IPv6 Support

[mlewellyn]

Now that ISPs are starting to roll out native IPv6 support, and Toredo/6to4 being almost ubiquitous and almost well-supported even in the lowest-grade consumer gear, I'm seeing more IPv6 trackers and peers. Unfortunately, BitComet is not yet able to connect to these resources. :(

Quite notably, trackers which only have an AAAA record (no A record and thus no direct IPv4 connectivity) give an "Tracker connection error: 11004 DNS error" in BitComet (verified that this is still an issue in 1.28).

A public tracker which only has an AAAA record, for testing purposes, is Ubuntu's IPv6 tracker: http://ipv6.torrent.ubuntu.com/

Note that if you do not have IPv6 (native, tunneled, 6to4, Teredo, or otherwise) connectivity, you won't be able to view the page (and therefore download the torrents). Note that this particular tracker provides torrents which have both IPv4 and IPv6 trackers listed (though it is trivial to just remove the IPv4 tracker for testing purposes). There are some private communities already which do not: it's IPv6 for their communities or bust.

Considering that many communities still have misgivings over allowing BitComet due to the missteps of years ago (0.6x and 0.85 come to mind), offering superb IPv6 torrenting on Windows would likely help BitComet's image amongst those who have closed their minds toward it bar any reason of reconsidering. At the moment, uTorrent is the only viable choice for IPv6-only trackers on Windows.

[greywizard]

I kind of second this.

I think sooner or later all BitTorrent clients will be forced to adopt IPv6 (and BitComet along with them) following the flow of the industry.

It would be better if that were done rather sooner than later.

However, how soon this will be implemented will probably highly depend on how much rewriting is necessary in the source code.

IPv4 is likely to still be seen for quite a long while among us, but this issue that you raise with some sites (which is possible to grow in number) not being available on IPv4 anymore, could be a good incentive to start implementing the IPng.

I just hope this is in the cards, among the short-term projects of the development team.

[mlewellyn]

I thought I should provide a brief run-down on IPv6 for those who might not be familiar with it outside of (usually mostly-accurate, at best) news reports. I sincerely hope that the devs don't need this post... :lol: I just think it's only fair that the rest of the users are aware of exactly what they're likely to start seeing at a fairly rapid pace.

IPv6 is a whole new addressing system for the entire Internet. About 15-20 years ago, some bright people foresaw that the Internet was growing very rapidly. Of course, rapid growth with a limited number of addresses logically means that you'll run out at some point (this is called "exhaustion"). So, they came up with a replacement for the IPv4 addressing scheme, while at the same time coming up with novel ways to postpone exhaustion so that software and hardware vendors would have sufficient time to educate their users and implement the new IPv6 scheme long before exhaustion became an issue.

Unfortunately, the novel ways of postponing exhaustion, alongside the proliferation of underpowered consumer gear, worked too well. The IPv4 address space officially hit exhaustion very early this year, so once the various geographically-based numbering authorities run out for their areas, there really are no more addresses coming.

On the bright side, larger ISPs worldwide are in the midst of large-scale IPv6 testing and deployment. Operating systems from the previous decade or so should have no problem with the change to IPv6, and even Windows 2000 has a IPv6 component still available from Microsoft (even though the OS is unsupported these days, and the experimental IPv6 "stack" moreso). Even most consumer gear has IPv6 options these days, even if they're hidden away since IPv6 manages to simplify networking enough for the average Joe to be able to just plug it in and it "works".

As for the torrent front, more and more private communities are ending up hosting their servers in facilities which are desperately feeling the crunch of IPv4 exhaustion. More and more facilities are asking for "justification" forms which get sent to the numbering authority before giving out more addresses to each customer. In fact, I've started seeing facilities which give 4 addresses per server rack, without a justification form. If you're able to fit at least 8 machines into that rack, and you're doing things like a private filesharing community, I can see why you might be interested in making those 4 (or fewer) IPv4 addresses go further.

Also, IPv6 has many features which manage to enhance privacy a bit, plus the companies who use questionable tactics ("We THINK we saw this IP on a torrent we used DCMA takedown on! Cut their internet, matey!") have not yet been seen on the IPv6 trackers. There are more than a few people who are quite pleased about the idea that they are able to change IPv6 addresses extremely often, knowing that if they DO get a bogus report to their ISP, that IP will no longer be valid at that time. (Nevermind that the few IPv6-ready ISPs are probably not yet ready to even track their customers' IPv6 habits.)

If you want to play with IPv6 now, it may be as simple as turning on "6to4" with the default options in your router. Otherwise, there are sites like Hurricane Electric's Tunnelbroker service which are able to let you wet your feet in the new Internet waters. Just keep in mind that you won't be able to use BitComet yet to connect to IPv6 peers (there are few IPv6-only trackers; you would know by now if you were using one).

Chances are that much of the Internet you already visit is also IPv6-ready. They just haven't abandoned the IPv4 Internet yet. Sooner, rather than later, IPv6-only content will start appearing more and more. We've had a decade to get ready, now the snowball effect is going to happen. B)

Also, Microsoft actually has a pretty good IPv6 page that manages to hit pretty much every type of person, from businessman to developer to curious consumer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961.aspx

Hopefully this will help those who only have heard about IPv6 in passing understand why I'm asking for this functionality now, rather than when the poo hits the spinny blades for a large chunk of users. :P

Edited August 5, 2011 by mlewellyn (see edit history)

[The UnUsual Suspect]

Thanks for this detailed explanation. I'm sure our members will find it an interesting read.