The web server I run this blog’s virtual host from has been IPv6-enabled for about three years. On Monday night I asked myself why I’d never given the blog an AAAA record. So I did.
I just looked at the logs, out of curiosity, to see how many of my readers are IPv6-enabled. It’s painful. Discounting myself, 19 unique visitors out of 1683, 1.13%, came in via IPv6.
If you aren’t thinking about IPv6 you should start. Enabling IPv6 really isn’t a big problem, by itself, as most ISPs can handle requests like that now. If you’re anything like me the problems that will vex you are the little ones: death by a thousand paper cuts. It’ll be the fact that your hosts.allow files need new stuff in them. Or the guy who does DNS doesn’t know what a quad-A record is. Or your web log analyzer script that’s worked flawlessly for a decade now barfs. Each problem, by itself, takes a week or two to fix, and now it’s three years later.
I’ve been running a couple of hosts on their own little VLAN, separate from everything else so that I can figure out what we need to fix at an OS level. Because they’ve been separate I could take my time, fixing things slowly so that as we get ready to turn IPv6 on for more of my organization we’re ready. It’s worked out really well so far, and I’d recommend it to anybody who isn’t testing IPv6 already. Get on it, get an IPv6 allocation and build yourself a small DMZ testing area. Put your desktop in it, too. It won’t be long until you be forced to implement IPv6, and this way you’ll be prepared.