Monday, June 25, 2012

Jobs in Vermont

Jobs @ GE

General Search:http://jobs.gecareers.com/

All jobs open in Burlington Vermont

General Skills

HTML, Javascript, SQL Server, C#, C++, COM, ASP/ASP.NET, .NET, Visual Basic.   Look at each job description for detailed requirements.

Specific Jobs in my department

Management-ish

Software Development

Software Automated Testing


There are a few pending jobs in both Test Automation and Software Dev.  Use the "all jobs in Burlington" link to monitor them.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Apple steps back from IPv6

Apple is under fire for reduced IPv6 compatibility in their latest release of AirPort Utility version 6.

http://www.itworld.com/networking/267710/apple-under-fire-backing-ipv6-support

The article goes on to say that Comcast is planning to roll out IPv6 to the Home market soon.  It is currently available in only two cities, with plans to be offered in all markets later this year.  More details can be found here http://www.itworld.com/networking/267710/apple-under-fire-backing-ipv6-support (linked from the above article).



Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Seeking 6to4, it works...on purpose

Since first setting up my router to use IPv6, I've always wondered why it so easily found the ISP's 6to4 tunnel.  In the days since, I've spent more time reading up on IPv6.

There's a reason the router found the tunnel -- it is built into the IPv6 spec. It uses a reserved "anycast" IPv4 address to forward traffic through.

When I saw the "auto-config" button on the router setup page, I pressed it half-thinking "this'll never work" and was absolutely amazed when it did (do these "auto" buttons ever work?!)   It seems that the boffins behind IPv6 thought through many of the deployment issues.

Why repeat what better writers have already created...



The Wikipedia article also contains a link to public 6to4 relay points, however the published link has been updated and indicates that it is no longer needed since RFC3068 exists.


IPv6 RunAsRadio show 254 is up.

The interview on RunAsRadio has been published. A big Thank you to Richard Campbell, it was a great experience.

Direct show link:  http://runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=254

RunAsRadio web site

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Better UI, Please!

I use Quicken to manage my money (a.k.a herd cats).  This morning I launched Qucken and it politely indicated that an update was available and asked whether to download & apply the update now?  I selected "yes" - and the window closed.

Nothing else seemed to happen.  No other window popped up.  Thinking that maybe it had applied the update and closed, I launched Quicken again.  A dialog came up indicating that Quicken was already running and that if this message kept occurring I should reboot the computer (yes - the suggested fix was basically toggle the power switch).

Opening Task Manager and viewing the network activity tab showed a slow trickle of data.  Popping open Wireshark showed me the IP address, and using nslookup determined the address tracked back to quicken.com.  I used Wireshark for two reasons:  where was the conversation to, and was anything actually being downloaded?

10 minutes later a dialog finally came up stating the update was ready to install - and pressing the "next" button gave me an installation progress bar.

Yo!  Quicken!!   Bad UI!


Killer App for IPv6 - the home Cloud?

I was honored to be on RunAs Radio talking with Richard Campbell about IPv6.  We talked a bit about what the impact on IPv6 may be - and in a perfect world nobody should really notice, IP addresses should be under the covers.  One thought came to me was IPSec and I recalled an interview I heard on a previous show with some guys from Microsoft.  They were talking about how they could access their office network from anywhere in the world, VPN technologies were just built in.

After the interview was over another thought came to me.  With all of this talk of the cloud, what happens if the devices within our home can be included in this thing we call the cloud.  I find all of the software on my PC to be easier to use for managing my photos and music than any "cloud" app.  I also have a problem paying rent to access my own photos and music.  But wait!  What if I could stream or access photos from the hard drive in my house?

How many times have you taken photos with a fancy camera and didn't have time to upload them.  I pull out my smartphone to show picture to friends and family - and of course can only access those that I remembered to upload.

Gee, what if my home was part of the cloud?  If I could securely access all photos, videos, and music from my phone as if it were part of the cloud!   You could extend Skydrive or YouTube or Picasa to include the home.  For content that you wanted to share with the world the upload/share button would move it to a public server.  For those thousands of pictures of kids and dogs (cat people already have a web site), just pull out the smartphone and share with the grandparents.


Wednesday, February 1, 2012

No IPv6 for you!

My new Motorola cable modem arrive last week and I hooked it up.   Unfortunately it reports "IPv4 only" - I guess Comcast hasn't enabled IPv6 in this area.  So I'm stuck using the 6to4 tunnel.

Device specifics: SURFboard SB6121.  Hooking it up was painless.  I called 1-800-COMCAST.  The tech first asked for the device serial number - I've heard they do a stolen device search because people take the equipment with them when they move and sell it on eBay.  Next he asked for the MAC and put me on hold for 5-8 minutes.  When he came back on the line it all worked.

