Consumer IPv6 Device?

noel · Post by **noel** » February 3, 2007, 4:24 pm

Anyone aware of a consumer-level (Netgear/Linksys/D-link/Buffalo/etc.) home router that supports IPv6 on the internal side?

I haven't found one yet.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 4, 2007, 4:10 pm

Finally found two. One is wireless, one is wired. Interestingly you have to dig through the information on the website to determine that they actually do what you want. From Linksys:

RVS4000 (Wired)
WRVS4400N (Wireless)

The majority of you might not care about this, but for those of you running WinXP SP1 (or later), Windows Vista (all versions), Win2k3 (all versions), or any version of Linux (likely OSX too)... if you'd like to move to learn about or make use of IPv6, this is a good solution because it does IPv4 on the WAN side, and both IPv6 and IPv4 on the LAN side. It's also got an integrated intrusion prevention system, 802.1x support, WLAN QoS and all of the switched ports are 10/100/1000. It's really an impressive piece of networking hardware.

Midgen · Post by **Midgen** » February 4, 2007, 6:25 pm

Interesting idea. I might look into this myself.

Don't the windows stacks support this natively?

Edit: Sorry Noel, I edited my post after re-reading yours. I re-instated my question so your reply would be in context.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 4, 2007, 6:30 pm

noel wrote:but for those of you running WinXP SP1 (or later), Windows Vista (all versions), Win2k3 (all versions), or any version of Linux (likely OSX too)...

On XP, you simply go to your network properties panel, and add it as a protocol. With Vista, it's enabled by default. I think it might even be available on the Xbox 360 in an upcoming update.

Truant · Post by **Truant** » February 5, 2007, 12:32 am

I'll be honest here. I don't even know what IPv6 is!

noel · Post by **noel** » February 5, 2007, 1:01 am

Truant wrote:I'll be honest here. I don't even know what IPv6 is!

Not surprising. Most people don't even know it's coming or why. Here's a rather concise writeup from the book Windows Vista: Inside Out:

Understanding IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer that is designed to overcome shortcomings of the original Internet Protocol, IPv4. (That’s right; the first version was dubbed IPv4, and the second version is IPv6.) The most significant difference is the much larger address space. The 32-bit IPv4 addressing scheme provides for a theoretical maximum of approximately 4 billion unique addresses, which seemed like a lot when the internet and Internet Protocol were conceived over three decades ago. (Because of= the way IP addresses are allocated, the actual number in use is far less.) As a stopgap measure to overcome the limited number of IP addresses, private IP addresses and network address translation were implemented, as this system allows a large number of computers to share a single public IP address.

There will be no shortage of addresses with IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses—providing a pool of 3.4 × 1038 addresses. (That’s over 50 octillion addresses for every person on earth. Not many people have that many computers and other electronic devices, each of which will ultimately be addressed by its IPv6 address.)

Although NAT has been promoted as a security measure that shields networked computers behind a NAT firewall from external attack—which it does reasonably well—the security benefit was largely an afterthought; its real raison d’être is to ease the address shortage. IPv6 brings true security improvements, achieving the long-sought goal of security implemented at the network layer level; standards-based IPsec support is part of every IPv6 protocol suite.

Other improvements in IPv6 include easier configuration and more efficient routing.

Unfortunately, although IPv6 is being rapidly rolled out in many Asian countries, its adoption in the West is likely to take many years. Full implementation requires not only support at the host operating system—which we now have in Windows Vista and other recent versions of Windows—but application and hardware support as well, including the routers that tie together the various nodes of the internet and the firewalls that keep them apart. Replacing the existing hardware (not just routers, but also printers and other network-connected devices) and other infrastructure will require huge investment
and much time.

Until the transition to IPv6 is complete many years hence, you can gain several of its benefits with Windows Vista. Today, computers running Windows Vista can communicate over IPv4 and IPv6 networks at the same time. This means that, if your local area network (or your ISP) supports IPv6, Windows will use it, as IPv6 is the primary protocol in Windows Vista. You can also access IPv6 websites and other resources even if the intervening network infrastructure doesn’t support IPv6, as Windows will automatically fall back to a tunneling system such as Teredo. (Teredo is an IPv6 transition technology that allows end-to-end communication using IPv6 addresses; NAT translation
tables on Teredo client computers allow it to communicate through routers that use NAT. Other tunneling systems effectively embed IPv6 data in IPv4 packets.)

