Implications of IPv6?

Skidilliplop · 21 Jan 2011 at 13:26

feriso said:
OK, so how can we check if out home hardware is IPv6 ready; obviosuly you have already done that bigred but I suppose its something the rest of us ought to get sorted.

Look for IPv6 settings.

EG if you go into most newer HP printer's config pages you'll see settings for both IPv4 and IPv6. If there's no option there for IPv6 then either it doesn't support it or it needs a firmware upgrade to do so.

deadite66 · 21 Jan 2011 at 13:44

I have this in my router settings, will it be any use to me?

branddaly · 21 Jan 2011 at 15:05

deadite66 said:
I have this in my router settings, will it be any use to me?

Can I ask which model of router that is?

6to4 is an automatic tunnelling protocol, it allows IPv6 packets to be encapsulated in IPv4. I suspect your router is allowing 6to4 in an anycast relay configuration, which simplifies configuration.

If your router gets a public IPv4 address, it can use this to generate a IPv6 prefix for you. This takes the 6to4 prefix 2002::/16 and concatenates the IPv4 address (in hex) to it.

So for the IP address 82.163.123.1 it produces the Prefix

2002:52A3:7B01::/48 (this becomes the IPv6 network for your site)

Your router will use this prefix for your internal network, taking one of the /64s that this prefix covers, possibly the first one (2002:52A3:7B01:0::/64) and advertising this into your LAN. Devices on the LAN will use this prefix to automatically generate their global IPv6 address(es) and can use this to talk to other IPv6 addresses.

IPv6 traffic from these nodes can go to the router which will then encapsulate it in IPv4, and send it to a 6to4 Relay (using the anycast address 192.88.99.1 as the destination). The 6to4 relay is dual-stack, having access to both the IPv6 Internet and the IPv4 internet.

Once the encapsulated packet arrives at the relay, it removes the encapsulated IPv6 packet, and sends it natively over the IPv6 internet to the destination. Return traffic is similar, being routed to a 6to4 relay, and then encapsulated in IPv4. The 6to4 relay discovers the ipv4 endpoint (your router) by looking at the ipv4 address encoded in your prefix.

The usefulness of 6to4 is limited; the reliance on relays means that it is less reliable and robust than IPv4. Because of this all the major operating systems now prefer IPv4 over 6to4 based IPv6, so it should only be used when there no native IPv6 connectivity, and no IPv4 connectivity to the target. It is possible to make it more preferred than IPv4, but you may notice more brokenness.

NAT-PT was deprecated as there were a lot of operational problems. It will depend on your router as to how it is implemented and what it is capable of doing.

bigredshark · 21 Jan 2011 at 15:47

feriso said:
OK, so how can we check if out home hardware is IPv6 ready; obviosuly you have already done that bigred but I suppose its something the rest of us ought to get sorted.

The easy answer is it doesn't. I do not know of a single Netgear, Linksys, Belkin etc product which properly and fully supports IPv6, there are a few semi consumer options. Some draytek, billion and AVM (fritzbox) do support IPv6.

Configuration on some is pretty complex, none are competitors for the £60 mass market rubbish churned out by the previously mentioned manufacturers though (sorry, did my hatred of consumer routers spill over there). Zyxel are adamant they'll have a product/firmware shortly which will do the job.

But now, it's not much worth checking because odds are strongly it doesn't. Which is going to be fun sometime soon. Fortunately, once they work out it's a problem, it's hopefully just a software thing to provide some IPv6 functionality.

deadite66 · 21 Jan 2011 at 16:15

branddaly said:
Can I ask which model of router that is?

Netgear DGND3300v2 hidden page ipv6.htm

deadite66 · 23 Jan 2011 at 16:51

made use of it via tunnelbroker.net

MikeHiow · 23 Jan 2011 at 19:08

On the subject of IPV6, has anyone setup their own tunnel?

Tunnel providers do not sit right with me, so I'd rather run my own. I have a server with native IPV6 connectivity, and all my routing is done with a linux machine locally as well.

Zarf · 23 Jan 2011 at 19:49

MikeHiow said:
On the subject of IPV6, has anyone setup their own tunnel?

Tunnel providers do not sit right with me, so I'd rather run my own. I have a server with native IPV6 connectivity, and all my routing is done with a linux machine locally as well.

Are you renting the server / rackspace or just taking advantage of work?

I'm using a tunnelbroker tunnel to tunnel my allocated /64 to my Cisco 877, so every device on my network enjoys ipv6 connectivity. Not really found it that useful, but as a network tech I enjoyed playing around.

I have found a few annoyances, I can't use the onboard wireless on my 877, there's some kind of issue with ipv6 on a BVI. Not a massive deal since I have other AP's around. Also annoyingly I can't use windows file sharing over ipv6 just by entering a \\ipv6 address , it'll only work with DNS. Kinda annoying since my link local ipv6 addresses are actually less characters than an ipv4 (fe80::1, fe80::2 etc).

I've also had some weird issues with using link local addresses, sometimes I can ping using them, sometimes it only goes one way etc. Using my /64 addresses works fine all the time though.