I wanted to share is that, there might be an internet connection problem on that day, June 8th of 2011. The social network site, that we all love to see it daily if not hourly, facebook is one of the participants among the hundreds on the IPv6 day. You can find the participating sites here. If you are a windows user, like most Ethiopian, Microsoft had been working on IPv6 since the days of Windows xp. Please don’t get me wrong if I am favoring Microsoft on this issue. It has come up a way of looking at if you will have a problem accessing sites on that day or not. Click here and see if you will have a problem. Here is the result of my test.

As you can see I am expected to have problems connecting this day to web sites participating in IPv6 day. It tells me to disable IPv6 configuration. To get a fix for this problem, Microsoft is telling me to go to this site  and download the fix or run it from there. It will do all the configuration and on the 10th of June the configuration will be back to normal. For a simplified test of your IPv6 day readiness you can also use  this.

Lastly, I would like to share with you my idea on “Is there any benefit for applications when IPv6 comes?” and invite you to say what you feel. From what I have seen in this week, I hope there will be a revolutionary change coming in the way we interact. May be communication will be cheaper and easier than now. Who knows Ethio-telecom will have sufficient IP’s to give us all. Have your say and let’s get ready for it.

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