IPv6 Support

[Debian]

I've set this up specifically for ipv6 proxies and there doesn't seem to be any support for it. Please tell me this isn't true and I'm missing something here.

[adrien]

Hi

yes, it's correct, we've received extremely few requests for IPv6 support, and there are a lot of issues with implementing it (mainly DNS, and NAT/DHCP).

Is there a particular reason you need IPv6?

Regards

Adrien de Croy

[Debian]

IPv6 is not hard to implement at all. DNS is easily solved with google ipv6 dns servers (2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844). And with a single ipv4 it can be a 6to4 setup in less than 60 seconds. I really don't get the issues here as this is basic stuff for any network administrator.

[adrien]

there's a lot more to it than choosing an IPv6 DNS server to use.

There's the "happy eyeballs" algorithm for dealing with the issue that you need to do contemporaneous A and AAAA record lookups, because they didn't think about this and provide a way to get A and AAAA records returned from a single query. This opens up a raft of race condition problems.

If you want to prefer IPv6 to IPv4 then you need to delay connection attempts until you've given up waiting on an IPv6 lookup. this just makes 99.999% of browsing a little bit slower.

Double DNS lookups and double TCP connection attempts is another problem.

These are some of the reasons why IPv6 although being nearly 20 years old still has a lot of places where there's no deployment.

Is there some part of the internet that you can only access with IPv6? Or are you using only IPv6 on your LAN? Or are you needing this for reverse proxy to/from an IPv6 interface?

[Debian]

You only need A records if your dual-stacking ipv4+ipv6. In this case I am not trying to do that. I operate a /29 ipv6 range on a private network with full gigabit capacity. The only think I'm trying to replace here is the timeout threshold of squid, which can only handle 500 ipv6's at a time and I need much more than that. So your product came up as a possible replacement to squid's rather excellent ipv6 proxy support. Only 2-3 sites are using these proxy connections and neither site needs ipv4 connectivity at all, so dns is not an issue as thats provided by the local network already.

[adrien]

OK sure, yes IPv6 only is a lot simpler that's for sure.

It's been on our roadmap probably over a decade now, just have had so few requests for it (literally).

So you wouldn't need NAT support either?

[Debian]

I don't need nat support personally. Just a proxy platform that would support a whole lot of ipv6 proxies. I would have loved your product under ipv6 and http and socks. Having both available would be a literal dream come true as it would allow far more possibilities than just http/https alone. I'd be first in line to buy it tomorrow if ipv6 support was integrated.

[SysOp]

I don't mean to necropost but this is still relevant. I have had contact with Qbik before about this at my last job, the second at which I have deployed WinGate. I now have a new job at a much larger company with many branches across Europe and a new quest for which WinGate would fit the bill perfectly again, but I could not recommend it any more as I gave up hope on WinGate ever supporting IPv6 (and a stable ENS driver on Windows NT 6+). Can you confirm this or hopefully tell me to hold on just a bit longer for WinGate 10 (or something)?

Regards,
Jeroen