News of 2011

SixXS wishes everybody a happy and fruitful MMXI.

IP-Max open their PoP in Geneva, Switzerland to the public. Details about the PoP can be found on the chgva01 information page.

We have decided to discontinue the im.sixxs.net service as it does not fall under the core attention for SixXS. Supporting the installation costs time which is better spend on the core parts of SixXS, and there is lot to be done there. The IM service ran for four years and when we started it it was one of the first IPv6 enabled BitlBees.

Several other public BitlBee servers support IPv6 nowadays thus users can continue using those.

We have updated our DNSSEC validation and as such support a lot more types now. Please see the FAQ on DNSSEC for more details. Comments are of course always welcome at the ever popular contact address.

GCI (General Communication Incorporated) have opened their PoP in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. Details about the PoP can be found on the usanc01 information page.

Gyron have opened an extra London based PoP. Details about the PoP can be found on the gblon03 information page.

Digiweb Limited have opened a second Dublin based PoP. Details about the PoP can be found on the iedub02 information page.

Today we welcome a new PoP for users in the Czech Republic, hosted by Inotel in Prague. Details about the PoP can be found on the czprg01 information page.

Today we welcome a new PoP for Greek users, hosted by GRNET in Athens. Details about the PoP can be found on the grath01 information page.

Today we welcome a new PoP for Polish users, hosted by Inotel in Poznan. Details about the PoP can be found on the plpoz02 information page.

DIGI are from today providing two new PoPs. The first PoP (hubud01) is available for all Hungarian users, the second PoP (hubud02) is restricted to customers of DIGI. Details about the PoP can be found on the hubud01/hubud02 information page.

We are extremely proud to announce that we have reached more than 25.000 active users. It took nearly 10 years to get here, but with a specialized service as we provide that is a big success, especially for a hobby project. Note that these are active users, not just users who signed up and are not using the service, as then we would have near to 50.000 users already.

The Growth Trend indicates that 2011 truely is the year of IPv6 with more and more users signing up daily. A lot of these user's signup reasons are related to preparing for the upcoming IPv6 day which is a trend we have recently seen.

Lets see how close we can get to 50.000 active users in the next few years. On one side that would be a good thing, on another it would be bad as it means that those users still don't have the ability to get native IPv6, which is the ultimate goal of course.

Even though our IPv6 and IPv4 Website Gateway has been in operation for 8 years already, we justed fixed a bug which has been lingering in it for all that time already. Thanks to Hagen Fritsch for bringing to our attention that multiple cookies where not being properly passed back to the webbrowser, this has now been resolved and should allow even better compatibility when surfing the IPv6 waves with a IPv4 webboard and IPv4 streams with a IPv6 jetski.

This bumps the IPv6Gate version to 3.2. Like other parts of the SixXS service, if you notice something that is not working correctly don't hesitate to report it.

A couple of people have noticed already that we have been trial-running the new sixxsd v4 daemon on decgn01. Except for a couple of minor issues that where reported and resolved, it has been running stable.

The sixxsd v4 daemons primarily focus is scalability as our 7 year old v3 daemon was not able to cope with the many tunnels that where running on some of the PoPs, which is why we've done a redesign and then reimplementation of the daemon which is also why it earns the v4 mark up from v3.

For users v4 brings today already something quite useful: per default every tunnel automatically also gets a routed /64 which can have reverse DNS delegated just like normal subnets and one does not have to wait for a week or request it for credits to get it. This solves one big issue we have been seeing with the advent of various vendors (AVM's Fritz!Box, DrayTek, Motorola, Astaro, amongst others) having added built-in support for TIC and heartbeat. These devices automatically terminate the tunnel and then require a subnet for actually connecting up the devices behind the CPE. Because of this new feature these CPEs can now directly use the routed /64.Of course the /64 is available also to your home grown setup, the details are in the webinterface.

Existing tunnels have received these /64s but they are disabled in the userhome and thus are not visible through TIC, one can enable them in the webinterface and then they will be visible for TIC clients.

Further new functionality that we have added to sixxsd v4 will be revealed soon.

Note that currently this only affects decgn01. The PoP page shows the version of sixxsd running on each PoP and when a PoP has been upgraded it will thus there be visible that these new features are available. We will be starting upgrades to v4 PoPs in the run of next week hopefully completing the upgrade to v4 for all PoPs before Friday the 15th July 2011.

Of course, in case of problems, don't hesitate to contact us.