Word of warning, if you are using a VoIP phone, your old modem will be disabled during the call.  Consider calling from a cellphone.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

DNS, DNS, where art thou DNS?

While configuring my router last night I began to wonder what the DNS settings were.  Windows 7 now indicates that DNS is at an external address - being that of the router (of course the gateway).  I stumbled across a post on the comcast6 website where they published the IPv6 DNS entries and began to wonder if my network was using those values?   After poking around for awhile I was unable to determine what DNS my PC is actually using.  Windows 7 is simply forwarding all DNS requests to the gateway address.

The router allows one to override certain settings in the IPv4 configuration.  This particular router allows a hybrid autoconfig scheme where it pulls in settings via DHCP and the user may then override specific settings as needed.  However no such interface exists on the IPv6 configuration UI.   Actually, I wasn't able to find a place to define any network based settings at this level for IPv6.

This is more of an academic quest - IPv6 DNS is working.  I know that DHCP has morphed under IPv6, and I need to read the IPv6 specification a bit more closely than I have so far.

I'll get right on that as soon as I catch up on back episodes of TopGear.


Monday, January 23, 2012

Win7 IPv6 disabling 6to4

I spent some time this evening making sure that my Windows 7 laptop wasn't directly accessing 6to4. I wanted to make sure that the Win7 computer was properly routing traffic to the router - and the router then pushing data through the tunnel.

First thing was to disable the IPv6 traffic through tunnel interfaces. The fix-it programs on the MS website are quite handy for this job (See KB 929852). After rebooting I used regedit to view the local settings for the PC (as described on the KB) just to verify all settings. Because IPv6 was previously enabled using the full-tilt option, everything continues to work. Using a tracert, nslookup, and ping, I verified that traffic is indeed flowing through the gateway address (the router).

The reason I disabled the local 6to4 was because the Win7 computer could have tunneled through the IPv4 address of the router.  So even if the new modem allows native IPv6 the Win7 PC may have continued to seek out the network using the 6to4 adapter.  These kinds of changes should be encapsulated at the router thus enabling access for all devices.

In other news, I purchased the Motorola SB6121 SURFboard modem. That should be hooked up and ready to go by the end of this week. I hope to see if native IPv6 is available in my area this weekend.

Comcast has also updated their blog site indicating support for World IPv6 Day 2012 as well as announcing a pilot of IPv6 in select California markets. See http://www.comcast6.net/.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

World IPv6 Day - this time it's for real!

Just announced,  June 6th 2012 will be World IPv6 Day.

...and this time they promise to leave it on afterwards!

More details...
http://www.worldipv6launch.org/

Last year was a connect-a-thon.  After 24-hours they unplugged everything and went home.  Not this year.  We can keep using it and work out the kinks.

In preparation I'm buying a new DOCSIS 3.0 Cable "modem" (Motorola SB6120 SURFboard) which has native support for IPv6.  Comcast is listed as a supporter of IPv6 day, so I'm hoping to have native IPv6 to my house rather than my current 6to4 tunnel.

Show your inner dork.  Get your running shoes on, this is the kind of thing that'll cause people to chase you down and beat you up.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Adventures in IPv6

A little over a year ago I heard about a world wide event called World IPv6 Day which was supposed to give everyone a preview of IPv6.  In the months prior I began researching what changes I could make to my home network and give it a try.  IPv6 is the next big thing, it will save the world.  Since I work for a company that owns a class A network (not running out anytime soon), the only way to learn IPv6 was to screw around with my home network.

My ISP is Comcast.  After poking around I discovered that they have a great technology area on their website.  It contains blogs and howto articles, readiness site, as well as progress reports towards technology adoption.  Around the same time there was some DNS highjacking going on and DNSSEC was top of mind too. Comcast was in the early days of providing DNSSEC too and had published instructions on how to setup your home to use it (they recently announced that DNSSEC has been rolled out to all users - no special configuration required).

Google is your friend

I found the Comcast technology website by searching for "comcast ipv6."  After figuring out what kind of IPv6 I would be able to use (6to4) - I had to read up on that.  And later when everything seemed to be configured correctly and still not working... a quick search sent me to the Microsoft KB articles for a few "fix-it" scripts.  Cox has limited information, and it looks like TimeWarner has a lot of detail like Comcast.  All three claim to have started trials in 2011 with plans to roll out in 2012.  Some plan to address their Business customers first and then upgrade Home customers later.   Comcast is rather specific with their plans - they even discuss the address width that they plan on using (very wide) during initial rollout, and then plan to shrink it later once all the bugs are shaken out.

When in doubt - Google it.

Equipment Check

First off was to check my equipment and determine what might and might not work.  I use a Netgear N600 WNDR3700 (gen1) Wifi Firewall/Router, Comcast provides the Cable "modem" (RCA DCM425), and my OS is Windows 7 (x64).

