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gorgonzola · Aug 12, 2002, 10:36 PM

Well, IPv6 is definitely enabled by default on the interfaces (stf0 and gif0 exist by default), but I've been playing around with it and can't quite figure out whether I even have it working properly.

After signing up for an account at TunnelBroker and following their configuration instructions for FreeBSD 4.4 (which did work), I noticed that I couldn't ping6 6bone.net (100% packet loss), which seemed to me indicative that something was rather borked. I guessed that this might have had to do with the fact that I was behind an AirPort router, but wasn't sure if it could block that kind of traffic (it didn't seem likely at the time...).

Has anyone tried IPv6 before on other machines, and if so, what kind of interesting tests can you do to see if it's all working properly?

WJMoore · Aug 12, 2002, 11:05 PM

Excuse this somewhat offtopic question... I would like to know why bother with IPv6 at all at the moment, as I get the impression that it exists but nothing much uses it. The way I understand it IPv6 was created the get around the fact that we will run out of IPv4 IP address sooner or later. That sounds like a good idea but it just seems weird that in my experience it isn't actually utilised yet. I was wondering if you could shed some light on IPv6 for me.

Wesley

gorgonzola · Aug 12, 2002, 11:24 PM

Everything will use IPv6 in a few years. It's still somewhat experimental technology, but there are changes at the protocol level other than just a larger number of available addresses. For example, IPSec (which is protocol-level security for IP) is usable but not required in IPv4 but it's required in IPv6, apparently, which improves security for any IPv6<->IPv6 transactions. (This is my impression; it may be a bit inaccurate.)

Right now, it's mostly for people who like playing around with bleeding-edge stuff, but being on the IPv6 bandwagon is definitely a good thing to do for Apple, since everything will be switching over to it soon. However, users don't really need to bother with it yet. The reason for the slow switch is that so much depends on the internet protocol that you have to be very, very careful about backwards compatibility and interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6. It has to be completely seamless, or the whole internet becomes crippled, and that's a huge problem. It will probably be 2006 or 2007 by the time IPv6 starts getting used at the major ISP level.

A good source of information on IPv6 is www.ipv6forum.com or www.ipv6.org. There are actually some IPv6-based IRC servers and some FreeBSD mirrors that use IPv6, so it's not completely unused, but you're right that there's no significant penetration yet.

HTH

Detrius · Aug 12, 2002, 11:26 PM

Originally posted by WJMoore:
Excuse this somewhat offtopic question... I would like to know why bother with IPv6 at all at the moment, as I get the impression that it exists but nothing much uses it. The way I understand it IPv6 was created the get around the fact that we will run out of IPv4 IP address sooner or later. That sounds like a good idea but it just seems weird that in my experience it isn't actually utilised yet. I was wondering if you could shed some light on IPv6 for me.

Wesley

It's not used yet because Windows doesn't do it. XP might (i don't know), but ME, 98, 95 don't.

IPv6 also makes the headers smaller which will automatically make data transfers go faster. Your connection to the internet includes the headers when it maxes out. If the headers shrink, you get the relevant stuff faster.

It's also more secure.

WJMoore · Aug 13, 2002, 06:26 AM

Cool, thanks for the info guys.

Wesley

gorgonzola · Aug 13, 2002, 08:56 AM

Well, in case anyone is interested -- I did finally get it working. It seems that the AirPort base station was blocking the response packets to the pings, so it showed up as 100% packet loss. When I connected it straight to my DSL line and tried again, it all worked fine.

However, I'm unable to try connecting to my machine via ssh (which does support IPv6) using an IPv6 address, though ... any ideas on this?

Evangellydonut · Aug 13, 2002, 01:05 PM

Just another random stat for moving to IPv6...I believe the US owns 80% of all the current IPs in the world, which means there's a major IP shortage in the rest of the world...this is forcing Europe, Asia, and I guess Australia and Canada to move to IPv6, which gets rid of this problem. However, from what I've heard, US wouldn't be switching for quite some time, since we don't have any shortage problems...one of the perks with early adoptation of new tech is slow to move to newer-n-better. (Just look at Cell phones and you know what I mean...)

Brit Ben · Aug 16, 2002, 08:50 AM

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Well, in case anyone is interested -- I did finally get it working. It seems that the AirPort base station was blocking the response packets to the pings, so it showed up as 100% packet loss. When I connected it straight to my DSL line and tried again, it all worked fine.

However, I'm unable to try connecting to my machine via ssh (which does support IPv6) using an IPv6 address, though ... any ideas on this?

Just a guess, I don't have 10.2 (and I am not planning on buying it) but the inetd "super server" isn't listening for IPv6 connections if ssh is invoked from inetd, or if your run sshd all the time, then it hasn't been told which IPv6 address it should bind to.

Cheers,
Ben.

Brit Ben · Aug 16, 2002, 08:53 AM

Originally posted by Evangellydonut:
Just another random stat for moving to IPv6...I believe the US owns 80% of all the current IPs in the world, which means there's a major IP shortage in the rest of the world...this is forcing Europe, Asia, and I guess Australia and Canada to move to IPv6, which gets rid of this problem. However, from what I've heard, US wouldn't be switching for quite some time, since we don't have any shortage problems...one of the perks with early adoptation of new tech is slow to move to newer-n-better. (Just look at Cell phones and you know what I mean...)

Close, right reasons certainly. It's about 64% for the US. There are some interesting breakdowns here:

http://www.caida.org/analysis/geopolitical/bgp2country/

Cheers,
Ben,

gorgonzola · Aug 16, 2002, 12:06 PM

Originally posted by Brit Ben:

Just a guess, I don't have 10.2 (and I am not planning on buying it) but the inetd "super server" isn't listening for IPv6 connections if ssh is invoked from inetd, or if your run sshd all the time, then it hasn't been told which IPv6 address it should bind to.

Cheers,
Ben.

Actually, it *appears* that SSH doesn't really support it at all under OS X. I tried ssh'ing to someone else's IPv6 address (which does work and is valid), and it gave me errors about host not found.

Strange. The odd thing is that I downloaded the OpenSSH-3.4 source code, and even after compiling clean, it doesn't work properly. And there doesn't seem to be any configure flag or anything you have to use to explicitly enable IPv6. Maybe something is funky in Darwin?