Supporting IPv6
IPv6 is the next generation internet protocol which improves scalability of the internet to support it's growth in the future, in various ways:
- IP address size increased to 128 bits, from 32 bits in IPv4, allowing everything to have a globally routable IP, and eliminating the need for NAT. It is also the answer to IPv4 address space exhaustion happening within a few years.
- standardize the subnet prefix length and allow for stateless autoconfiguration to simplify network management
- reduce the size of the global routing tables by improving aggregation. the abundancy of IP address space allows for reserving a contiguous block of addresses for an ISP for it's future expansion
- eliminating the need for routers to recalculate header checksums
- mandate IPsec to improve end to end security
an IPv4 address is notated as 4 decimal bytes (number between 0 and 255), separated by dots; an example would be: 172.17.110.236.
an IPv6 address is notated as 8 hexadecimal 16 bits words (number between 0 and ffff), separated by colons, and the longest run of zero words can be reduced to "::"; an example would be: 2001:db8:1:23::456
I made the 88x31 button after not finding something like it in a brief search, with the intention of showing to others that one is "for" ipv6, and puts effort into supporting it technically. You can use the button image for similar purposes, without my permission, however,
the turtle is from the KAME project, copyright status is unclear, and i will stop using it on request from the owners.
my goals met to support ipv6:
- IPv6 support and acceptable internet connectivity on servers - each server has a low latency tunnel from a different provider.
- IPv6 support for all offered services (HTTP, FTP, DNS, MX, NTP, etc)
- nameservers have ipv6 glue
- ipv6 support and internet connectivity on home network. i run debian linux on my router. connectivity and /48 provided by my ISP, XS4ALL
- released/publicly available software with IPv6 support: beware sntp, lcore, beware ircd
I use tunnels from SIXXS and HE. I use the term "low latency tunnel" to mean the POP is nearby such that IPv6 traffic does not have a higher latency than IPv4 within ~1 ms.
i have some simple test pages for ipv6 connectivity:
link with both ipv4 and ipv6
link with only ipv4
link with only ipv6