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I feel that while we don't need IPv6 yet, waiting until we do need it would be foolish. Think of this in the same terms as the Y2K issue, which never became an issue because people took proactive action.

Some useful IPv6 related links:
    - http://www.simphalempin.com/dev/miredo/
    - http://evanjones.ca/macosx-ipv6.html
    - http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/
    - http://www.hexago.com/
    - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/590/ - displays ipv6 address in firefox, if it has one
    - http://www.ipv6.org/impl/windows.html

All that is really needed is for the pockets of IPv6 networks to join up, rather than staying as pockets. Maybe an IPv6 based P2P or something of the sorts might help provide some sort of momentum.

Wrong. Linux is nowhere near as IPv6-friendly as the *BSDs. To enable IPv6 in FreeBSD, for example, put 'ipv6_enable="YES"' in /etc/rc.conf

Each FreeBSD CD comes with a bunch prebuilt IPv6-ready apps, like apache, wget, etc -- apps that don't have native IPv6 support.

Wrong yourself. On RedHat 9 for example, to enable IPv6 all you do is type "modprobe ipv6' as root. Rebooting is NOT required.

Most Linux distros contain a LOT of IPv6 support. RedHat comes with IPv6 enabled through a kernel module, and a large number of packages that include IPv6 support out of the box. Examples include Apache, ping6, iproute6, traceroute6, and so on.

The following page describe Linux IPv6 support in a variety of distros.

IPv6 information:
http://www.ipv6.org/

IPv6 for Windows:
http://www.microsoft.com/ipv6
http://research.microsoft.com/msripv6/

IPv6 for Linux:
http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/

IPv6 for Mac:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/ipv6

IPv6 for Java:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/net/ipv6_g uide/

I've been messing around with IPv6 for a couple years, and reading about it for a couple more, which still puts me behind the curve a bit. Bottom line is this is really new stuff, and the kind of basic information out there is just that, basic, in the same way assembler is basic (though not as basic as straight machine code). There is very little in the way of easy to follow directions, let alone complete network stacks and applications to make use of them. If you want a (mostly) complete IPv6 stack, go with BSD.

The best web resource i've found for linux specific information is a HOWTO by Peter Bieringer. It's located at http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/index.html

http://www.hs247.com/ Has a bunch of links to a ton of information, and is OS agnostic.

One book I've found to be pretty helpful is called IPng and the TCP/IP protocols: Implementing the Next Generation Internet. The first half of the book rambles a bit, but the second half gets down to business quite nicely. It can be a bit technical at points, which I like, but may be a dry for some.

O'Reilly has a good article on 6to4 tunneling at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2001/06/01/ipv6 _tutorial.html. The specifics are BSD oriented, but the concepts apply everywhere.

If you want to start writing some code that uses IPv6, the ever popular UNIX Network Programming is a great resource.

Programming IPv6 apps is actually quite easy, and actually involves programming protocol family independent code if you want to do it right. On the client end, this basically involves using a function (getaddrinfo(3)) to get a linked list of all addresses associated with a given hostname in any protocol family (IPv4, v6, or even something fun like AppleTalk) and walking along the list until you get a good connection. This has the added advantage that if you are trying to connect to a host that has multiple IP addresses, and some of them are non-responsive (i.e. a round-robin DNS situation), your client will try connecting to each IP address until it succeeds.

If you're trying to learn how to configure and use IPv6 on your hosts, try some of these:

• Microsoft
• The Kame project (*BSD)
• The 6bone for general IPv6 stuff, as well as information on connecting to the experimental IPv6 backbone.
• Peter Bieringer's Linux IPv6 page.

• 3com - no listings (no support???)
  
• Cisco Systems
  
• HP - no listings in network equipment
  
• Juniper Networks - OS support
  
• Linux IPv6 HOWTO
  
• Lucent - interesting
  
• NetBSD IPv6 docs
  
• Windows XP - Installing IPv6
  
• RFC 2492 - "IPv6 Over ATM Networks"
  

The following list will keep you occupied about IPv6 for some time... oh just for the record ams-ix is doing NATIVE IPv6 since 1998 now... alongside NSPIXP6 and PAIX and some others to be found at v6nap.net.

