Hi, I'm tweedge.

While troubleshooting NPTv6 on my router, I stumbled across a dead link to unique-local-ipv6.com. Checking the Wayback Machine, the site was preserved and functional, so I decided to restore it for others' convenience. As of today, there are ~100 dead links currently visible to Google pointed to it - including everything from GitHub issues, to the thread I was using to troubleshoot, to even slides presented at the Linux Foundation.

This page describes the history of the site, what I've done to restore it, and some minor errata.

Cheers :)

Timeline

A nearly complete history of this site is visible through the Wayback Machine archives:

• The earliest archive on 22 April 2013 features this site with serverside rendering and a simpler layout.
• On or before 9 February 2014 the site was updated to use Bootstrap 3 and clientside JS for generating ULAs.
• Before 9 June 2017 the site begins throwing 404 Not Found errors. This is the beginning of the end - after the initial 404 capture, the site was never fixed.
• The domain registration eventually lapses and unique-local-ipv6.com is bought by an online spammer sometime in 2019, who run a Wordpress site filled with SEO shit and a $5 logo.
• Said spammer continues filling the site with shit at least into February 2020 - this is likely autogenerated or scraped from other sites.
• Sometime in 2020-2021, the spammer lets the domain lapse, and no more archives are saved. This was probably in 2020.
• I found this site (now defunct, with the domain ownership lapsed) in a thread around January 2022, then decided to register and restore the website on 16 January 2022.

Restoration Process

So, what did I change or add since the original site?

1. Bought the original domain, as it was available to register again
2. Pulled the original saved files for the index.html and faq.html pages from the Wayback Machine (here's an example of pulling only the original HTML from the Wayback Machine)
3. Removed comments from those HTML files inserted by the Wayback Machine
4. Fixed indentation and somewhat standardized formatting for the HTML files
5. Removed Google Analytics from the site
6. Fetched the sites' required dependencies and bundled them into a subdirectory (bootstrap@3.0.3, and jquery@1.10.2) - this isn't necessary, just personal preference
7. Versioned the site in GitHub at tweedge/unique-local-ipv6 so any feedback can be left easily, and future updates (not planning much) are trivial
8. Updating the FAQ and Index, fixing some minor spelling errors and ensuring content is accurate
9. Set up a storage bucket and BunnyCDN so the new copy of the site is available globally in a snap
10. Added a brief GitHub Action to update the site's edge storage bucket automatically when the source changes
11. Wrote this new about.html page describing the history of the site and what little was necessary to restore it

The process described above would work for anyone looking to restore a similarly clientside-only website from its early grave. However, please note that this is not solving any problems with site preservation - having a copy of this site nearly five years after it vanished off the internet is only possible because of the Internet Archive. Please donate if you are able and willing - we're trashing our digital history every day, and there are very few organizations solving such fundamental problems.

Improvements & Contributors

As this site is versioned in GitHub, you can submit PRs to correct, update, or modify this site. To be totally honest: I set that up for myself, not anyone else, so it'd be harder to lose the files when changing systems etc. I was not expecting anyone to contribute fixes to a random site on the interwebs. I'm surprised and thankful to find that there are folks who give a damn, and not only found an issue but bothered to read all this to find the source and put in a correction!

Shoutout to these kind folks on GitHub who've improved this site:

• aadnehovda - fixed notation of IPv6 ULA prefix in faq.html (error made in 2015!)
• NetaliDev - fixed typo in RFC number in index.html (error made in 2022!)
• glyph - made ULAs monospaced and added color to create more visual interest

Post-Spammer-Owned Domains

The original domain was available as the spammer (see Timeline) had let it lapse, so I purchased that to make the old links that I'd tried following useful again. This came with a minor issue - the domain had been flagged by Google as "pure spam" in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, which lowers or removes it from Google's results. That's probably part of why the spammer let the domain registration lapse - no more clicks for them once Google figured out the ruse.

I found this out when I loaded the domain into Google Search Console - the violation (and some other errata, like sitemaps and metadata about indexed pages) carries over to the new owner, and I had to file for it to be reviewed by Google's staff. After some back-and-forth with Google's support, I did get this violation removed.

Privacy

Requests to this site are logged for three days by BunnyCDN for abuse detection/prevention. All ULAs are generated clientside and are not logged by this site.

I commit that as long as this site is operated by me, it will never perform clientside tracking of viewers, and will never serve advertisements.

Original Copyright

As noted in the footer, I (tweedge) am not the original author of this site. Unfortunately, since the original copyright was nebulous ("Copyright 2013 unique-local-ipv6.com") it's not clear who produced or owned the source code for this site. Based on historical WHOIS records, this may have been Manuel Badzong or another affiliate of ANDEV GMBH, as both those entities showed up in WHOIS records for this site at the time of its initial registration.

I am assuming "no news is good news," but if the original rightsholder contacts me with any objection (and proof of their authorship/ownership), I am certainly happy to address their concerns.

Unfortunately I am also not sure how copying/redsitributing this should work for anyone looking to make a derivative of this site, and cannot advise you in this matter. To avoid concerns like this in my own work, I am dedicating substantially more of my written works to the Creative Commons and encourage others to do the same if their values are aligned with that.