IPV6

I decided it was time to sit down and start learning IPV6. And learn I did! I now have a dual stack (IPV4 and IPV6) on my network (wired and wireless). I went to Go6 and register for an IPV6 tunnel. I learned about link local addresses, site local addresses (a deprecated address), global addresses and RFC4193 addressing (kind of like RFC1918). I found this useful script for generating a valid RFC4193 network address. I've configured my radvd (Route Adverting daemon) for local use. I started finding out the details of IPV6 enabled network programming. It's not much different than what we currently do as it's mostly in the libraries. I hope to have some of my home automation software listening on both the IPV4 and IPV6 addresses.

I still have a ton of learning to do (the above only covers 3 days worth of learning). I still need to properly understand IPV4 (the current IP version used by most of the Internet) to IPV6, get a better understanding of the DNS issues, how I get a registered address for my home network or get NAT for IPV6, proper routing and anything else I don't know (which I'm sure is a lot). The reason for this sudden interest is that I'm beginning to see the need for IPV6 at work and the best way to know something is to use it on a daily basis. Having it at home will allow me to observe with the Wireshark Ethernet sniffer and give me a chance to experiment. I am also doing some experiments at work but my time at work is for work and there's very little time for play. Yes I know the benefits but deadlines are deadlines.

Oh, a couple of minor things, once you've enable IPV6 on your machines remember to restart things like your Apache daemon so they're listening on IPV6 addresses. Next to connect to the Apache server on it's IPV6 address ! use the following URL: http://[::1]/ . The ::1 is the local loopback so if it's a remote machine use it's IPV6 address (but not the link local address). This works in Firefox 2.0.0.12 and above. My telnet and ssh work with IPV6 addresses (don't use the [] format, use the ::1 format instead and don't use the link local address).

Well I figure I've got years of learning to do (it took me years to get the current understanding of IPV4). Books alone won't be my sole source of learning now that I have an actual network. I've found a lot of useful information on the Internet, especially the RFC's. I'll be spending a lot of time with the RFC's. Well that's all for now.