While you wait for the transition to IPv6 to be complete, you can find plenty of detailed
information about IPv6 at the Microsoft IPv6 website, http://www.microsoft.com/ipv6

If anyone has any specific questions, I'll try to answer them. I don't know it as well as I like yet, and chances are if I can't answer your question I'll need to learn it soon.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 5, 2007, 2:22 am

IIRC, America has a ginormous block of addresses allotted in the v6 space already, and most talk I heard was along the lines of creating entirely different Internets as more and more devices came online and the existing address space filled up. Bet that happens fast now that more and more people are using wireless gizmos.

But private IP spaces and NAT were a really clever way of letting large corporate networks access the internet without one to one terminal addressing. I don't think the security benefits should be underrated either. There isn't really a way to actively attack a computer that doesn't exist to the public network from the public network, and I'm not even sure it's possible to assault a VPN tunnel without insider access. Never got too into that stuff tho.

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » February 5, 2007, 6:50 pm

Man, converting IPv6 to binary must be asshole.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 5, 2007, 8:03 pm

It's pretty much the same as IPv4, just 4 times as long. Not like you need to be converting addresses to binary (for either protocol) all the time anyway.

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » February 8, 2007, 1:36 am

No, but, just saying.

IPv6 is actually a huge leap in my opinion. It will cause issues at first, like all new things. But will be damned fine in the end.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 8, 2007, 2:24 am

So I got the router and I'm basically going to return it.

It would be a great device for a very small company that needed improved security and better remote access via VPN. Unfortunately it's designed more for people who've got DNS, WINS, DHCP servers configured, and if you want all that as IPv6 stuff you'll need those configured as well.

Instead I'm going to make use of Earthlink's public IPv6 test, and keep watching for a more appropriate product and IPv6 offering through a decent ISP.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » February 8, 2007, 6:17 am

Get any old POS that someone is trying to throw away and run it as a linux router, there's your IPv6, DNS, DHCP, (I'm going to bet WINS isn't a requirement... that's like... dead man!)

noel · Post by **noel** » February 8, 2007, 10:59 am

I agree with you, and for the record, that's very obvious to me.

The problem is, my focus is on the networking side of things. I'm interested in the switch configurations, VRRPv3, OSPFv3, RIPng, and the new IPv6 Multicast protocols.

I'm not really interested in spending the time to set up a Linux box to provide DHCPv6, and DNS for an IPv6 environment as that's really not my focus. It might come to that, and I might have to find a beater machine to do that, but I'm hoping not.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 25, 2007, 10:34 am

Update: They updated the firmware for the router, and included basically everything (including the kitchen sink) that's available in any other router on the market plus they've now included both:

NAPT-PT
Enable this option to allow your IPv6-only host on the LAN side to connect to IPv4-only hosts on the WAN side through address-translation and protocol-translation (per RFC2766).

6to4 Tunnel
Enable this option to allow your IPv6 network connecting to other IPv6 networks via tunnels through IPv4 Internet (per RFC3056). The remote router also needs to support 6to4.

Considering it also does QoS, VPN connections, VLANs and has a built in IPS, this is now a pretty sweet device for a home user.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » February 25, 2007, 10:52 am

I got on an ipv6 kick while doing some certification stuff not too long ago and was going to do the same type of thing you are, run it on my home network with translation for the wan side.

Then I thought about it and with private addressing and CIDR it may actually be a while before a push is made for ipv6 in the states. I know Japan has pretty much converted to v6, as well as a few other countries but how quickly do you think it'll become an issue in the US? I'm betting not for a while.

We've discussed ipv6 at a high level at work, but once again we've decided that we'll keep v4 internally and if required to migrate to v6 we'll run both stacks on our edge routers and translate. Pain in the ass to migrate thousands of desktops, serves and various other devices even in a phased rollout.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 25, 2007, 11:49 am

My problem is that I do a lot of work for the DoD. They were supposed to be fully IPv6 by '08, and I assure you, that's not going to happen. Frankly, I'd be surprised if there were any devices outside of Fort Meade that were running IPv6 natively anywhere in the DoD by '08.

That said, my customers LOVE talking about it, ad nauseum. By talking about it, what I really mean is having me explain it to them, over and over again. The easiest way to learn it is to live in an environment, so I figured I'd look for a way to run it at home.

I totally agree with you though. CIDR and NAT have made IPv6 all but unnecessary in the US which is disappointing, because it really is a better way to go and you eliminate the cost associated with unnecessary routing and packet rewriting. Still, at some point, the time is going to be right for everyone, and I'll have been running it for years.

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » March 8, 2007, 7:04 pm

I saw this article, and thought someone might like to read it!

Everything you need to know about IPv6