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It bothers me that AWS doesn't have usable IPv6 support (not in VPCs, unavailable for EC2 instances, not S3, missing from Route53, etc). I think there is a bun

It bothers me that AWS doesn't have usable IPv6 support (not in VPCs, unavailable for EC2 instances, not S3, missing from Route53, etc). I think there is a bunch of progressive companies running on AWS that would like to offer IPv6, but cannot.

IgorPartola 11y ago
I agree with you that it is very important that AWS offers it everywhere. However, I would say they do offer it "where it counts": their load balancer a are already dual stack and Route 53 ALIAS records support this directly too. Your clients can access you via IPv6 and that is huge.
- justincormack 11y ago
  But not in S3, or on the CDN, for example.
- jnsaff2 11y ago
  Their LoadBalancer is IPv6 only in EC2 Classic which is being deprecated.
  - tsavola 11y ago
    When you create an AAAA alias record in Route 53 and point it to a VPC load balancer, it gives out an IPv6 address. It does only mention A record in the load balancer description's DNS Name field, so I don't know what to make of it.
    - jnsaff2 11y ago
      Yes, this is very confusing. It assigns the IPv6 address but that does not actually work as the LB is in the VPC which does not support IPv6. Lesson I learned: testing whether IPv6 actually works is worthwile.
      - tsavola 11y ago
        That's what I was afraid of...
adevine 11y ago
Apparently Apple announced that once iOS 9 is released, all apps will be required to support ipv6. Given the large number of apps that use AWS as a backend, how will this be feasible?
- arbitrage 11y ago
  Supporting IPv6 doesn't necessarily mean IPv6 exclusively. Also, there's always tunneling. Hacky, but it might be the stick that is needed to whip people into actually using IPv6.
- mfenniak 11y ago
  The app can support IPv6 while not actually using it for communication. This would be a matter of allowing people to enter IPv6 addresses, websites, e-mail addresses, etc; logging, and displaying IPv6 addresses rather than hard-coding IPv4-only approaches, etc. Basically, prepare your app so that if your backend supports IPv6, your app already does. It would be bigger news if iOS 9 required all apps to support not having access to IPv4.
  - sp332 11y ago
    There's really no point having IPv6 if you still require IPv4. It's a natural middle step, but you're still burning an IPv4 address.
    - simon_vetter 11y ago
      On the contrary, there are advantages in having your apps/clients support ipv6 even if your backend is not ready to offer v6 connectivity: 1) your app/client will work just fine on ipv6-only networks with NAT64 gateways, making for a better experience for your customers (less breakage on such networks) and will help network operators transitioning to v6, 2) if it does any kind of p2p (think rtp, webrtc, bittorrent, sip, etc.), it will take advantage of nat-free v6 paths for client to client communications, regardless of which address family it uses to talk to the backend.
- dspillett 11y ago
stevekemp 11y ago
Route53 has IPv6 support in the sense that you can get/set AAAA records. It doesn't have it in the sense that their namesrvers are IPv4 only. That's my biggest annoyance with route53. (I wrap route53 with tinydns + git to provide DNS with flat pricing and good reliability - http://dns-api.com/ http://dns-api.com/ )

IgorPartola 11y ago

I agree with you that it is very important that AWS offers it everywhere. However, I would say they do offer it "where it counts": their load balancer a are already dual stack and Route 53 ALIAS records support this directly too. Your clients can access you via IPv6 and that is huge.

justincormack 11y ago
But not in S3, or on the CDN, for example.
jnsaff2 11y ago
Their LoadBalancer is IPv6 only in EC2 Classic which is being deprecated.
- tsavola 11y ago
  When you create an AAAA alias record in Route 53 and point it to a VPC load balancer, it gives out an IPv6 address. It does only mention A record in the load balancer description's DNS Name field, so I don't know what to make of it.
  - jnsaff2 11y ago
    Yes, this is very confusing. It assigns the IPv6 address but that does not actually work as the LB is in the VPC which does not support IPv6. Lesson I learned: testing whether IPv6 actually works is worthwile.
    - tsavola 11y ago
      That's what I was afraid of...

adevine 11y ago

Apparently Apple announced that once iOS 9 is released, all apps will be required to support ipv6. Given the large number of apps that use AWS as a backend, how will this be feasible?

arbitrage 11y ago
Supporting IPv6 doesn't necessarily mean IPv6 exclusively. Also, there's always tunneling. Hacky, but it might be the stick that is needed to whip people into actually using IPv6.
mfenniak 11y ago
The app can support IPv6 while not actually using it for communication. This would be a matter of allowing people to enter IPv6 addresses, websites, e-mail addresses, etc; logging, and displaying IPv6 addresses rather than hard-coding IPv4-only approaches, etc. Basically, prepare your app so that if your backend supports IPv6, your app already does. It would be bigger news if iOS 9 required all apps to support not having access to IPv4.
- sp332 11y ago
  There's really no point having IPv6 if you still require IPv4. It's a natural middle step, but you're still burning an IPv4 address.
  - simon_vetter 11y ago
    On the contrary, there are advantages in having your apps/clients support ipv6 even if your backend is not ready to offer v6 connectivity: 1) your app/client will work just fine on ipv6-only networks with NAT64 gateways, making for a better experience for your customers (less breakage on such networks) and will help network operators transitioning to v6, 2) if it does any kind of p2p (think rtp, webrtc, bittorrent, sip, etc.), it will take advantage of nat-free v6 paths for client to client communications, regardless of which address family it uses to talk to the backend.
dspillett 11y ago

stevekemp 11y ago

Route53 has IPv6 support in the sense that you can get/set AAAA records. It doesn't have it in the sense that their namesrvers are IPv4 only. That's my biggest annoyance with route53. (I wrap route53 with tinydns + git to provide DNS with flat pricing and good reliability - http://dns-api.com/ http://dns-api.com/ )