NAT64/DNS64

branddaly · 15 Sep 2010 at 19:00

Finally, for a short period my house is IPv6 only. Taken me far too long, but managed to get a combination of a 6in4 tunnel from SIXXS, terminating on a Fritz Box, and Ecdysis's NAT64 and DNS64 (bind version) running on Ubuntu.

So for now overclockers is;
forums.overclockers.co.uk [64:ff9b::5b97:da0b]

Its working surprisely well. Apart from MSN, and traceroute.

alex24 · 15 Sep 2010 at 19:05

Well done (sounds involved), but what are the advantages to this setup?

branddaly · 15 Sep 2010 at 19:16

alexhull24 said:
Well done (sounds involved), but what are the advantages to this setup?

none? Or very limited. Mostly this is so I can find out what does and doesn't work in a IPv6 only enviroment, and to provide some practical experience with a NAT64 solution. The upcoming exhaustion of IPv4 address (next 2-5 years ish) means that IPv6 deployment is gathering pace. As T-mobile in the US are trailing IPv6 with NAT64 I wanted to take a look at what it does. Simply its a method to allow IPv6 only nodes access to IPv4 services. It only works for communcations initiated from the IPv6 node, as its a stateful translation. Presently it only works for TCP and UDP. Seems to be ok. Avforums is the main website that appears a bit broken, may drop back to IPv4 to see if its the NAT64 or just a bit squiffy atm.

Horrid as it sounds at some point there may be no option but to either have IPv6 only customers, and provide translation, or incorporate some form of carrier grade for IPv4.

alex24 · 15 Sep 2010 at 19:20

OK that's what I thought but it goes beyond my expertise really. Just interested to find out a bit more, that's interesting anyway. I know IPv6 has been swimming around for a while but I didn't think anything used it yet, which I guess is true for the most part. I think a backwards compatibility for IPv4 would have to be implemented, unless it can be transferred seamlessly when the time comes and it's needed.

branddaly · 15 Sep 2010 at 19:26

Ideally everything would be dual stack. Have both a IPv4 and IPv6 address, but unfortunately its been left a little late (no profit in enabling IPv6). The lateness means not everything will be able to have both addresses, so this is one of many mechanisms to allow interoperability.