ipv6 Loopback Addresses (equivalent to 127.x.x.x)

Question

I have a development environment set up where I have a separate loopback address for multiple websites.

For example, I have the following:

127.0.0.1 www.mysite.dev
127.0.0.2 foo.mysite.dev
127.0.0.3 bar.mysite.dev
127.0.0.4 waffles.mysite.dev

I'd like an equivalent solution for ipv6.

I already know that you can use ::1 as a loopback address, but ::2, ::3, etc don't seem to work.

Are there any other loopback addresses in ipv6? Is there a way to have multiple unique loopback addresses?

Answer 1

Your loopback adress is ::1/128. Note the width of the subnet which restricts it to just one host. change the subnetmask to something wider and check your routing table. Or use link-local adresses.

Answer 2

Technically ::2, ::3 etc. are part of ::0.0.0.0/96, the "ipv4 compatible ipv6 address" range. It's deprecated, but you probably don't want to use that range.

For a lab environment, use unique local addressing. Go to http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/ and generate yourself a prefix. Then you can pick whatever addresses you want out of that prefix, and assign them to the loopback interface.