Projects and random notes: Creating a IPv6 subnet at home

With multiple computers at home, I want to setup all with IPv6 addresses. For that need to get some questions answered:

1. Who will assign me a set of global unicast IPv6 addresses that I can use?

2. How will IPv6 traffic get routed between these computers to other IPv6 computers?

Since my ISP (Hansanet Alice) does appear to support native IPv6, I must use a IPv6 tunnel over IPv4. I will use the Freenet6 (Go6.Net) service with Hexago Gateway6 client.

After a lot of reading, the actual setup turned out to be surprisingly easy.

Setup

Windows XP (Gateway6 client and router) – Install the Gateway client. First verify it is working and then set it in router mode. Here are the steps I used - In the Gateway6 client application, click the Advanced tab. At the bottom, select the “Enable Routing Advertisements”. Select the LAN or wireless interface that is your local network. (IMPORTANT: If you don’t select a valid interface, netsh crashes when you try to connect).

Windows Vista (automatic IPv6 configuration) – Ensure the Vista machine is connected to that network. Restart the machine or simply disable and re-enable the network adapter. (Start Run “ncpa.cpl” and disable / enable the LAN or wireless connection).

Windows XP (automatic IPv6 configuration) – Check if IPv6 is installed (From the command line, ipconfig /all. IPv6 is installed if there are any fe80:* addresses. Install it with “ipv6 install”.) Restart the machine or simply disable and re-enable the network adapter. (Start Run “ncpa.cpl” and disable / enable the LAN or wireless connection).

In both cases, you can use “ping –6 ipv6.l.google.com” to verify that you are connected to the IPv6 internet.

The real test is to check if your machines can be reached from outside by other IPv6 machines.

Useful commands

ipv6 if 1 -- See ipv6 details of the interface. Change the number 1 to other numbers to see other interfaces.

netsh interface ipv6 show address – See all ipv6 addresses assigned on your machine.

netsh interface ipv6 show route – See route on your machine.

VMware virtual machines

The above setup worked with VMware virtual machines with two caveats. The network adapter should be in “bridged” mode and it should be connected to an ethernet interface (VMware does not support IPv6 when you bridge to a wireless card -- forum bug report post).