NewtonNet - IPv6

Page last modified Sunday, 30-May-2010 19:13:01 BST

NewtonNet is IPv6-enabled!

... but unfortunately you are not!

Happy

This assumption is based on the fact that you appear to be coming from 38.107.191.82 - an IPv4 address.
(this could actually be the address of a web-proxy you are using, knowingly or otherwise, however the end result is just the same)

The bulk of NewtonNet's Internet-facing services, such as the web hosting and mail server, are hosted on my server 'Targur' which is colocated in a data centre in Telehouse North (London) and with it being the main hub of the UK's Internet it enjoys native IPv4 and IPv6 100Mbps full-duplex connectivity.

However, the rest of NewtonNet, including my other server 'Rugrat', sits on my home LAN on the end of a 10Mbps (512kbps upload) residential cable broadband connection provided by Virgin Media. Unfortunately, like the vast majority of other ISPs, at the time of writing (March 2008) they only provide native IPv4 connectivity and so in order to have IPv6 connectivity I am having to tunnel IPv6 inside IPv4.

Whilst this all sounds wonderfully simple, the reality is rather more complex...

I am using the services and software from SixXS - an IPv6 Tunnel Broker project based in Switzerland. They have written a utility called AICCU (Automatic IPv6 Connectivity Client Utility) which automatically configures tunnels using TIC (Tunnel Information & Control Protocol) between end-users and an IPv6 Tunner Server, otherwise known as a PoP (Point of Presence). I tunnel my IPv6 traffic to a PoP in London operated by Goscomb Technologies. The PoP has connections to both the 'IPv4 Internet' and 'IPv6 Internet' and is able to pass traffic between the two.

The tunnelling method itself can take on one of many forms, however given my circumstances of using private (RFC1918) IP addresses behind a NAT gateway to a single dynamic public IP address I am using the AYIYA ('Anything In Anything') protocol to create an IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnel - this basically wraps ups my IPv6 packets as the payload inside UDP running over IPv4. You can read the Internet-Draft describing exactly how it does this here.

In addition to providing the IPv6 addresses for the tunnel, the Goscomb PoP also routes a /48 prefix to my tunnel endpoint this giving me plenty of IPv6 addresses to play with, 1.20892582 x 10²⁴ (~1.2 septillion) to be exact!

Once the tunnel is established, my server then announces a /64 prefix to the NewtonNet LAN using the Router Advertisement Daemon (radvd) thus allowing IPv6-enabled clients to create their own globally-unique addresses using stateless autoconfiguration. The server also forwards IPv6 packets to/from the Internet on behalf of the local IPv6-enabled clients.

Other IPv6 tunnel services are available, including Hurricane Electric's popular offering however their service does not work through NAT without having a router capable of identifying and passing IP protocol type 41 ('Proto-41' as per RFC 2529) packets which unfortunately mine doesn't.

Told you it was a bit complicated! They do however say a picture speaks a thousand words so here goes...

NewtonNet IPv6 Connectivity

All clear now ?! ;-)

(Incidentally, yes, that is an IPv6-enabled Cat Feeder - see here for further details!)