Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote -1 down vote favorite

What kind of (server) infrastructure is necessary for automatic IPv6 tunneling to work? How would a client automatically find an endpoint?

I'm not even sure if this is a standard feature of IPv6 or not, but setting up an IPv6 tunnel using an Apple Airport base station I noticed that it offers IPv6 tunneling with automatic configuration. Trying it, it didn't work (i.e. it failed to establish a tunnel). I'd imagine the ISP would need to run some sort of server advertising where an endpoint can be found? How is this supposed to work exactly?

share|improve this question

closed as off topic by EEAA, Michael Hampton, Shane Madden, Ward, John Gardeniers Dec 3 '12 at 8:15

Questions on Server Fault are expected to relate to professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

1 Answer

up vote 0 down vote

I am not familiar with the Airport base station, Looking at the device specs it supports 6to4 tunnelling, This would require the Airport to have a public IP address for the tunnel to work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4)

If you are unable to give the Airport a public IP address then you could setup a tunnel with an IPv6 tunnel broker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_broker) and use stateless auto configuration to give out IPv6 addresses on your network. Most tunnel brokers (if not all) run the service for free.

You may need be able to configure this on your router, if not then you could setup a small server to do this.

I have used Hurricane Electric's tunnel service in the past to do this http://www.tunnelbroker.net They also have example configuration for various devices and operating systems.

Edit: I just had a quick look at Hurricane Electric's website and they have example settings how to setup a manual tunnel using an Airport (The example configuration are viewable after you have created the tunnel), So it looks like you could set it up directly on the Airport.

share|improve this answer
1  
And that's exactly what I did, set up a manual tunnel through HE. But in the process I saw that there's also an "automatic tunnel" mode which requires no configuration (and did not do anything when I tried it). So my question is, what is this mode, is it part of the 6to4 or related spec, and what infrastructure does it require to work? – deceze Nov 24 '12 at 17:09
The automatic tunnel requires to the device setting up to the tunnel to have a public IP address, the infrastructure is already setup by multiple ISPs globally, the 6to4 tunnel will try to connect to 192.88.99.1 The tunnel won't work if device setting up the tunnel has a private IP. – Epaphus Nov 24 '12 at 22:24
The device does have a public IP, the manual tunnel works fine after all. Am I understanding correctly that 192.88.99.1 is like a defined global auto-config service for 6to4 tunneling? Any idea why it might not work then? Could the ISP be blocking or not supporting it somehow? – deceze Nov 24 '12 at 22:43
From what I understand this is correct, You should be able to ping/traceroute to that IP. I guess the ISP might be blocking it, doesn't make sense for them to do that. I was going to suggest that something might be blocking protocol 41 which is used for IPv6 traffic over IPv4 however since you have a manual tunnel working I guess that is not the case. – Epaphus Nov 25 '12 at 0:48

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.