herbalanswers wrote:
Can you tell me what shutting off configure IPv6 is ? I always wonder how that will affect what my computer does...? what does that DO when its ON???
Today it allows you to visit a few test sites around the internet (e.g. http://www.ipvs.apple.com), but nothing other than that. That will eventually change when they truely run out of IPv4 IP addresses, which they have said for years would happen, but not today. I've had mine turned off for years with no ill effects.
What has changed is that in preparation for the day they have to issue IPv6 addresses to new sites, they established June 6th as Worldwide IPv6 day when ISP's were supposed to turn it on and some have. Most apparently have not or are still in the process of rolling it out which seems to have caused problems for many users over the past couple of weeks. Some of it is probably caused by modems and routers that are not IPv6 savy and must be replaced. Some of it is probably DNS sites that are not capable of interpreting IPv6 addresses. I have not seen a good analysis of what's wrong yet and Apple's troubleshooting guidance is still very thin. I've heard rumors that iTunes wasn't ready, that OS X 10.5.8 can't handle it, that the capability was initially removed from Airport Utility 6.0, etc. I turned mine all on for a few minutes, and everything slowed to a crawl.
So some day you will need to turn it back on in order to access every site you need, but until then I think it's best to avoid problems until things settle down.
If you want to see how things are going, go to this site http://test-ipv6.com/ with IPv6 on and off and perhaps it will help determine if you're ready or not.
