IPv6 Support

WordPress is deployedDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. in a large number of environments; and increasingly this is leading to WordPress being used within IPv6-only deployments, where there exists no form of IPv4/dual-stack/IPv64 gateway.

It’s no secret that hosts should realistically provide a 6to4 gateway, or NAT64 / DNS64 service when supplying IPv6-only hosts, but due to the extra burden that supporting both IPv6 and IPv4 places upon them, they’re often (especially in low-cost/low-end VPS markets) choosing against this, and placing the burden upon other hosting infrastructure (WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/) instead.

This is leading to an increase in the number of end-user requests along the lines of “Why doesn’t WordPress just work” and “Get with the times”, which while unhelpful, are a valid segment of the WordPress users.

WordPress is not alone in the list of applications installed in hosting environments which doesn’t natively support IPv6, but we’re also not important enough to many of the use-cases for those services (Who often explicitly state, that it’s not viable to be used as a production hosting environment) to cause them to implement basic network functionality to support us.

Current state of IPv6 on WordPress.org:

✅ WordPress.org CDN supports IPv6 (s.w.org)
❌ WordPress APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. & Downloads are available over IPv6
❌ WordPress.org website is available over IPv6

Meta ticket for reference: https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3090

This isn’t a ticket requesting IPv6 support; but rather, a discussion point over when IPv6 support may be able to be offered, and any limitations in the WordPress.org infrastructure that currently limits us in providing that.

#prio3 #ipv6

Dion Hulse 1:48 am on March 4, 2024

My understanding is that while most of the upstream networks for WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ now support IPv6, the additional many-fold increase in IP addresses as clients would be unlikely to be able to be viably supported with the existing DDOSDistributed Denial of Service A type of online attack where a large number of infected computers are used to overwhelm a target computer, to the point where it no longer has the resources to perform its normal job. Read more. and firewall implementations.

And that as a result, enabling v6 support would likely only be viable with migrating WordPress.org services from it’s current infrastructure to a CDN/many-edge infrastructure environment instead, which is not currently on the systems roadmap.