We'd like to bring to attention to everybody that the Call For Applications for the International IPv6 Application Contest 2011 is out. This year they have again a first prize of 10.000 euros, as such, don't hesitate to compete along as even the idea category brings a hefty 1000 euro prize! 2011 is the year of IPv6, thus do contribute to this contest and get your idea out there.

The submission deadline is on the 31st of October 2011 and the award ceremony will be on 1st of December in Potsdam, Germany. See the the International IPv6 Application Contest 2011 website for lot more details.

Today we welcome a new PoP for Belgian users, hosted by EDPnet in Sint-Niklaas. Even though their core network has been native IPv6 for many years already, EDPnet wants to go further and strives to bring IPv6 to every single xDSL user on the network in collaboration with SixXS, because native IPv6 in that domain hasn't matured yet. Not only will the SixXS PoP be open to edpnet customers, but also to the rest of the world.

Details about the PoP can be found on the beanr01 information page.

In the Western Pacific Ocean lies a beautiful archipelago which is the setting of a new PoP: ncnou01.sixxs.net. This PoP is provided by Nautile SARL. The PoP is available for all New Caledonian users.

Further details about the PoP can be found on the Nautile PoP Page.

EDPnet have kindly set up another PoP, this time in St.Petersburg, Russia! This PoP opens up proper IPv6 connectivity for everybody in Russia as EDPnet is present at the Moscow Internet Exchange (MSK-IX) where most Russian ISPs peer.

The name of the PoP is 'ruled' as St. Petersburg used to be called Leningrad, hence LED, from 1924 till 1991¹ during which time UN/LOCODE was established.

Current Russian SixXS users will soon receive an email detailing how they can receive a free tunnel and subnet on the new PoP when they relinquish their existing tunnel and subnet from other PoPs.

Details about the new PoP can be found on the ruled01 information page.

With the launch of EDPNet's rudel01, SixXS now has a total of 50 PoPs online around the globe!

We like to thank again the generosity of all the ISPs who are providing these PoPs as they are the ones who make SixXS possible.

Of course, if other ISPs are interrested in helping the transition to IPv6, don't hesitate to send in a PoP requirements form.

Interscholz have just opened their first PoP in Leonberg: deleo01. The new PoP is located in the picturesque historical town of Leonberg, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany and is open to all German users.

Details about the new PoP can be found on the Interscholz deleo01 information page.

On the 11th of the 11th month of 2011 we proudly present a new PoP hosted by a new provider: BurstNet Technologies, Inc.. The new PoP is located in sunny Miami, Florida, USA and is open to all US endpoints.

Details about the new PoP can be found on the BurstNet usmia01 information page.

We have enabled another couple of PoPs to v4 and thus currently beanr01, decgn01, deleo01, ncnou01, ruled01 and usmia01 are running v4 code.

As more and more people and more-over their equipment gets exposed to the new platform we are discovering little quirks though as reported by some users. We'd like to thank these users and encourage others to also step up when they notice strange things so that we can determine what the problem is and resolve those issues. Thus please don't hesitate to contact us if you think there might be something odd going on.

More and more equipment, especially CPEs are getting IPv6 enabled, either simply with the standard static proto-41 tunnels, but many also with full SixXS support. We unfortunately do not have every single piece of IPv6 enabled equipment in the world available to us, thus we hope that the community can help out there and document them in the Wiki See specifically the Routers section for a large list.

Thus thanks for your contributions and if you wrote an article don't hesitate to claim extra ISK!

As a special Samichlaus gift we present: AICCU 2011.12.05.

This new version of AICCU supports all Windows versions between Windows 2000 and Windows 8 (Developer Preview). It now has build-in support for Windows User Account Control (UAC) on Vista, Seven and 8. See the AICCU History page for more details.

One can download it from the AICCU page.

We have just released the 2011-12-12 edition of AICCU which fixes a time anomaly in the binary. This should resolve the messages from AICCU stating that timestamps are wrong.

One can download it from the AICCU page.

The SixXS website has grown a lot over the nearly 10 years of it's existence and quite a few things have changed or have been amended over those years. To keep the internals of the site clean and to keep performance up we have done some major rework on the internals of the site. The site you are looking at now is running on the new engine with a few more tweaks coming up over the next few days.

Hopefully we have tested all the possibilities that the site has to offer, but we have likely missed a few. As such, in case there are any issues, don't hesitate to contact us so that we can resolve them. Don't forget to provide the URL that goes wrong and the actions taken if any to get to that result.