Opensuse 12.3 and disabling IPv6

pancakefiend · 04-18-2013, 06:10 PM

I recently installed Opensuse 12.3 onto my Tobshiba laptop (L505d, I believe) and I seemed to notice that the internet was running somewhat slower. I checked the opensuse forums and they said to disable IPv6 -- but why? If I had no connection issues in other distros of linux (which I have not) why would disabling IPv6 do anything?

I'm a networking newbie and a linux newbie, but this seemed weird to me. Any responses are appreciated!

Edit -- forgot to mention that it did seem to speed up after disabling IPv6

cliffordw · 04-19-2013, 08:29 AM

Hi there,

I'm no expert at this, but one reason might be:

I would guess that a modern web browser would be looking for an trying an IPv6 address for a website before trying the IPv4 address. Assuming you're on an IPv4 address, disabling IPv6 would eliminate the steps of doing a DNS query for an IPv6 address (AAAA record) for the distination site, and a connection to that IP if one is found, which would improve the overall speed with which a page is loaded.

Regards,

Clifford

pancakefiend · 04-19-2013, 11:04 AM

Sounds reasonable, thanks for the reply!