Contributor I

Enable IPv6

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in 2013 it is way time to add IPv6 support to every things we connect to the Internet.

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MikeV

IPv6 use continues to grow. This makes sense, since now four out of the five regional IP registries are completely out of IPv4 addresses. 2015 was a big year for IPv6 growth worldwide. The numbers below are based on Google data... APNIC numbers are higher in some areas as they use a different way of measuring user percentage. Cisco's 6Lab site shows both numbers on their maps, but only provides historical data for Google.

- IPv6 users in the US grew almost 10% this year, with 23-24% now using IPv6; over 60 million users.
- Canada's on the rise, moving up to almost 7% with a big jump in September; About 2.3 million users.
- Germany continues a steady climb, rising about 7% to over 20% now, almost 14.2 million users.
- Belgium also continues a steady climb, rising about 10% to over 38%, about 3.6 million users.
- Japan grew from about 6% at the start of the year to just shy of 9%... over 10 million users.
- Portugal almost had 300% growth... currently at 20% of users with IPv6, after starting with only 5.5%.
- Greece was just shy of 200% growth... starting the year at 6.75% now at just under 19%.
- Switzerland made a big jump in June, and continues to rise... over 26% of users have IPv6.
- Sweden IPv6 users just about doubled this year... over 2.5% have IPv6.
- The Netherlands started 2015 at about 2.1%... they briefly peaked over 4% before falling back to 3.8%.
- The UK took a big step this year, jumping from 0.25% in January to over 2.5%.
- Brazil also took a big step this year, jumping from 0.1% to almost 6.5%!

An ISP in the UK has begun providing IPv6-only service... the ISP provides ONLY IPv6 addresses to customers, then handles translation to IPv4 sites as necessary on their end. Guess what won't work on this ISP, since it doesn't support IPv6?

Music services will likely continue to support IPv4 for a long time, yes that's true... but if IPv6 only ISP's start popping up in greater numbers (and they can't get more IPv4 addresses, so this is increasingly likely), Sonos will be just as useless.

And to lend credence to an earlier comment about IPv6 being more responsive than IPv4... I submit the two Smokeping graphs attached. One shows the IPv4 response time over the past week from my VPS in New York to my home router in Virginia, the other shows the IPv6 response. The v4 graph clearly shows increased delays during "prime time", while the v6 graph is much cleaner.

Get going with this Sonos... many would say you're already well behind the curve on this. The devices can support IPv6, even if your servers don't,

The S in IOT stands for Security.

J

JeroenB

Lyricist III

I was wondering what the status is of Sonos supporting IP v6.

"Starting June 1, 2016 all apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking."
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=05042016a

What does this mean for updates to the official Sonos App? Probably Apple will reject it? It depends on how hard coded IPv4 is implemented.

(and this goes for all the 3rd party apps such as my little project SonoControls https://itunes.apple.com/app/sonocontrols-controller-widget/id1082647737?mt=8). After all, the only way 3rd party apps can connect to Sonos devices is with a fixed IPv4 address.

Also, there is a risk that IoT apps / universal remote Apps that now support Sonos, will drop Sonos support as soon as they find out that Apple rejects their App updates for using fixed IPv4 addresses.

Again, not sure how strict Apple will be with this, but the Apple documentation link I posted suggests this will probably be reason for rejection.

Apple will not remove apps, but will reject App updates in such cases.

J

jishi

Headliner II

Although I'm all in favor of IPv6 support, having IPv6 connectivity to internet doesn't restrict you from using IPv4 locally. I would assume that the Apple rules applies primarily for internet facing network traffic, and not necessarily for local traffic.

However, with that setup (having only IPv6 as internet connectivity), streaming services would probably struggle to function, since there are no IPv6 stack on the players. That will be a much bigger problem for Sonos. Having to rely on v4->v6 bridging in a local router or with your ISP is not a pleasant situation to be in.

J

JeroenB

Lyricist III

I would assume that the Apple rules applies primarily for internet facing network traffic, and not necessarily for local traffic.

My experience with Apple and App Store guidelines: they have rules and there is no room for "but surely you see my situation is just a bit different" arguments. You either stick to Apple's rules or get rejected. But then again, if a lot of big brands are not ready for IPv6 only, Apple might be more flexible. We will have to wait and see.

