Your IP: 38.103.63.16
Near: Washington, District Of Columbia United States
6gate: The incredibly simple, free way to add IPv6 access to your website
6gate setup questions:
Q: How do I add IPv6 to my website?
A: There are many ways to do it (6to4 is usually the easiest method aside from 6gate). However, if you don't want to spend a lot of time learning about IPv6, you can just use 6gate by adding a DNS AAAA record for your website pointing to 2002:42eb:b46b::2 (all methods of adding IPv6 to your website require you to add a DNS AAAA record).
Q: How do I add an AAAA record to my DNS?
A: If you are using a DNS server with a "zone file", you can just edit that file and add a line "www.example.com. AAAA 2002:42eb:b46b::2". If you are using a DNS server with a GUI interface or a DNS hosting service, you would normally select a choice labelled "Add a DNS record" (or something similar), then choose "AAAA" as the record type, and "2002:42eb:b46b::2" as the value.
Q: But I have a CNAME for www.example.com pointing to example.com?
A: That is a very poor way to set up DNS (it's a hack using CNAMEs in a way that they were not intended to be used). However, in this case, you would do the exact same thing as above except use "example.com" instead of "www.example.com" (so you would add a record "example.com. AAAA 2002:42eb:b46b::2").
Q: Can this affect my website visitors in any way? My website is mission critical.
A: It is impossible for this to affect anyone connecting to your website via IPv4. Specifically, the only time that the AAAA record for your domain will be looked up is if someone wants to connect to your website via IPv6. People using IPv6 will connect using our service, and if there is a glitch in our service, it could affect them. But IPv4 users cannot be affected at all no matter what our service does.
General 6gate questions:
Q: What is IPv6, and why do I care about it?
A: IPv6 is the "Next Generation" of the Internet. Currently, the Internet mostly uses IPv4. IPv4 has about 4 billion possible IP addresses, which isn't even enough for every person on the planet to have their own. IPv6 has a nearly infinite amount of IPs (enough so that every person on the planet could have trillions of IP addresses). It has been around and used since the late 1990s, but hasn't become widespread -- yet. By having your website IPv6 accessible, it shows that you are on the cutting edge of technology.
Q: What is 6gate?
A: 6gate is a "transition mechanism" (a protocol used to ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6). It allows a website to be accessible via IPv6 in the easiest possible way, without requiring any changes on the webserver. Therefore, it can be used by any domain no matter where the website is hosted.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: We believe that the transition to IPv6 is important, and one of the main ways to get IPv6 to take off is to get websites IPv6 accessible. We want 6gate to be one of the catalysts that causes IPv6 to overcome IPv4. We have the tools and resources to do that.
Q: How does this work? How can it be so simple?
A: When an IPv6 user tries going to your website, their DNS software will perform an AAAA record lookup of your domain. Their web browser will then connect to the IPv6 address in your AAAA record. So all we do is have you point your AAAA record to our gateway. The web browser connects to our gateway, and requests a webpage. We see that it is a webpage on your site, and we connect to your website via IPv4 and request the page, then sending it back to the IPv6 user.
Q: Why has nobody done this before?
A: Perhaps nobody thought of such a simple solution before. Maybe someone did, but they didn't have the resources to get it done.
Q: Can I donate money to you?
A: No. We appreciate the offer, but feel free to donate the money to another deserving website.
Q: What if I want to stop offering IPv6 connectivity to my website?
A: All you need to do is remove the AAAA record.
Q: What if I want to offer IPv6 connectivity to my website in a different way?
A: Excellent! That is what we were hoping you would do. As soon as your website is ready to be IPv6 accessible in a different way (perhaps through 6to4 or IPv6 tunnelling), you can just change your AAAA record to point to your new IPv6 address.
Q: Are there any websites that are not allowed to use this service?
A: We do not allow adult websites or any illegal websites. And we do reserve the right to disallow other websites, but we do believe in free speech, so we do not expect to do so.
Q: Do you have enough bandwidth and resources for this?
A: We have a lot of resources devoted to this project. We expect that today we can handle IPv6 traffic for websites that generate 3 billion hits per month (total IPv4+IPv6), and the capacity to expand to many times that level if needed. And our bandwidth is very high quality, well connected, and well located; we average 2-5ms to root DNS servers and many major websites.
Q: Who is behind 6gate?
A: The 6gate concept was conceived by and developed by the same people that run the www.DNSstuff.com website, one of the most popular sites for DNS and networking tools.
Technical 6gate questions:
Q: Can I detect that my users are connecting via IPv6, and show them their IPv6 address?
A: Yes! Just like with IPv4, you need an appropriate tool to do so. You can detect a 6gate connection by looking for a "Via:" HTTP header that includes "www.6gate.com" in it. The IP address can be found by looking at the "X-Forwarded-For:" HTTP header, and looking for the last space character on the line. With PHP, you can use:
if ( strpos( $_SERVER['HTTP_VIA'], "www.6gate.com" ) )
{
echo "Welcome IPv6 gateway user from ";
echo strrchr( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'], " " );
}
else
{
echo "Welcome IPv4 user!";
}
Q: Are there any limitations?
A: This service only works with port 80, the standard web port. That means that it is not possible at this point to provide SSL (secure) connections via IPv6. This is due to technical reasons (for SSL, we would have to act as a "man in the middle", or use separate IPv6 addresses for each website needing SSL). We are considering adding such a service. We also may add the ability to use other ports other than port 80.
Q: What other DNS records might I want to add?
A: There are several other records that are optional, but which you may want. These will allow IPv6 users to connect to just http://example.com (without the 'www'), as well as allow people with both IPv4 and IPv6 to force a connection using one type or the other:
example.com. AAAA 2002:42eb:b46b::2
IPv6.example.com. AAAA 2002:42eb:b46b::2
IPv4.example.com. A 192.0.2.80 ; enter the IPv4 address of your website instead of '192.0.2.80'
