I got the Lemonhead refill, today:

There will be much joy at the office, tomorrow.

Ok, so site multihoming with IPv6 is going to be tough - we all know that.  Basically, an ISP will give you a PA (provider assigned) prefix, usually a /48, since it's next to impossible to get a /32 of PI (provider independent) space, for fear of the IPv6 route table ballooning like its v4 cousin.  Unfortunately, many ISPs (ahem, Verizon) have chosen to filter any prefixes larger than /32s.  If you get yourself multihomed, and happen to arrange with your upstreams to announce your PA space through both ISPs, the prefix will probably not make it everywhere because of this.

Some folks at the IETF came up with Shim6, or the "Site Multihoming by IPv6 Intermediation" protocol.  After reading through some of the documents, I'm wondering why people think this is a good idea.  From what I can tell, the IPv6 stacks on end hosts are modified to accept multiple addresses from different provider's PA space, and netogiate which ones to use and/or load-balance with the remote hosts.  This seems like a bad idea for several reasons:

• The site multihoming should not be handled by end hosts - this potentially gives users the ability to control traffic flow out or in to your networks.  Erm, remind you of source routing, or the original RSVP spec?  Anyone?
• Multiple IPv6 addresses on end hosts is possible, but just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.  I don't have faith in many operating systems to handle this properly.  Sorry.
• How do you firewall hosts that could potentially have up to a dozen different addresses?  How about keeping state?  Maybe we'll end up using the flowlabel field after all…
• This is worse than a routing table with 640k routes!

Hopefully this will just go by the wayside.  I really don't want to see this implemented.

I've been using the Nokia E71 for over half a year so far.  Despite my initial impressions, I've grown to really hate the phone due to some outrageous software problems.

Bluetooth - major issues

The phone would pair with my car just fine, but within a second or two of dialing or answering an incoming call, it would disconnect.  I would then have to manually connect via the phone, and sometimes it would work.  After almost driving off the road one day, I decided to just delete the pairing and give up.

The connection with my Motorola S9 headphones (A2DP) works, but every time I power on the headphones, I have to go through a little connect/disconnect battle with the phone before they'll stay connected.  I'll power on the headphones, they'll connect to the phone, and then 5 seconds later the phone will disconnect.  I then manually initiate a connection from the phone to the headphones, and 50% of the time the connection will stay put.  For the other 50%, the phone will disconnect again after 5 seconds, and I'll have to go through the process once again.

It looks like everyone else has similar problems with the Bluetooth.  And the 110.07.127 upgrade didn't help, at all.  In fact, it made things worse with my car's handsfree link - it doesn't work at all, now.  Thankfully, the Motorola S9's still work with the same connect/disconnect issues.

Mail - 110.07.127 upgrade broke it

Prior to the 110.07.127 upgrade, I could connect (via IMAPS) to my eMail account, and keep the application open all day.  I'd receive eMail as it was delivered to my mailboxes, and everything worked well.  However, after upgrading, the eMail application seems to terminate the connection after about 20-30 minutes.  According to a packet capture, the phone doesn't even send the normal FIN/FIN+ACK/ACK sequence - the connection just goes away.  I thought this was some inactivity timer, so I setup a script to eMail myself every two minutes.  Again, after 20-30 minutes of receiving the test eMails, the application disconnected.  Crummy.

VPN - It used to work, kinda

I got it working with the original firmware with a policy-based VPN only.  I never could get XAUTH to work.  However, ever since the 110.07.127 upgrade, I can't even get the policy-based VPN configuration to work anymore.  Due to the fantastic amount (ie, none) of debugging logs available on the phone, I was forced to give up on this, too.

Memory issues and random problems

The other day, I had to delete all my eMail settings (2 accounts) and re-enter everything in from scratch.  Why?  There was one folder that had become corrupted, and resulted in either locking up the whole phone or a "memory full" message when highlighted.  Who knows.  Reading online, it seems like lots of people have this problem, too.  And there's also the "share online" feature that allows you to upload photos to your Flickr account on-the-fly.  Unfortunately, after two uses, now the application just says "System Error -1" when started.  This happened with both firmware versions.

So, what's the verdict?  Well, the phone still works, but the software is buggy as hell.  This will be my last Nokia/Symbian phone, if I don't see a software upgrade that addresses these issues, SOON.  Nokia, please QA your software, thanks!

