[LINK] Fwd: Internet Society, World IPv6 Launch

[Karl Auer]

On Sat, 2012-06-09 at 11:58 +1000, David Boxall wrote:
> Which is why, out of curiosity, I checked out my home network. From
> the looks of it, the only hardware that explicitly supports IPv6 is a 
> relatively new Wi-Fi router.

If you have Windows XP or later, or any modern operating system, you
will find that it too supports IPv6, out of the box. As you say later.

>  On the 'net-facing interface, it has 
> provision for IPv6. On the home-facing side, I see only v4. My three 
> switches seem to support v4 only.

Were that router receiving a prefix from your ISP, you would probably
see IPv6 on the home-facing side as well.

You switches will almost certainly work just fine with IPv6. An
IPv6-aware switch handles IPv6 more efficiently than a non-IPv6-aware
switch, but in a home network it is unlikely to make any significant
difference.

There's a simple way to find out if your network will work with IPv6.
Use "ipv6 if" [1] to look for the link local IPv6 address on the
connected interfaces of one of your home machines. The link local
address is the one starting with "FE80:..."[2]. From a different home
machine, ping that address. Because these are link local addresses you
will have to provide a scope ID, so the command will look something like
this:

   ping fe80::102:3ff:fe04:506%3

The number after the "%" is the scope ID - in Windows, it's the
interface index. You can find out Windows' interface indexes using the
"ipv6 if" command. Note that you are providing the scope ID of the
interface you are running the ping command on.[3]

If all is well, you should see ping responses:

   Reply from fe80::a00:27ff:fe43:6ddc%5: time<1ms
   Reply from fe80::a00:27ff:fe43:6ddc%5: time<1ms
   ...

At the moment, there are only two ways to get IPv6 access from the home:
Be an Internode customer and get native IPv6 access, or use a tunnel.
Native IPv6 access requires an IPv6-capable home router, tunnels require
no special hardware. You can get tunnel access from:

   Internode - onshore, TSP, free/free.
   AARnet - onshore, TSP, free/free
   Freenet - offshore, TSP, free/free
   Hurricane Electric - non-TSP, offshore, free/free
   Sixxs - non-TSP, offshore, free/free
   IPv6Now - TSP, onshore, free/pay[4]

Internode's tunnels are available to Internode customers only. All the
others are open to all.

"TSP" means it is a Tunnel Setup Protocol broker. You run some software
to manage the tunnel. Non-TSP has to be set up "by hand", and the effort
repeated if anything changes.

"offshore" means there is a 300ms flagfall on every IPv6 packet from
your home network :-) At the moment there is Freenet onshore, but it may
not be for much longer.

"free/free" means free singletons, free prefixes. A singleton puts one
computer on the IPv6 Internet. A prefix puts one or more subnets on the
IPv6 Internet.

> thinking that the home network can stick with v4 for quite a while, if
> not indefinitely, provided the 'net interface supports v6?

Yes (except for the bit about the 'net interface). It depends a bit on
what your ISP decides to do. Certainly no-one is going to take away IPv4
access any time soon - they will *add* IPv6 access.

Important point: IPv6 works *alongside* IPv4. It's as well as, not
instead of, IPv4.

Regards, K.

[1] If you are using a Unix variant (Linux, BSD, OSX...) use "ifconfig"
instead of "ipv6 if". And the ping command may be called "ping6" instead
of "ping".

[2] If your network interfaces do not have these addresses, then IPv6 is
not installed or not enabled on the host.

[3] Link local addresses are only unique on a particular link (basically
within a subnet). So the operating system has to know which interface
you want to send your ping out on. The scope ID tells it.

[4] I'm a proprietor of IPv6Now.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

GPG fingerprint: AE1D 4868 6420 AD9A A698 5251 1699 7B78 4EEE 6017
Old fingerprint: DA41 51B1 1481 16E1 F7E2 B2E9 3007 14ED 5736 F687
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