MacOS X IPv6 Problems list

$Id: ipv6-problems.html,v 1.14 2009/02/14 13:36:15 t-momose Exp $

The IPv6 features on MacOS X works well generally. However, there are several problems in some points.

Lepard (10.5)

Until now, I couldn't find any serious problems regarding IPv6 on Leopard. A few applications doesn't seem to have IPv6 capability yet.

'Screen Sharing.app' is used to share screen among iChat users, but actually it is a VNC client and possible to connect other non MacOS X VNC servers. But I couldn't connect to an IPv6 only VNC server. Seems the 'Screen Sharing.app' doesn't sopport IPv6...

Tiger (10.4)

In Tiger, most applicaitons including Safari work on IPv6 very well. I think Tiger is the best operating system for consumers to use in IPv6 environment at this time.
...But, unfortunately, there remain several problems yet.

ndp(8) with '-p' and '-r' options doesn't work yet. I made a patch to fix this. I made a web page about this problem, and you can also get a patch to fix it.
~~Mail.app, which is a major upgraded in Tiger, can't send mails with IPv6 smtp. Receiving mails with POP3 or IMAP on IPv6 works well, though. It would be just a degrading.~~ The problem was fixed in 10.4.6. great !
The problem occures again on intel based macintosh ...
iChat supports only IPv4. There might be no IPv6 specefication in AIM, but jabber should work on IPv6.
'Software Update' works on IPv4 only.
IPsec with IKE on IPv6 hangs up the system. Once setting IKE and SPD, the application to touch the IPsec hangus up with rainbow circulating ball. After that, all applications to touch the system (maybe via system calls) are hanging up respectively. I reported this problem with Bug reporter. this worked well on Panther. just degrading. The problem had been fixed. I'm not sure when the problem was fixed. Anyway, IPsec(with IKE) works well at least after 10.4.7.
MSS value is never picked up from a link mtu value. it always uses the interface mtu value instead of the link mtu.
The command 'netstat -s' doesn't show appropriate values in 'ipsec6:' section.

Panther (10.3)

ndp(8) with '-p' and '-r' options doesn't work yet.
Safari seems not to be perfet of supporting IPv6. sometimes it connects via IPv6, but in most cases uses only IPv4.

Jaguar (10.2)

I expect all of this problems are fixed by next release, Panther.

Gethostbyname2(3) and getipnodebyname(3) have a bug that cannot get any results if the target has only AAAA records. Mozilla or some other derived browsers doesn't access such hosts by this bug.
ndp(8) command with '-p' or '-r' options doesn't work. The command fails anytime with a message "sysctl(ICMPV6CTL_ND6_XXLIST): No such file or directory."
Most of Applications shipped with MacOS X doesn't support IPv6 at all except some simple commands such as telnet, ftp or ping6.
Router solicitation isn't sent after wakeup sleep.
Querieng DNS uses only IPv4 transport. Because of this limitation, we needs IPv4 connectivity always even when we use IPv6 only.

If you found other IPv6 related problems on MacOS X, please let me know them via email.

MOMOSE Tsuyoshi