[pydotorg-www] Fwd: website and ipv6

[Doug Hellmann]

On Nov 26, 2010, at 3:07 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

>>> I assume this is an end-user problem and that python.org
>>> <http://python.org> *can* be reached by ipv6?
>> 
>> I've run into this a couple of times and the solution I was always given
>> was to disable IPv6 on my client system.
> 
> I think you ran into a different problem. The OP complained that he
> can't reach www.python.org over IPv6, even though his operating system
> supports IPv6.
> 
> While this is likely true, it is not at all a reason to disable IPv6.
> Applications should fall back to IPv4 transparently - no need to disable
> IPv6.

> However, many systems have IPv6 enabled today, yet can't reach
> www.python.org, simply because they don't have IPv6 connectivity
> from their ISP. Again, that alone is no reason to disable IPv6.

> It's mostly unclear in what specific cases disabling IPv6 actually
> helps. The known cases are

The problem I had was a very long timeout while the IPv6 connection failed, leading to the perception that python.org was responding very slowly.  Disabling IPv6 meant the client went directly to IPv4, bypassing the timeout.

> - old Opera versions (before Opera implemented the IPv4 fallback)
> - bogus university network setups (students propagating
>  misconfiguration in the network), and
> - certain bogus Apple setups (in particular, broken airport
>  base stations).

I'm on a Mac, but don't have an airport base station.  I would not be surprised if my ISP doesn't support IPv6, though, so maybe it's upstream from me.

Doug