The trees on Ballantyne Commons Pkwy are in bloom, so I took a few shots.

19:01 < beez> look like cherry blossoms

Hmm, I guess they do look similar.

All you IPv6-heads, check this out:

 HOST: dax.prolixium.com                        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. prolixium-2.tunnel.tserv4.nyc4.ipv6.he.net  0.0%    16    4.5   4.3   3.8   4.8   0.3
 2. gige-g3-8.core1.nyc4.he.net                 0.0%    16    2.7   1.8   1.1   2.7   0.5
 3. 10gigabitethernet3-1.core1.sjc2.he.net      0.0%    16   80.8  83.1  80.1  93.1   4.3
 4. gige-g1-1.core1.fmt1.he.net                 0.0%    16   91.6  83.8  80.7  91.6   3.5
 5. 100m-0-0.tserv1.fmt.ipv6.he.net             0.0%    16   81.6  81.4  80.9  82.4   0.4
 6. apnic-1-pt.tunnel.tserv1.fmt.ipv6.he.net    0.0%    16  256.2 256.3 255.6 257.2   0.5
 7. 2001:dc0:8000:23::2                         0.0%    16  455.6 455.5 453.6 458.6   1.4
 8. 2001:cc8:6201:1::2                          0.0%    16  713.1 724.2 711.5 869.9  40.3
 9. ge0-2-35.v6wlg0.acsdata.co.nz               0.0%    16  730.5 744.5 722.4 882.3  40.2
10. nzwlg01.sixxs.net                           0.0%    16  732.0 732.5 722.1 751.2   8.2

Yeah, it's the way it looks.  One of the SixXS PoPs is getting transit from a New Zealand-based ISP that is (apparently) getting transit from a Hurricane Electric tunnel.  I feel sorry for folks hanging off the nzwlg01 PoP :-(

Looks like Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been released.  I think I've been running pieces of it for the past couple weeks.  The final version is just a dist-upgrade away!  Here's an interesting list of development time taken for past Debian releases:

buzz->rex 6 months
rex->bo 6 months
bo->hamm 13 months
hamm->slink 8 months
slink->potato 17 months
potato->woody 23 months
woody->sarge 35 months
sarge->etch 22 months
etch->lenny 22 months

(information found on a Slashdot comment)

I started using Debian around the 'woody' release, I think.

It's tonight!  Don't miss it.

I finally broke down on Sunday and converted my network from SixXS' (or rather, OCCAID) usewr01 (see previous posts) to Hurricane Electric's tserv4.

2001:4830:122d::/48 -> 2001:470:8ad6::/48

It took me a few hours to hit everything, but I did it during the Super Bowl, so I wasn't missing anything that I cared about (although I did catch the new Star Trek trailer).  Here's the list of tasks I hit:

Stuff on my hosts
----------------------------------------------------------------

* dax ( rc.local, quagga, pf.conf, dns cfg, dns zones,
        apache, mrtg replace, mrtg interface, start.prolixium.com access )

* nonce ( interfaces, quagga, dns cfg, dns zones, apache, exim )

* starfire ( interfaces, quagga, radvd )
* kamikaze ( local, quagga, radvd )
* mercury ( local, quagga )
* atlantis ( apache )

* scimitar ( interfaces, quagga, radvd )
* proton ( local, quagga, radvd )

* nat ( interfaces, quagga, radvd )
* linksys ( local, quagga, radvd )
* patricia ( search n' replace )

* tachyon ( local, quagga, radvd )

* hysteresis-JUNOS-ES ( search n' replace )
* hysteresis-JUNOS ( search n' replace )
* vorta ( search n' replace )
* stargazer ( search n' replace )
* defiant ( search n' replace )
* excelsior ( search n' replace )

* six ( interfaces )
* eclipse ( interfaces )
* lepton ( interfaces )
* neodymium ( interfaces )

* nislab01 ( ip6tables )

Stuff elsewhere
----------------------------------------------------------------

* joker.com update GTLD records ( ns2 and ns3 )
* SixXS update DNS ( remove )
* HE.net update DNS ( add ns2 and ns3 )

So, now I'm finally back in the IPv6-connected world - without hacky NAT!