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IPv6 for the Linksys WRT54G
AndersBrownworth writes "Earthlink Research and Development has released a firmware load for the Linksys WRT54G wireless access point that supports end-to-end IPv6. They suggest features such as extremely large address space, stateless autoconfiguration and low cost restoration of end-to-end addressability will revolutionize IP communications. It would be interesting if releases like this significantly boost the IPv6 take-up rate but as far as I know, Earthlink doesn't supply end-to-end IPv6 yet."
I use Earthlink and saw a link on their site about 6 months back for "testers" of their broadband offerings. I signed up cause it offered discount service. About 3 months ago, they sent me a new router (a Linksys, but not the same one as this article) and set me up with end-to-end IPv6. So far, all's worked fine and w/o issue. Perhaps this firmware patch is to be released before they start offering it to more users...
You don't need any ISP support if you use 6to4.
Windows supports IPv6 already, although not perfectly.
The ThreeDegrees P2P app automatically enables and configures IPv6 when you install it, and all its traffic goes over IPv6. It turned out not to be a killer app, but imagine if something like Kazaa or Skype decided to enable IPv6 on everyone's computer.
it really doesn't matter how slow NAm and EU are in changing, because most of humanity will be using IPv6 regardless.
.-/
You either surf the wave or it crashes over you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is IPv6 a tool looking for a job to do?
It's not a chicken-and-egg thing, where everyone would do it if there were only the infrastructure, but there's no infrastructure because no one's doing it yet. At least, it doesn't seem that way to me.
IPv6 came about when the Internet exploded in the early 90's. Folks looked at the address space and said "Hey, we're running out of room!"
The solution in IPv6 was to use 128-bit addresses instead of 32-bit ones, and to design the next gen of protocols using the lessons learned from the previous one. TCP/IPv4 was designed in an era when security was not in as much focus as it is now.
It seems like about two minutes after IPv6 began to be developed, the world discovered NAT and firewalls. We'd always had routers with private networks, but NAT made it possible for mortals to set up. A whole company with thousands or millions of IP addresses can be hidden behind a very small set of IPv4 addresses.
That solution has worked so well that few feel the need to use IPv6.
I wonder what will happen to force the issue?
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This could be useful for breaking the cycle that prevents adoption of IPv6. ISPs don't provide service because there isn't enough user demand. Users don't demand it in part because a lot of software would break. And software developers don't provide IPv6 support because their ISP doesn't support IPv6. Yes, you can configure tunneling software but if you are behind a NATing and Firewalling router, there are likely to be some problems and by the time you are done configuring it, you don't have time to work on the software; this project actually replaces a commonly used router with one that enables IPv6 rather than getting in the way. And likewise, most people can't really switch to IPv6 only until almost everyone supports IPv6. So, this could help provide critical mass.
The web page is pretty vague about what is actually going on under the hood. Presumably this distribution creates a tunnel to some IPv6 relay router but what gateway or tunneling protocol is used is not specified.
Ever tried putting Asterisk on one? It's sweet!
But when is Slashdot going to get some IPv6?
Call themselves a site for geeks?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Just set up an IPv6 tunnel (Linux SIT tunnels support this natively), and point it to 192.88.99.1 to send to non-6to4 addresses. Other 6to4 destinations will be auto-tunnelled with IPv6-over-IPv4, and any IPv6 packets sent to you will also be automatically routed over IPv6-over-IPv4 by the Internet. Therefore, there's no need to set up a tunnel with a third party if you're using 6to4.
Fedora Core supports 6to4 more or less out-of-the-box. All you need to do are two things: /etc/sysconfig/network (why does Slashdot split the lines?):
2. Add these lines to the1. Add these lines to
Not quite true (well, true, but misleading). IP addresses were designed to be handed out hierarchically, which made routers very simple. Now, IP addresses are handed out in blocks of 256, in a relatively arbitrary way, making the routing tables much larger than they should be. With IPv6, we will have enough IP addresses to assign them hierarchically again, and still have a few million per person.
Now this is just nonsense!
Again, not quite. A lot of worms propagate by simply scanning the IP address space. Because of how densely packed it is, they only need to scan a hundred or so to be guaranteed to find a host (usually a lot less). With IPv6, they would have to scan millions of IP addresses before they found one that was valid. A machine trying to connect to a million non-existent IP addresses is very easy to spot.
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