Fixed IPv6 addresses not supported

[Walter]

The first ISPs in Germany are delivering IPv6 to customers...

 

[Adam Howard]

The first ISPs in Germany are delivering IPv6 to customers...

China and Russia seems to be stock full of them.... Trust me on this.

 

[tenants]

China and Russia seems to be stock full of them.... Trust me on this.

Yep, 5 seconds after setting up the logs for StopCountrySpam and I saw a list of IPv6 from Russia and China getting blocked..
I hope this comes soon

 

[Per Hansson]

Here is a friendly bump to please increase the priority of this!

 

[Julio Franco]

I second the above. This needs to be taken care of. We made a bet on Xenforo, don't make us regret it.

 

[D.O.A.]

This was marked as a future fix. Surprise, it's not the future yet.

 

[HWS]

We made a bet on Xenforo, don't make us regret it.

You didn't bet. You bought a software to be used "as-is". This software isn't developed currently, so if you need such features, you unfortunately have to code it yourself or hire someone to do.

I find IPv6 very important too. But since no official words are spoken when or even if (or by whom) XenForo will be developed again, there is no way to know if we ever will see this feature.

 

[Chris D]

...when or even if (or by whom) XenForo will be developed again...

Here's your "if":

Kier - you're reading this thread right now. Tell us whether the development will continue if XF wins the case.

Of course it will, we're not fighting for nothing.

 

[D.O.A.]

Think of any update this way;

If xenforo lose the case, IB are claiming ownership rights here. Would you put time into something you'll be giving to the enemy if things don't pan out? Don't expect a mad rush to fix your IP issues.

 

[HWS]

Here's your "if":

Thank you.
I truly hope this post has more real content than several other posts, that didn't exactly happen as posted.

 

[HWS]

150 spammer today and ALL using v6 IP addresses.


edit: 151

I would recommend disabling your IPv6 interface, since you do not offer IPv6 content at your server.
If you do that (why have you activated that interface anyway?) no IPv6 traffic is able to reach your server.

 

[Weppa333]

By the way just a suggestion,

If IPV6 adresses are one day supported, as a MOD or native, couldn't you use a "dirty hack" to spare memory usage ?

I thought about this while considering the problem for myself on my own XF install.
here in continental Europe we are starting to see quite a few IPV6 native surfers from France. They are welcome on my XF install which is on an IPV6 enbabled network, host, and apache vhost. XF seems to perform nicely with those IPV6 surfers (I don't have IPV6 myself to test but I see them in the apache logs)

However, XF itself dumps the info in the logs, online info, etc.
For good reasons indeed ( it would currently be a waste of space to store all V4 adresses, a vast majority, in a IPV6-wide field)

I thought about this. You might find my idea stupid. But why not create a lookup table between non routable IP space ranges ( like 10.0.0.0, 192.168, or whatever range someone would specify) and an IPV6 adress table. This works because it's unlikely anyone will ever see THAT much IPV6 traffic as to entirely fill such a lookup table.

If a surfer from 2001:blah::1 comes to an XF install, XF adds a lookup entry 2001::1 -> 192.168.0.1 and inserts this is the logs, etc. The system know this is a "fake V4" adress and only for those special V4 adresses, makes an additionnal lookup in the "conversion table"

I know it's dirty, but as long as IPV6 pentration in your country is at most abysmal , it's a good use of memory space...

 

[Steffen]

An IPv6 address needs 4 bytes. An IPv6 address needs 16 bytes. I don't think that 12 bytes of additional required space per post is significant at all. Even for 1 million posts that's less than 12 MB.

Furthermore, I think that in a few years IPv6 traffic will skyrocket.

 

[Reeve of Shinra]

Weppa, good idea but sounds like it could add processing overhead. Why not a cron job to prune IP's from entries older than 1 year (admin definable)?

 

[Weppa333]

I agree with Steffen, but one of the dev's (I don't remember who) told right here that storing IPV6 instead of IPV4 was a memory problem, so i'm suggesting something "in the middle". The overhead when displaying IP is minimal, it's mostly parsing IPV4 to a "substr" to see if this is a routable ipv4 or not.

Just a final word, if the dev make XF compatible with IPV6 is someway or another, please keep in mind that IP "banning" should also be adapted, as people who surf with an IPV6 adress most likely receive an entire block from their ISP, so IPV6 banning should always be as a mask, not "per ip" as with IPV4.

 

[Spenser]

Weppa333: I don't think that you understand how IPv6 works.
Every single IP address worldwide has to be changed to IPv6 (which will last about 20 years according to latest estimates), but the number of IPv6 addresses will increase very fast in the next months/years (depending on the country). Right now German Telecom (biggest ISP here) assigns IPv6 addresses to every new customer. At some point there has to be native IPv6 support in every piece of software and right now is the time we should start with this in Xenforo.
Unfortunately many spamers use IPv6 right now and we can't deal with that in Xenforo.

 

[Weppa333]

I run one of the few IPV6 enabled websites in our country. But that V6 support is just for the technical challenge, the V6 audience is very small currently. OK, it's rising... From nothing to very little.

I was just suggesting a way to implement some basic IPV6 support in the logs without modifiyng XF too much. Of course, if the next XF is fully IPV6 compliant, it's even better, but it seemed to me this was not a priority for the devs, and as you said we need something rather quickly.

My main problem is with the logs, basically someone with IPV6 is nearly anonymous. I have not yet been hit by V6 spam or robots, but I guess it's only a matter of time. The other problem I've got is that banning IPV6 trolls is way more difficult than with V4 as many V6 ISPs here give away entire ranges, or use V4-V6 gateways that make it very simple to change IP.

Final problem is that trolls who want to post anonymously often use free V6 gateways to hide themselves (and again these gateways have very large ranges).

So indeed, V6 support is more than just enlarging the IP field in the database, tools have to be tweaked a bit.
Maybe we should all list our "wishlist" from our V6 experience ? Which tools do you need ? Hopefully KAM will read this someday.

 

[Weppa333]

(And the hack I suggested solves your question in #1, the thread start.)

 

[Spenser]

IPv6 isn't made for giving away single IP addresses, you normally get a /64 subnet (sometimes /56).
Blocking is even easier than today as you only have to block a /64 address range to keep the guy out (in many cases ip ranges are kinda "static").

 

[Arantor]

Just as a thought, you could create a table which just contains the IPv6 addresses and a unique (numeric) identifier, and just use *that* identifier to store in posts/sessions/wherever.