---
layout: page
title: "Blatant self-advertising on the IPv6 Canvas" 
description: "An ungodly amount of pings for a small bitmap"
date: 2023-02-07
tags: project
draft: false
extra:
  auto_center_images: true
  excerpt: "Using some python, I have a reference to this website semi-permanently implanted on the IPv6 Canvas"
---

Yesterday, the [IPv6 Canvas](https://blog.tugzrida.xyz/2023/02/06/introducing-the-ipv6-canvas/) was pushed to the public.

Of course, as soon as I learned of this, I threw together a script to place my domain `ewpratten.com` on the canvas for all to see.

## Screenshots

![](/images/posts/ipv6-canvas/v6_canvas_1.png)

![](/images/posts/ipv6-canvas/v6_canvas_2.png)

## How I'm doing this

The code is [public](https://github.com/ewpratten/v6-canvas-writer) for anyone wanting to do this themselves, and the process for getting everything working was pretty simple.

1. I designed the graphic in a random online pixel art editor
2. The design was converted to a bitmap
3. I have a Python script that can read an arbitrary bitmap and convert it to a list of IPv6 addresses
4. Hundreds of `ping -c 1` processes are spawned in the background to write the image to the canvas
  
This script is executed via a Cron job on one of my edge routers for maximum IP nerdiness.

### Why ping?

I considered doing this with some clever `mtr` commands, or even crafting the ICMP ECHO packets straight from the script, but that was slightly too much work for the 5 minutes I had before work this morning.