Perhaps this is something the Sonos iOS app team knows more about...?

Updated. From https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternetWeb/Conceptual/NetworkingOverview/UnderstandingandPreparingfortheIPv6Transition/UnderstandingandPreparingfortheIPv6Transition.html

"Some apps also pass the SCNetworkReachabilityCreateWithAddress method an IPv4 address of 169.254.0.0, a self-assigned link-local address, to check for an active Wi-Fi connection. To check for Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity, look for the network reachability flag kSCNetworkReachabilityFlagsIsWWAN instead."

To me this reads as: "if you are using a fixed IPv4 address, even only to check something on your local network: too bad, you have to fix this as well.". We'll see.

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

Hi JeroenB, our team has already been looking into this to see if we'll need to make any adjustments to the app. The players themselves won't have an issue but we're investigating if any changes need to be made to the app and working to change anything that does.

Thanks for asking.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

MikeV

How timely for some new info for this topic... I just thought I'd provide a link to this video... it's from a Cisco symposium in France last month, with one of Comcast's IPv6 engineers talking about their path to IPv6 only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSLrJfBwkiI

The USA's largest ISP has a full IPv4/v6 dual-stack network NOW, and they're moving towards IPv6-only. There's no definitive timeline given of course, but they're clearly looking ahead as they mention that they will have more info and insight into implementation of "IPv4 as a service" in a year. It could be as soon as late next year that they start treating IPv4 as "second class" over IPv6, as more and more traffic travels over IPv6. They already see 25-30% of their network traffic as IPv6; About 90% of their traffic to a "major search provider" (read: Google) is IPv6. Those numbers are only going up.

I hope this serves as an early wakeup call... it's only going to become more and more prevalent. And it might happen sooner than you think. As a Comcast customer embracing IPv6, I really hope that Sonos has it on the calendar to at least start working on it.

The S in IOT stands for Security.

MikeV

Halfway through the year... some updates on deployment around the world over the past 6 months...

- The US is up to just shy of 29% of users using IPv6. Of the top 500 sites in the US as per Alexa, 56 are now using IPv6 (up 10), with another 6 under construction/testing.
- Canada has moved up almost 2% to 8.8% of users using it.
- Germany has moved up almost 4% to 23.7% of users.
- Belgium is up to 43.4% of users...
- The Netherlands has moved up about 2.5% to 6.3% of users.
- Portugal has increased almost 2% to 21.7%.
- The UK has made a BIG jump of over 10%, with almost 13% of users using IPv6.
- Norway's at about 7% of users with IPv6.
- France has over 11% of users with IPv6.
- Ireland has 7.25%...
- Greece continues its roll with over 4% growth to 23.4%
- Japan's up over 2.5% to 11.6%...

Not sure how many Sonos customers there might be in Saudi Arabia, Oman, India, and Pakistan, but over 70% of the transit networks in those countries have IPv6 in place, meaning big jumps in user counts could be coming. A good many European countries have already passed this point (some at 80% or higher even!) so growth in IPv6 use is not slowing down at all. BTW, for comparison, the US has about 65% of its transit networks supporting IPv6. Of course, keep in mind how many providers and networks there are in the US versus the rest of the world.

The S in IOT stands for Security.

T

Tozz

Lyricist I

I am looking to replace my current Squeezebox setup, as that ship has sailed. However, I have an IPv6-only CIFS share over the Internet. It does have IPv4, but it is not reachable over IPv4 publicly. So I need the Sonos to be able to connect to IPv6 for CIFS. I dont care so much about IPv6 audio streams.

I dont fully understand how Sonos works (eg. what is the CIFS client, is it the Sonos device, or is it the App controlling it?). Can someone tell me if he CIFS client supports IPv6?

If not, any ideas on when this will be supported? Sonos would be useless for me until that time.

MikeV

The CIFS device would be the actual Sonos speaker/player, not the controller. Sonos speakers/players do not currently support IPv6. Sonos has made no indication of plans to support IPv6 at this time.

The S in IOT stands for Security.

T

Tozz

Lyricist I

That is just sad 😞

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