Best practice: Use load balancing SLB IPv6 for Apple AppStore approval

Greetings HI, dear colleagues, I am Tien Yi, product manager of SLB, today we are going to talk about apple IPv6 auditing, and using alicloud SLB (IPv6) to implement AppStore IPv6 auditing. Due to the early development of IPv6 in foreign countries, there may already be some IPv6 Only network environment in the world. The so-called IPv6 Only refers to the Internet environment with IPv6 address Only. In order to ensure that these IPv6 Only users can also smoothly use Apple’s services and apps in the AppStore, Apple requires that all apps in the AppStore must support IPv6- Only network from June 1, 2016.

1.Greetings

HI, everyone, MY name is Tian Yi, product manager of SLB load balancing. Today we are going to talk about Apple’s IPv6 review and how to use aliyun SLB (IPv6) load balancing to complete the AppStore IPv6 review.

2. What is Appstore IPv6 approval

Due to the early development of IPv6 in foreign countries, there may already be some IPv6 Only network environments in the world. The so-called IPv6 Only refers to the Internet environment with IPv6 addresses Only. In order to ensure that these IPv6 Only users can also smoothly use Apple’s services and apps in the AppStore, Apple requires that all apps in the AppStore must support IPv6- Only network from June 1, 2016.

Refer to the website: https://developer.apple.com/support/ipv6/

This requirement is often misinterpreted to mean that merchant AppStore applications (including apps, servers, and the network on which the servers are installed) must be fully IPv6 supported, which is not the case.

Of course, Apple knows that third-party developers and their servers are all over the world, and the progress of IPv6 construction in various countries is uneven. If we cut it all down, let alone 2016, I am afraid that the transformation work will not be completed until 2018, which will greatly affect the prosperity of AppStore market and Apple ecosystem.

Therefore, Apple only requires “Support ipv6-only” rather than “Must be ipv6-only”, that is, third-party developers’ applications can be accessed by users in the ipv6-only environment, and the entire system is not required to be fully converted to IPv6.

Peruse the link above to see the following description:

First of all, Apple gives a lesson in the absence of ipv6-ony environment, teach you to build a ipv6-only access environment, convenient for local testing

Then Apple said:

For App: it is not necessary to completely replace the code related to IPv4 (network related API), as long as it can be accessed through the above ipv6-only environment, it can be seen that there is some ambiguity in this standard, and users need to build the above environment and pass the local test.

Apple also recommends that your code not have apis that are specific to IPv4 or IPv6, and instead use encapsulated address cluster independent apis. Using these address cluster-independent, Well-packaged apis from Apple, apps can adapt in both IPv6 and IPv4 environments without being aware of the details of the underlying network infrastructure.

For servers: if the server is deployed over the Internet, no immediate changes are needed because Apple will use a 6to4 conversion server, KNOWN as DNS64/NAT64, to access your application, as long as it works.

Apple also suggests that, although not currently required, servers will need IPv6 support sooner or later, i.e. servers will be able to assign IPv6 addresses and resolve domain names to V6 addresses.

However, if some servers are embedded in the iOS App client itself, 6TO4 conversion cannot be carried out in this case, so both the embedded Server and client must be required to have IPv6 processing capability.

To sum up, Apple’s ipv6-only Support review takes two routes:

So, most of the time, we should be able to pass without doing anything, but why are there so many complaints online?

3. Why did the audit fail

In fact, the problem is mainly in the link of DNS64/NAT64. When Apple accesses our application server through DNS64/NAT64, its test environment is deployed in the United States, while if our server is deployed in mainland China, there will often be some indescribable failure reasons in 6TO4 conversion access, resulting in audit failure.

In this case, the best way is not to audit the access path of DNS64/NAT64, so that the application server has an IPv6 address, is king.

4. Solutions

Using alicloud SLB IPV6 instance of load balancing, it also does not need the transformation of back-end applications. The original service is directly mounted to the back-end of IPV6 SLB, and THE 6TO4 conversion is realized by SLB. When Apple audit service accesses the application system, it directly accesses IPV6 VIP (the IPV6 address provided by SLB). So App approval is no longer a worry.

5. Conclusion

At present, Ali Cloud SLB has been open to the whole network users to buy IPv6 instances, please refer to the details, at the same time, IPv6 SLB can enjoy a 65% discount for bandwidth, immediate action, let your service upgrade to IPv6 today!

Author: Tian Yi

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