The first stop is probably your home router, if it won't do IPv6 go to jail and do not collect $200.  While I haven't tried it - Comcast is providing a 6to4, so maybe you can tunnel from the PC all they through to the other end - some assembly required.  Thankfully Netgear released a firmware update early last year that provided support for IPv6.

Comcast has provided details regarding which equipment will support IPv6 at http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/.  First thing noted, the cable "modem" I have doesn't support IPv6 (and I've only had it a year!).  No matter, a bit more searching turned up that Comcast is offering 6to4 technology, which is basically a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that tunnels traffic over the legacy IPv4.  So my router and PC both see an IPv6 network, but the traffic tunnels through IPv4 technology.  Not truly IPv6 - but my computer won't know the difference (well - that isn't completely true).  It is important to note that 6to4 technology is a temporary solution until native IPv6 is rolled out.   It allows two ends of the conversation to support and test IPv6 while the infrastructure between the two nodes uses legacy IPv4.

Configuration

Netgear has an IPv6 setup page that allows one to manually enter the configuration information.  For grins and giggles I pressed the "auto-detect" button rather than entering all of the required data.  To my surprise the router correctly found the 6to4 gateway and the configuration was complete!

Windows 7 out of the box has IPv6 configured.  ipconfig showed that the router had assigned an IPv6 address already.  So that seemed to all that was necessary.

Test the configuration.

Alternate name for this section:  Nothing Works

Again - back to Google.  I found a website called Test Your IPv6 at http://test-ipv6.com/.   I later would find a duplication of this site at Comcast http://test-ipv6.comcast.net/# 

First attempt - all tests failed.   However it gave great diagnostic information, everything from "your browser prefers IPv4 over IPv6" and "DNS isn't working."   More poking around, a few more configuration changes, and still nothing worked.

I began to wonder if Windows was correctly talking to the router, which maybe wasn't forwarding traffic through the tunnel.  Harder yet was trying to determine how to get my software to "prefer" IPv6.  I use Google Chrome as my browser and couldn't find any settings Under the Hood.  The Chrome webpage indicates the Chrome is IPv6 ready.  I also know from my day job that Chrome likes to use Windows and IE network settings.  This was a good hint - I guessed that the problem had to be in the OS, fix that and other things might work.

Finally I stumbled across a few MS KB articles.  One specifically talked about changing Windows 7 to use different IPv6 settings and 6to4 adapter (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852).  The KB was long and had many many choices - I think this was the first time I had ever used their "Fix it" download option.  So I let it make the changes for me.  Still - nothing worked.

I slapped the laptop shut and went to bed.   Days later I decided to pickup the project once more.  Strangely - it was working.

Not all Tests are Equal

One things I hadn't considered was the dual stack issue.  IPv4 will be around for awhile.  Some of these tests provide details around whether IPv4 will work after turning on IPv6.

Now that I could access ipv6.google.com I tried running the tests just to make sure I wasn't imagining things.  test-ipv6.com gave a score of 7/10.   As I noted above, I found the same webpage at Comcast - so I ran that one too... it gave a score of 10/10.  After using profanity in the form of a question - I decided to put that on hold.

All hooked up and nowhere to go

So now that it works, what can you do?   Google offers search at http://ipv6.google.com.  According to the Google IPv6 Day page,  GMail and YouTube are supposed offer IPv6 access too.  I wasn't able to figure that out - it seems that much of the World IPv6 Day have been shutdown.

Personally I think it should all be turned on all the time.  It's the only way we're going to knock the bugs out.

Next?

Where am I now?  I wonder if my PC has it's own 6to4 tunnel into Comcast.  My next step along this path is to undo some of the Windows changes (and read more about them). Both ping and tracert for Windows 7 have a few IPv6 options ("tracert -6" for instance).   I'm trying to decipher the output to determine where the tunnel is and how the home router is involved.

I plan to head back to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852 and run some of the other scripts.  While writing this post I discovered that one of the choices is "change DNS to prefer IPv6."   My goal is to verify that devices on my network are talking to the router, and the router is sending data through the 6to4 tunnel.

And if you read this and wondered what they heck IPv6 is and why do I care? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

This is one of those "yeah, kind of important" but don't worry, somebody else will take care of it.  Go back to sleep.

Unless you are a software developer.  Be on the lookout for IPv6.  Do you have any code that assumes an IPAddress is either 15 characters long or has Dots in the addresss (like string s.Split(".")) - you have work to do.

Links

Test your configuration http://test-ipv6.com/
Windows 7 configuration fix-it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852
Windows 7 6to4 adapter http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980486
Google Search, IPv6 enabled: http://ipv6.google.com
World IPv6 Day: http://www.worldipv6day.org/