[[!meta title="Google Earth and IPv6 DNS lookups"]]
[[!meta date="2011-01-22 13:02"]]
[[!meta author="rohieb"]]
[[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]

Apparently the combination of a WLAN router that blocks IPv6 DNS queries
of type `AAAA` (in my case, it was a Siemens S1621-Z220-A sold as [Alice
Modem 1121 WLAN][0]) and the current version of Google Earth for Linux (I am
using 5.1.3533.1731 from [Medibuntu][1]) do not work well together. The
problem is that the router simply throws away `AAAA` queries (or
generally, any type it does not know), so the DNS query times out.
However, Google Earth does not seem to fall back to IPv4 queries (type
`A`) in this case, and shows a message about network connectivity errors.
I don’t know if it’s Google Earth’s fault or if the underlying eglibc
resolver of my Linux system does something wrong, anyhow there is a
fairly well-commented [bug report][2] on Launchpad for Ubuntu Karmic and
Lucid which explains the issue.

Anyway, I got rid of the problem by manually configuring a nameserver on
my local machine (for example the nameserver(s) of your internet
provider, or the ones of OpenDNS), and not using the WLAN router as a
resolver. NetworkManager allows you to do this by editing a connection
and choosing “Automatic DHCP (Addresses only)” on the IPv4 register tab;
or you can write the settings directly to your `/etc/resolv.conf` (here
for the OpenDNS servers):

    nameserver 208.67.222.222
    nameserver 208.67.220.220

[0]: http://www.alice-wiki.de/Alice_Modem_1121_WLAN
[1]: http://www.medibuntu.org/
[2]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eglibc/+bug/417757

[[!tag Ubuntu workaround Alice_DSL DNS eglibc Google_Earth HanseNet IPv4
    IPv6 Ubuntu_Karmic Ubuntu_Lucid]]