14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has added an improved network selection algorithm inside the newest releases of its iOS and OS X operating systems, iOS 9 and El Capitan, as David Schinazi, Apple engineer confirmed for IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
This recent update is a better implementation of the Happy Eyeballs (Fast Fallback) algorithm published by the IETF back in 2011 to help ISPs and various tech companies adopt and properly implement the IPv6 protocol.
The original algorithm as developed by the IETF was meant to be deployed with dual-stack applications that use IPv4 and IPv6 for network communications.
Happy Eyeballs allowed an application to select between an IPv4 and an IPv6 address when establishing connections, with a slight advantage for newer IPv6 addresses.
While Apple implemented Happy Eyeballs for its products as soon as the IETF released the algorithm, it was modified by Apple engineers to choose the fastest connection, and not to prefer IPv6.
Apple is now using an (almost) standard Happy Eyeballs implementation
In a message on the IETF official mailing list, David Schinazi, engineer on Apple's CoreOS Networking team, has announced the company is now implementing a newer version of the Happy Eyeballs protocol, that is closer to the original, even if not the same.
"Based on our testing, this makes our Happy Eyeballs implementation go from roughly 50/50 IPv4/IPv6 in iOS 8 and Yosemite to ~99% IPv6 in iOS 9 and El Capitan betas," said Mr. Schinazi.
He then went on to detail Apple's new implementation of the Happy Eyeball algorithm, and said "If this behavior proves successful during the beta period, you should expect more IPv6 traffic from Apple products in the future."
There were no responses from IETF members, but Sander Steffann, an ICT specialist, said "That sounds like a reasonable algorithm."