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Home Server On IPv6-only Internet Connection?
RandyOo writes "I've recently learned that our neighborhood is getting a fiber optic network, with a 100Mbps connection in each subscriber's home. IPv6 connectivity is included, but unfortunately, the only IPv4 connectivity they offer is Carrier Grade NAT, due to the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in RIPE. I travel a lot, and I've become accustomed to accessing my home network via SSH, VNC, etc. It appears uPNP and PMP are unsupported by CGN. So, without a publicly-routed IPv4 address, I'll be unable to reach devices on my home network from an IPv4-only connection, such as the one provided by my cellular carrier (which also appears to be behind some kind of NAT, by the way). If the ISP isn't willing or able to sell me an IPv4 address, what alternatives do I have? I'd be willing to pay a small monthly fee for, say, a VPN service that would allow me to accept incoming connection requests on a range of ports on their Internet-facing IPv4 address. Does such a service exist?"
I've been using LogMeIn's Hamachi system to accomplish this. It's a virtual LAN solution that links machines behind firewalls or CGN devices. The down side is that it has to be installed on all devices that access the virtual LAN, and they don't have any mobile clients (yet), but if you need access from a device you can't install the Hamachi client on, you can always get a cheap VPS, install the linux client on it, and set up some port forwarding - the Hamachi IPs are static, so each machine always gets the same one.
There are some limitations with the free version (5 machines in a virtual LAN, connection only works with a logged in user on desktop clients), but the $30ish it costs per year for a 32 user license is very reasonable. And it supports IPv6 and IPv4 across the VLAN, too.
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also, if you're using t-mobile and have a newer phone, you can get IPv6. https://sites.google.com/site/tmoipv6/lg-mytouch
A cheap Linux based VPS (Virtual Private Server) will do what you want. You can set up a VPN connection between your home server and the VPS, and then connect to the VPS on its public IP and have it route to your home. I haven't set up such a thing myself, and it will be a bit laggy, but it should works for what you need.
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Every system I've seen has some form of IPV6 tunneling that allows you to call out to an IPV6 server. The only time it fails is if you're trying to host an IPV6 server which will fail due to NAT but connecting to an IPV6 always works. The fact that you've got an IPV6 server means you're set. Run Teredo/Miredo on your clients and connect away.
Go setup teredo/miredo and connect away.
Take a look at Hurricane Electric, they offer free tunnel, dns hosting, etc. ;)
Oh, and an awesome IPv6 training program for which you can get a t-shirt if you finish it!
You can be up and running on an IPv6 tunnel from anywhere in 30 seconds!
Like tunnelbroker.net or broker.aarnet.edu.au
then gogoc (or similar) to connect you to the IPv6 tunnel when on the greater internet, then ssh to your ipv6 address
As one other comment suggested, get a cheap VPS and setup a VPN so that you can connect to your network. DigitalOcean has one for $5/month (I'm in no way affiliated) https://www.digitalocean.com/ and you can then have your router connect to the VPN. Setup the routes correctly and any VPN user can access every device at home.
However you won't always want to load up the VPN on your phone, and if there's just 1 computer you want to access you can use a VPS with a remote SSH tunnel. Have the computer on your network connect to the VPS and forward some high numbered port, say 4222, to port 22: ssh -R 4222:localhost:22 user@vps. Then you can ssh into your VPS on port 4222 and it will go directly to your home computer. Just made sure you add "GatewayPorts yes" to /etc/ssh/sshd_config or the remote port will only bind to localhost.
Couple this with autossh and the home computer will always keep the connection open and re-establish it as necessary.
Sure, there's a little overhead, but I've never really noticed it. I use this trick so that my phone and tablet can always ssh into my laptop no matter where the laptop is (home network, friend's house, coffee shop, etc)... no need to find the IP address and worry about port forwarding.
SSH into the Virtual private server, then SSH from the virtual private server to your LAN's IPv6 address
For VNC, open SSH back to your remote computer from inside your LAN in remote tunnel mode, using the -R option, to tunnel the port to the local VNC at the remote end, then connect to that local port on your local computer with VNC for remote access to your home.
For me, the cheapest way to go was to have the machine behind NAT automatically connect to a second server and bring up an IP tunnel through pppd-ssh.
The second server has a public IP and I connect to it when I want to access the machine behind NAT. You can also do port redirection on the public IP server so you can log directly into your home computer with the public IP.
