[Distutils] PyPI lost IPv6 support?

[Donald Stufft]

On Jun 10, 2014, at 10:00 AM, Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net> wrote:

> On 10 Jun 2014, at 15:47, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10 June 2014 23:22, Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> If I remember correctly there are some mobile networks in Asia who only do IPv6 internally. Gandi offers IPv6-only servers that are cheaper than servers with ipv4 connectivity. So while right now not having IPv4 connectivity is unlikely, it does happen and will only become more common. People are also introducing monstrosities like carrier-grade NAT to delay the inevitable, but we really should not encourage that madness and just add IPv6. It generally is very easy to do.
>> 
>> The challenge is that PyPI now runs behind a donated CDN service, and
>> our vendor doesn't offer IPv6 yet:
>> https://fastly.zendesk.com/entries/30549708-Do-you-support-IPv6-
> 
> I saw that and was very disappointed by Fastly. It means I won't consider using them for anything I do at this point in time.

Eh, like anything it's a value judgment. Fastly has been great for us and it
has made scaling PyPI massively easier and just better overall. I wouldn't
want to try to handle the ~78TB and ~891M requests that PyPI got in May (or
~108TB/~1.1B requests for all of Python.org via Fastly) without Fastly,
especially not for something like IPv6.

> 
>> That means that, for the time being "the PyPI CDN is generously
>> donated by Fastly" trumps "the PyPI CDN supports IPv6" - IPv6 support
>> isn't currently high enough on the priority list for us to be willing
>> to turn down Fastly's offer. That trade-off may change some day, but I
>> expect Fastly will have already added IPv6 support before we reach
>> that point.
> 
> Is the PSF willing to ask push Fastly a little bit on this, so we at least have timeframe?

We don't need to push them, we have a real amicable relationship :)

I just popped into their IRC channel and asked, they said that IPv6 is on their
radar and planned for the future but they do not have an ETA.

We're unlikely to do anything but wait for Fastly at this point. Perhaps if
push came to shove we'd setup a ipv6.pypi.python.org which doesn't route
through Fastly but we're not setup for that currently and it'd take a bit of
effort to do so. Effort we'd much rather spend elsewhere right now.

Of course PyPI supports mirroring, so if someone believes that ipv6 support
is important for package installs all it takes is a server with some bandwidth,
~80GB of HD space, and an IPv6 address to host a IPv6 mirror. It's like it
wouldn't get near as much traffic as PyPI itself does so it wouldn't require
as much as PyPI does to power it.

> 
>>>> It's something we'll want to keep an eye on, but yeah, at this point
>>>> in time, when connecting an IPv6-only system to the internet, PyPI is
>>>> likely to be long way down the "it isn't working" priority list.
>>> 
>>> I have an ipv6-only VM, and it works wonderfully: it can send email, pull Debian updates, serve IPv6 websites and it has my remote backups and git-annex repositories.
>> 
>> I was thinking of the client case, but you're right, in a server
>> context, IPv6 only is far more likely to be viable already.
> 
> It’s very viable right now I’ld say. If I remember correctly Cloudflare has a free service where they add an IPv4 frontend for IPv6-only servers so you can still provide service to IPv4-only users.
> 
> Wichert.


-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

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