IPv6 28 September 2012

U.S. White House Website Now On IPv6

By Dan YorkDirector, Internet Technology

Given that the IPv6 mandate for US federal government agencies came from the Obama administration, a few people noted in recent days that the White House website was not available over IPv6 and indeed it was not listed in yesterday’s run of NIST’s list of US government IPv6-enabled sites.

This morning, though, brings the news that www.whitehouse.gov is now accessible over IPv6.   A quick “dig aaaa www.whitehouse.gov” shows these results:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.whitehouse.gov.    2441    IN    CNAME    www.whitehouse.gov.edgesuite.net.
www.whitehouse.gov.edgesuite.net. 216 IN CNAME    www.eop-edge-lb.akadns.net.
www.eop-edge-lb.akadns.net. 61    IN    CNAME    a1128.dsch.akamai.net.
a1128.dsch.akamai.net.    7    IN    AAAA    2600:1400:a::1743:fa93
a1128.dsch.akamai.net.    7    IN    AAAA    2600:1400:a::1743:fa78

… which indicate that the site is apparently one of the ones that we mentioned yesterday that Akamai would be enabling via IPv6.

A visit to the White House site using the very cool IPvFoo extension for Google Chrome also shows this graphically:

I would note that the image shows the standard challenge of modern websites that they are comprised of many different components that load dynamically, some of which are available over IPv6 and some still only over IPv4. The key point, though, is that www.whitehouse.gov is accessible over IPv6.

Kudos to the White House team and Akamai for making the site available over IPv6.  We look forward to seeing how many more US government sites come online throughout today and over the weekend.

Can we help you get started with IPv6?

P.S. If you like the idea of this IPvFoo extension but are a Firefox user, there is a similar add-on called IPvFox.

Disclaimer: Viewpoints expressed in this post are those of the author and may or may not reflect official Internet Society positions.

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