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Just now completed IPv6 certification with Hurricane Electric. It was very much fun!

Starting was pretty much simple and basic, followed by email server running on v6 - which also I was doing already. I was stuck at most unexpected part - when I had to setup IPv6 based DNS servers. My first reaction was - that’s so simple….later on realized that system was just not accepting my entry and kept on giving error with AAAA records. Then suddenly I realized that I missed creating AAAA at DNS servers, but created only glue records which was causing issue. Created AAAA and that also went smoothly + glue helped me in final test too.

Hello everyone!

Seems like Tata Communications routing table is changed (call it fixed) to route traffic for openDNS to Singapore. It’s not going to London anymore and I see very good latency from BSNL too (which uses Tata Comm for most of it’s International traffic).

Here’s latest routing from BSNL to openDNS: 

HOST: laptop                                                                 Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev

  1. router2                                                                        0.0%    50    2.0   1.7   1.5   2.2   0.2

  2. 117.207.48.1                                                             2.0%    50   25.4  26.2  24.5  36.1   1.6

  3. 218.248.173.38                                                        0.0%    50   26.1  31.2  25.0 125.5  17.8

  4. 121.244.68.114.static-lvsb.vsnl.net.in               2.0%    50   70.1  72.2  69.4  97.8   6.0

  5. 172.31.61.210                                                            0.0%    50   92.9  94.8  92.9 109.0   2.2

  6. ix-4-2.tcore1.CXR-Chennai.as6453.net            0.0%    50   94.3  98.4  93.1 154.6  12.6

  7. if-5-2.tcore1.SVW-Singapore.as6453.net          0.0%    50  127.2 130.6 125.8 165.5   8.5

  8. if-2-2.tcore2.SVW-Singapore.as6453.net         0.0%    50  126.8 128.6 124.4 178.2   8.3

  9. Vlan1807.icore1.SVQ-Singapore.as6453.net   2.0%    50  135.4 132.3 126.1 140.4   4.4

 10. 203.208.186.101                                                      0.0%    50  202.4 163.6 156.9 256.5  17.5

 11. 203.208.153.110                                                       0.0%    50  159.1 166.8 157.0 272.4  23.6

 12. 203.208.190.166                                                      2.0%    50  160.3 160.6 158.6 191.9   4.6

 13. resolver1.opendns.com                                           2.0%    50  159.0 158.3 156.9 162.4   1.0

Overall I am getting latency from 160ms which seems OK considering 25-30ms latency for DSL, adding 60-90ms for route till South India followed by 30-40ms latency between Chennai and Singapore and eventually destination openDNS node on ASN 36692. 

Yesterday I had a very interesting discussion with our senior administrator.

I was configuring reverse DNS records for our /24 block and I decided to use format - IP.static.domain.com thus if for IP 1.2.3.4, I pointed reverse DNS (PTR) to 1.2.3.4.static.domain.com

When I got chance to show my work to my senior administrator, he said - It’s wrong to use 1.2.3.4.static.domain.com in a hostname. Too many dots will make DNS resolution very slow (forward - reverse - again forward). And I should have used 1-2-3-4.static.domain.com

And here we get latest EIG cable i.e Euro India Gateway cable in action. Although cable was up few months back, but it’s now we are getting some changes in routing table up. (Probably earlier was test mode?).

Here’s a map of EIG cable.

This was very interesting project because of few reasons - firstly it is one (of few) cable consortium’s where India’s biggest State owned telco BSNL (also known as NIB - National Internet Backbone). Apart from that, it is one of direct link between India and UK. Earlier main route was from Mumbai to France (VSNL-Tata route) and next domestic Europeon bones Lamdanet, Telia, Level3 etc used to carry data further.

And Ubuntu 11.04 released yesterday.

I will do a seperate blog post reviewing Ubuntu 11.04 specially the new Unity interface, but for now I am trying to help Linux community by additonal mirror.

Incase you are going to download Ubuntu - I would encourage you to use this mirror for Asian and European region.

http://server7.anuragbhatia.com/Ubuntu/11.04/release/

Update: Mirror has been removed as of now. author: “Anurag Bhatia” url: “/2011/04/web-hosting/ubuntu-11-04-additional-mirror/”

Keep spreading the Linux! :)