Re: [rrg] Happy Eyeballs RFC6555: app changes so dual-stack IPv4/6 is usable

[Shane Amante <[e-mail]>]

On Nov 12, 2012, at 10:48 PM, Robin Whittle <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Shane,
> 
> Thanks very much for your Happy Eyeballs answer in the "Re: [rrg] ILNP:
> existing applications & other critiques" thread to my question about why
> people watching the Olympics on a Comcast HFC network would sometimes
> have their browser, player or whatever access the videos via IPv6 servers:
> 
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Eyeballs
>  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6555    April 2012
> 
> If the IPv4 connection is behind NAT, including with the NAT box in the
> provider network, and if the individual hosts have their own public
> unicast IPv6 addresses, then this can reduce the traffic through the
> IPv4 NAT box.  The algorithm is designed to generally favor IPv6, with
> the long-term intention of reducing the use of IPv4.
> 
>   "... the client sends two TCP SYNs at the same time over IPv6 and
>    IPv4."
> 
> If an ACK is received for both, the client selects whether to use IPv4
> or IPv6, and caches this for 10 minutes.
> 
>   "The simplest venue for the implementation of Happy Eyeballs is
>    within the application itself."
> 
> It seems that applications need to be altered, by the addition of a
> Happy Eyeballs algorithm, to provide reliable performance when the
> dual-stack host is connected to both IPv4 and IPv6.  This is
> unfortunate, but not surprising - since these are two separate Internets.

No.  Note that Mac OS X _operating_system_ implements a form of Happy Eyeballs. Thus, there is no need for apps on top of OS X to implement it.  IMO, the only reason apps such as Firefox & Chrome have implemented Happy Eyeballs is because Windows does not implement Happy Eyeballs, so the apps vendors were forced to work around it.

This illustrates the fundamental conundrum we're facing. Apps vendors are making up for the deficiencies of the underlying operating system network stacks.  If we give the O/S vendors something to latch on to, then it makes everyone's lives improved.

-shane


> 
>  - Robin
> 
>