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Your ISP should at least be giving you a block of static ports on a static public IPv4 address so that you can just map them on your home router afterwards. It's called "port block allocation". See this slide deck for more details.
Port control protocol is also very close to being reality. It's a bit like a combination of UPnP and DHCP that allows static IPv4 ports to be requested by and allocated to an end user like IP addresses are now.
You should pester your ISP about these two services monthly until they have a satisfactory response for you. Frankly it's irresponsible on their part if they don't have a FAQ explaining this stuff and a policy for helping customers deal with these things. To do otherwise is demeaning to their customers.
Buy a VPS. Create an open ended ssh tunnel commencing that opens a port on the VPS IP4 address. Use a utility like autossh to automatically maintain the ssh connection. Connect to port 80 on the VPS IP and get routed to your home web server.
Don't bother with any 3rd parties like most suggestions are advising. OpenVPN supports tunneling IPv4 and IPv6 over either of them. You can use a laptop or anything else that supports IPv6 to connect to your server at home over IPv6 via a bridged tap tunnel interface and then anything you connect to the laptop via layer 2 will be able to communicate with your home over IPv4.
Teredo(IPv6 over UDP) is easy to set up - if your Windows is Vista or later, it works automatically. For Linux it depends on the distro. If you happen to be in a non-NATted environment for once, 6to4 works great too.
So just enjoy the IPv6.
If you have devices at home that don't support IPv6, you can set up a NAT64 within your home network.
Conversely, get a tunnel from a tunnel broker to use whilst on the road vpn style (essentially tunnel into ipv6 network via local ipv4) and access your systems over ipv6 when on the road.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Serious question, no interest in flamebait or trolls. Why is mobile not on IPv6?
It's a place where I would expect it. Quick turnaround of devices, new networks all the time. It made sense for 2G and GRPS to be IPv4 at the time. But 3G and even 4G apparently are still using IPv4.
It's hard to believe the phones are not up to the task. It's all in the software, not too hard to require v6 on 3G and later, Older devices that are v4 only can't use 3G networks anyway. Users don't need to know their IP address, ever. This are devices, and there is a huge number of it, exactly what v6 was meant to support. Carriers have full control over their networks, start to finish, so that part of switching to v6 is also not an issue. They of course have to provide a gateway to access v4-only web sites, but that shouldn't be too much harder than maintaining a NAT like they have to do now to keep everyone on v4.
Honestly, I just don't get it.
It's such a stark contrast with that fibre provider that is basically IPv6, while providing a v4 compatibility layer for older devices that still need it.
While the title may have been less in your face, why is this modded down? AC is right - with IPv6, he has no shortage of addresses, so he could configure a DHCP6 server and set it up that way.
It would have helped if this was dual stacked, but since it isn't, one thing he should consider is asking his cell phone carrier whether they do IPv6, and getting that end IPv6 supported. Another option might be to set up a DS-lite configuration for services needing IPv4. That way, he uses his IPv4 cellphone to access those services, while providing them seamlessly from IPv6. Or else tunnel the requests from the IPv4 end.
No very much the opposite actually. Remember you are tcp or Udp inside the tunnel as well. For the inner Udp a lost packet is simply a lost packet like any other, the application will have been designed to handle that because its the nature of Udp. For tcp a lost tunnel packet will result in the inner tcp seeing a lost packet, there will be no ack and it will do what tcp always does a retransmit, the outer tunnel layer will encapsulate it in a new Udp packet and things will work fine.
Often tcp tunneled in tcp performs badly on lossy links. What happens if the stacks have not worked out the window sizes just right you get BOTH the inner and otter tcp doing a retransmit. This results in the inner tcp ultimately experiencing lots of duplicate packets; which it will handle, but you end up sending lots of useless traffic down the tunnel which is just like more overhead.
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You know, I honestly did spend some time searching Google without coming up with useful results. I certainly could have spent a lot more time searching, but sometimes, it's a lot easier to ask someone with expertise and experience. I debated asking the question here, but I also found it interesting (and perhaps news and discussion-worthy) that ISPs are rolling out IPv6-only deployments (on synchronous 100Mbit fiber, even!), and thought others here might find that interesting, as well.
My provider actually is T-Mobile Germany, and surprisingly, they don't plan to deploy IPv6 until next year!
Ask yourself whether you need a server, or you simply need to access your home computer.
If you just need to access your home computer to see files/etc., then a service like LogMeIn or TeamViewer would probably work for you. They work through NAT and don't require a publicly routable IP address to access specific equipment.