IPv6 delivery is "not supported" on GMail and Google Apps

[drlukacs]

Although Gmail does accept messages on IPv6 addresses, it turns out that it does not deliver to IPv6 addresses.

After spending a week on Google Apps' forum, the latest answer seems to be that delivery to IPv6 addresses is "not supported" by GMail and Google Apps:
http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/gmail/Ixp8B6pW-o4/discussion

The Google employee wrote that "I don't have an estimate for the estimate at this point"...

Any thoughts?

[sttun]

Well that is a bit strange, my guess is that one or more of the outbound mail servers have some issues (provavly sw related) that stops them enabling ipv6 or maybe the have not seen any demand yet.
Maybe folks only complain about inbound mail not being ipv6 (this wil change when people start getting delivery problems to servers in asia that has no ipv4 connectivity, hopefully soon)

PS: Please don't miss read that statement I'm not hoping for problems, but I know they will be coming, and the sonner they pop up an google (and others) start to get their ipv6 mail delivery in order the less people wil be negatively impacted in the transition period,  I picked asia because APNIC ran out of ipv4 addresses over a year ago so asian isps will probably be the first ones to only assign new costumers (or existing ones that need more address space) ipv6

[drlukacs]

Well that is a bit strange, my guess is that one or more of the outbound mail servers have some issues (provavly sw related) that stops them enabling ipv6 or maybe the have not seen any demand yet.

This is odd, because I could understand some concerns about incoming connections. But what could go wrong with outgoing ones?

[snarked]

GMAIL is not SMTP (standard 10; RFC 821) nor RFC 2821 nor 5321 compliant.  If they can't even do it properly over IPv4, what makes you think they can do it over IPv6?

[drlukacs]

GMAIL is not SMTP (standard 10; RFC 821) nor RFC 2821 nor 5321 compliant.  If they can't even do it properly over IPv4, what makes you think they can do it over IPv6?

You have a good point, although the fact that they do accept emails on IPv6 addresses is what made me think their IPv6 is actually already working.