WARNING: TCP and IPv6 Test Results for Popular OS

Widely installed desktop OS fails to perform

A subset of the Maxwell Pro TCP/IP tests were run against the most widely installed desktop Operating System with all known operating system updates applied as of October 1, 2013. The Major Operating System is listed in the Phase 2 Core Protocols IPv6 Ready Logo Program (a popular program to assure that IPv6 implementation will work correctly in the field). A summary of the results follows:

IWL Test results

Using the Maxwell Pro Test Suite, out of 396 protocol tests involving IPv4, IPv6, ICMPv4, ICMPv6, TCP, and UDP:

  • 327 tests passed.

  • 69 tests failed.

  • 10 IPv6 protocol-specific tests failed.

  • 18 tests of other protocols running over IPv6 failed that had passed when running over IPv4.

IPv6 failures

Of the IPv6 tests that failed, the ones that would be most likely to cause problems to customers in the field are the tests that involved incorrect checksums and IPv6 fragments delivered out of order.

Since the IPv6 Ready Logo tests makes no attempt to verify IPv4, ICMPv4, TCP, or UDP, it has not helped the Desktop Operating System Supplier catch the problems that caused it to fail 41 Maxwell Pro tests.

Additional failures

Of the non-IPv6 protocol tests that failed, the ones that could cause problems to customers are incorrect checksums, incorrect issuance of ICMPv4 redirects, lack of support for overlapping IPv4 fragments, dropping of some IPv4 datagrams containing unknown options, poor handling of out-of-order TCP segments, and poor handling of lost TCP SYN connections.

See a comparison of Maxwell Pro IPv6 Tests vs. IPv6 Ready Logo Tests here.

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