[Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Risker]

On 1 June 2012 17:12, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> June 6, 2012 is IPv6 Day ( http://www.worldipv6day.org/ ). The goal of
> this global event is to move more ISPs, equipment manufacturers and
> web services to permanent adoption of IPv6.
>
> We're planning to do limited production testing of IPv6 during the
> Berlin Hackathon 2012 (June 2-3). Provided that the number of issues
> we encounter are manageable, we may fully enable IPv6 on IPv6 day, and
> keep it enabled.
>
> MediaWiki has been used with IPv6 by third party wikis for some time.
> Wikimedia uses a set of additional features (GlobalBlocking,
> CheckUser, etc.) which weren't fully IPv6-ready until recently. In
> addition, we're working to ensure that all of Wikimedia's various
> services (mailing lists, blogs, etc.) are IPv6-ready.
>
> == What's the user impact going to be? ==
>
> At least in the June 2-3, 2012 time window, you may see a small number
> of edits from IPv6 addresses, which are in the form
> "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334". See [[w:IPv6 address]].
>
> These addresses should behave as any other IP adress would: You can
> leave messages on their talk pages; you can track their contributions;
> you can block them. CIDR notation is supported for rangeblocks.
>
> An important note about blocking: A single user may have access to a
> much larger number of addresses than in the IPv4 model. This means
> that range blocks (e.g. address with "/64") have to be applied in more
> cases to prevent abuse by more sophisticated users.
>
> In the mid term, user scripts and tools that use simple regular
> expressions to match IPv4 addresses will need to be adapted for IPv6
> support to behave correctly. We suspect that IPv6 usage is going to be
> very low initially, meaning that abuse should be manageable, and we
> will assist in the monitoring of the situation.
>
> User:Jasper Deng is maintaining a comprehensive analysis of the long
> term implications of the IPv6 migration here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jasper_Deng/IPv6
>
> We've set up a test wiki where you can see IPv6 IP addresses. This
> works by assigning you a fake IPv6 address the moment you visit the
> wiki, and allows you to see the behavior of various tools with the new
> address format:
> http://ipv6test.wmflabs.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> The best way to report issues is to register them in Bugzilla and to
> ensure that they are marked as blockers for the IPv6 tracking bug:
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35540
>
> We'll post updates to wikitech-l and elsewhere as appropriate.
>
> All best,
> Erik
>
>

Erik, as I am sure has been conveyed to you, some very serious concerns
have been identified with respect to this from the checkuser corps (and I
mean  the global level, not just one or two projects).  In particular, the
lack of notification, the inability to suddenly redevelop hundreds of tools
and scripts that are not IPv6-friendly, and the fact that there is
significant uncertainty as to exactly how various standard tools such as
CheckUser and Block actually will work, all mitigate against a full,
WMF-wide implementation, even for the short term.

I would very strongly urge two things:

1) Get the global notice up and running now.  Mailing lists reach less than
0.05% of regular users.

2) Consider implementation on only a small segment of projects, preferably
ones that have a small but active Checkuser/Admin team who is interested in
participating in this experiment.

Frankly, I do not believe that many of the aspects of this proposed
implementation have been considered; in particular, there are pretty
significant privacy issues that have not been discussed or addressed.  When
one is giving a Bugzilla link to illustrate that something has been
discussed, it demonstrates pretty soundly that probably no more than 40
users (out of tens of thousands) have any knowledge whatsoever about the
proposal.

Let's try to find some middle ground here, okay?

Risker/Anne