First two nice repositories where you can find almost anything IPv6 related:
IPv6 News and Links (hs247)
Open Directory Project Computers/Internet/Protocols/IP/IPng/

And some others important ones which can also be found there:
6bone
Belnet
Bieringer's Linux IPv6 FAQ
Euronet Belgium
IPng
KAME
Kitame's Debian IPv6 Packages
Microsoft IPv6
PuTTY IPv6
SiXXS
Sun Solaris IPv6
Surfnet IPv6
Trumpet IPv6

IPv6 for the future (or something advocating like that :)

good IPv6 homepage

IPv6 HOWTO

IPv6 Standards

IPv6 Tutorial (PDF)

And the 6bone

http://www.ipv6.org/

http://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng/html/ipng-main. html

http://www.ipv6forum.com/

http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6 -HOWTO.html

Unfortunately, ipv6.org is currently down.

r. ghaffari
(25/M/Baltimore, MD)

As all the OSs have a different way of setting up ip6 over ip4. You probably won't find a usefull generic how-to. There was I site I found in the past that had howto's for many OSs. I can't find the exact link, but start looking at www.freenet6.net.

For Linux specific try Linux: IPv6

But unfortunately, Linux is not an OS. Having IPv6 in the kernel is fine, but it is a *major* PITA to get even the basics (ping, traceroute) recompiled, etc. FreeBSD is way ahead of the game in this case.

Actually, the newest iputils packages have ping6, traceroute6, etc. and many other packages (e.g. OpenSSH) can be compiled with ipv6 support with relative ease. (Note that I realize OpenSSH is originally from a *BSD and I recognize and respect their support for IPv6 - but Linux *does* also have it)

As I'm sure countless others have pointed out, there is excellent information on transitioning (borrowed word from a friend of mine at school... I'm not sure it's a real word, but hey...) to ipv6 at the ipv6.org site, as well as a Linux HOWTO with some easy-to-follow instructions.

At this point, I recommend checking out some RFCs if you're wanting to set up an IPv6 box... It has all kinds of nuances IPv4 didn't have that you need to know at this point. Once it is widely deployed, IPv6 has fabulous autoconfiguration methods; however, if (like most of us) you will have to be tunneling through IPv4 to get to the nearest IPv6 host, you'll hafta set a lot of that stuff up yourself.

That said, you know that as soon as I can get a working IPv6 tunnel at school I'll have it in a heartbeat. ;-)

ipv6.org has lots of stuff for the less well informed, including the implementations that are currently available.

Oh, and the Linux HOWTO.

First we need the distribution providers to start turning on IPv6 support. I've managed to setup a RedHat box to do IPv6, but it required redoing the kernel, manually patching a couple of packages, and replaing quite a few other packages. Your average user just isn't ready for this yet.

Let me throw a few links at anyone who wants to try setting up IPv6 on their box. Be careful, you can really foul up a machine doing this wrong.

• http://www.bieringer. de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html - Linux IPv6 Howto document
• http://v6rpm.jindai.net/ - IPv6 RPM pacakges
• http://www.v6.linux.or.jp/develop.html - IPv6 Linux user group
• http://www.freenet6.net/ - User configured IPv6 tunnels

Instead of doing a IPv6 use day, we need an IPv6 lobbying day. Get your distribution provider to compile IPv6 support in to the default kernel (at least as a module), and start including the IPv6 packages and scripts with their installation.

For 6bone info, see http://www.6bone.net/

Let me pass along two links.

The first, http://www.bieringer. de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html, contains detailed instructions for updating a Linux system to IPv6.

The second, http://www.freenet6.net/, is an automated service for getting a tunnel to the 6Bone. This is an end station address (can't be used for a router), but it lets you test the client applications for talking to anywhere on the 6Bone.

--dkm

An easier way than 6bone for testing client implementations is through Freenet6 (www.freenet6.net). It uses a web form method to get a tunnel assigned that will work with Linux or NT machines. It's only an end of address (you can't use it as the front for a router), but it works great for testing the end user implementation. It allowed me to get IPv6 up and connected on Linux system here.

There are instructions for setting up the Linux IPv6 support at http://www.bieringer. de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html. I've followed it as far as updating my net-tools and traceroute and then hooked up the Freenet6 tunnel. With that, I've been able to FTP out to some IPv6 only sites for testing. Works great!

--dkm