[Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[John Du Hart]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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, what time is this scheduled to go live?  And on which projects?
> Please be specific here.
>
> I am gravely concerned about the privacy issues that are attached to IPv6
> IP addresses, as they are in many cases almost personally identifying
> information, something that is not permitted to be released under our
> privacy policy.  Have arrangements been made to hash these IP addresses to
> prevent them from being publicly available?
>
> Risker/Anne
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What personal information do you think is contained in an IPv6 address?

-- 
John