Friday, November 06, 2009
I never really thought about website being available via IPv6
So I'm trying to view a website (via Bunny via email) and it's not coming up at all under the Mac. It's just a blank page.
It comes up under Linux, but since I don't have speakers hooked up to that computer, watching the video (“Deer for breakfast, anyone?” in Texas—it's not what you think) would be “suboptimal” as they say.
I then try my standard diagnostic technique in such cases. From the
command line, I telnet
to the offending website and see what I
get:
[spc]marvin:~>telnet www.snotr.com 80 Trying 2a00:d00:ff:131:94:228:131:131… ^C [spc]marvin:~>
Oh! That's interesting!
marvin
(the Mac) is trying to use IPv6 to connect to the site.
Ah! That's right! I was playing around with IPv6 several days ago on the local network here at Chez Boca and I configured Firefox to try connecting via IPv6 if possible. Turning that option off brought the site up immediately.
But! That also explains the difficulties I've been seeing in one of the sites I check daily: The Devil's Panties (think of it as a semi-fictionalized illustrated blog that presents itself as a webcomic). It was taking an inordinate amount of time to come up for the past several days and I kept thinking it was due to a network issue at Keenspot.
Nope—it was my browser attempting to connect to the IPv6 address first.
I think it's cool that there are sites responding to IPv6. I wonder how many more of them exist?