[140292] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Yahoo and IPv6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin Oberman)
Mon May 9 12:34:58 2011
To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 May 2011 12:25:55 EDT."
<11723.1304958355@localhost>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 09:34:12 -0700
From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>, Arie Vayner <ariev@vayner.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
> Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 12:25:55 -0400
>
> On Mon, 09 May 2011 18:16:20 +0300, Arie Vayner said:
> > Actually, I have just noticed a slightly more disturbing thing on the Yahoo
> > IPv6 help page...
> >
> > I have IPv6 connectivity through a HE tunnel, and I can reach IPv6 services
> > (the only issue is that my ISP's DNS is not IPv6 enabled), but I tried to
> > run the "Start IPv6 Test" tool at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ipv6/ and
> > it says:
> > "We detected an issue with your IPv6 configuration. On World IPv6 Day, you
> > will have issues reaching Yahoo!, as well as your other favorite web sites.
>
> The *really* depressing part is that it says the same thing for me, on a *known*
> working IPv6 network.
>
> And then when I retry it a few minutes later, with a tcpdump running, it works.
>
> And then another try says it failed, though tcpdump shows it seems to work.
>
> For what it's worth, the attempted download file is:
>
> % wget http://v6test.yahoo.com/eng/test/eye-test.png
> --2011-05-09 11:44:39-- http://v6test.yahoo.com/eng/test/eye-test.png
> Resolving v6test.yahoo.com... 2001:4998:f00d:1fe::2000, 2001:4998:f00d:1fe::2002, 2001:4998:f00d:1fe::2003, ...
> Connecting to v6test.yahoo.com|2001:4998:f00d:1fe::2000|:80... connected.
> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
> Length: unspecified [image/png]
> Saving to: `eye-test.png.1'
>
> [ <=> ] 2,086 --.-K/s in 0s
>
> 2011-05-09 11:44:39 (154 MB/s) - `eye-test.png.1' saved [2086]
>
> Looking at the Javascript that drives the test, it appears the *real* problem
> is that they set a 3 second timeout on the download - which basically means
> that if you have to retransmit either the DNS query or the TCP SYN, you're
> dead as far as the test is concerned.
I have talked to Yahoo engineers about this and they say that their
testing has shown that, if it takes more than 3 seconds for a site to
load, they start to lose significant traffic. Hence the 3 second
timeout.
Sadly, I'm afraid that they have a point, but at the same time I suspect
that they are assuring failure for almost everyone. A 5 second timeout
would probably be more reasonable, but is probably unacceptable to Yahoo
management.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
