IPv6 GRIPE
IPv6: a rough timeline
December 1995: RFC 1883, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification," is published, marking the first standards-track IPv6 publication. The following additional RFCs are published at the time same:
- 1884: "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture"
- 1885: "Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Specification"
- 1886: "DNS Extensions to support IP version 6"
- 1887: "An Architecture for IPv6 Unicast Address Allocation"
November 1996: Linux development kernel 2.1.8 adds initial support for IPv6.1
July 1998: RFC 2373, an update to RFC 1884, is published.
December 1998: RFC 2460, an update to RFC 1883, is published.
December 2002 (estimated): noted security researcher Daniel J. Bernstein publishes "The IPv6 mess" archive, a treatise complaining about all of the mistakes he perceives the developers of IPv6 made. It continues to be cited for decades, long after most of the "mistakes" he notes have been corrected.
April 2003: RFC 3513, an update to RFC 2373, is published.
February 2006: RFC 4291, an update to RFC 3513, is published.
April 2006: RFC 4294, "IPv6 Node Requirements," is published.
January 2007: Windows Vista goes General Availability, marking the first Microsoft Windows consumer release to have IPv6 enabled, out of the box.
September 2007: RFC 4941, "Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6," is published. Every major operating system comes to adopt this RFC in the following years, correcting the security gap of MAC addresses being trackable between networks.
April 2011: RFCs 6146 and 6147 are published, outlining a process by which IPv6 can be made backward-compatible with IPv4. It should be noted that this does not mean IPv4 is meaningfully forward-compatible with IPv6, or any other successor protocol, however.
June 2011: the IPv6 community holds World IPv6 Day, a 24-hour test to see how users are impacted by enabling IPv6 on web sites. (Google shows 0.34% IPv6 use for this day.)
December 2011: RFC 6434, a replacement for RFC 4294, is published. It corrects the earlier mistake of mandating that all IPv6 nodes MUST support (not use, support) IPsec, changing the posture to SHOULD.
June 2012: the IPv6 community builds on the success of World IPv6 Day with World IPv6 Launch, where participating web sites enable IPv6, and leave it enabled. (Google shows 0.65% IPv6 in use for this day.)
July 2017: RFC 8200, an update to RFC 2460, is published. It is denoted as an Internet Standard, rather than the previous designation as a Draft Standard.
March 2026: Google's IPv6 statistics show that more than half of its users are reaching the site via IPv6, on March 28th. This repeats itself on April 18th.
Criticism, angry letters, suggestions for other IPv6 GRIPES: please contact me on the fediverse.
Hat tip to Youssef Habchi for the fabulously angry-looking Road Rage font!
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