IPv6 provides very large address space than IPv4. This results from the use of a 128 bit address compared to 32 bit address in IPv4. The new address space thus supports 2^128 addresses. This expansion provides flexibility in allocating addresses and routing traffic and eliminates the primary need for network address translation (NAT).
To get a feel of IPv6 environment I wanted to enable IPv6 address on my home Linux box. I download gw6c tunneling tool from www.freenet6.net. And with fairly simple config changes in gw6c.conf I am able to launch gw6c binary and get a new IPv6 virtual interface with global scope. which means I can reach IPv6 world and IPv6 world can reach me.
tun Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
inet6 addr: 2001:5c0:1000:b::4a1f/128 Scope:Global
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1280 Metric:1
RX packets:5064 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4071 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:500
RX bytes:6305367 (6.0 MiB) TX bytes:323317 (315.7 KiB)
by default it uses 3 tunnel brokers
montreal.freenet6.net
amsterdam.freenet6.net
sydney.freenet6.net
Though you get same IP from one tunnel but you may get connected to different tunnel each time which means you may get a different IP next time.
To reach my machine from outside world I wanted to map this IP to a hostname.
I am using freedns.afraid.org for IPv4 dynamic DNS. But this doesn’t supports IPv6 Dynamic DNS yet. I noticed that freenet6.net assigned IP gets mapped to a hostname, based on my user id on freenet6.net, manish.broker.freenet6.net. So I simply created a domain ipv6.mka.in with CNAME to manish.broker.freenet6.net.
root@jerry:~# dig AAAA ipv6.mka.in
; <<>> DiG 9.5.1-P3 <<>> AAAA ipv6.mka.in
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 33527
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ipv6.mka.in. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ipv6.mka.in. 3127 IN CNAME manish.broker.freenet6.net.
manish.broker.freenet6.net. 3600 IN AAAA 2001:5c0:1000:b::4a1f
;; Query time: 442 msec
;; SERVER: 4.2.2.2#53(4.2.2.2)
;; WHEN: Thu Nov 26 06:48:16 2009
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 97
To test IPv6 reach-ability from outside world you can try ping, traceroute from http://lg.he.net to your home machine IPv6 address.
core1.fmt1.he.net> traceroute ipv6 2001:5c0:1000:b::4a1f
Type Control-c to abort
Tracing the route to IPv6 node from 1 to 30 hops
1 <1 ms 29 ms 10 ms 10gigabitethernet1-2.core1.sjc2.he.net [2001:470:0:2f::2]
2 1 ms 14 ms 2 ms if-4-0-0.6bb1.sqn-sanjose.ipv6.as6453.net [2001:504:0:1::6453:1]
3 13 ms 32 ms 3 ms POS9-0-0.mcore4.PDI-PaloAlto.ipv6.as6453.net [2001:5a0:500:100::6]
4 74 ms 74 ms 74 ms POS12-0.mcore4.NYY-NewYork.ipv6.as6453.net [2001:5a0:1200::2]
5 93 ms 88 ms 94 ms POS1-0.mcore3.MTT-Montreal.ipv6.as6453.net [2001:5a0:300:100::1]
6 96 ms 107 ms 112 ms if-3-0-0.6bb1.MTT-Montreal.ipv6.as6453.net [2001:5a0:300:100::22]
7 116 ms 83 ms 96 ms 2001:5a0:300::6
8 376 ms 383 ms 371 ms manish.broker.freenet6.net [2001:5c0:1000:b::4a1f]
To test IPv6 reach-ability of your machine to outside world try to browse http://ipv6.google.com. this is strictly a IPv6 domain so works only on IPv6 enabled machines. read more at http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
you can also try to ping one of the google’s IPv6 resolver, 2001:5c0:1000:11::2
root@jerry:~# ping6 2001:5c0:1000:11::2 -c 4
PING 2001:5c0:1000:11::2(2001:5c0:1000:11::2) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2001:5c0:1000:11::2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=403 ms
64 bytes from 2001:5c0:1000:11::2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=284 ms
64 bytes from 2001:5c0:1000:11::2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=284 ms
64 bytes from 2001:5c0:1000:11::2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=63 time=284 ms
— 2001:5c0:1000:11::2 ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 284.026/314.026/403.367/51.582 ms
As of now you cannot play much in IPv6 domain. There are very few public internet services for IPv6.
but you can tie up with communities like www.gogo6.com to find some IPv6 armored friends on internet.