Setting up an IPv6 tunnel (was: Re: static IP & DHCP problems on LAN)

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2013-03-12 at 14:42 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
> Once I have the tunnels up and running that copes with access to the
> server from outside the LAN.  When I am back home, however, and the
> laptop is connected into the LAN then obviously I do not want to go
> out to the tunnel provider and back again in order to ssh to the
> server (I presume that is how the tunnelling works).  Currently that
> is the second reason that I have fixed ip addresses, in order to ease
> communication between the devices on the LAN.  Can ipv6 help me here?

That is how the tunneling works with singleton tunnels. If you get a
prefixed tunnel, then you can run a router advertiser in your network
advertising the prefix (or some part of it) and your whole network will
autoconfigure itself with IPv6 addresses. It is seriously cool the first
time this happens.

I'm not sure (again) what your actual question is here. If you mean, can
you somehow get to the right machine without fixed addresses, then yes,
you can do that, but it's not specific to IPv6 or IPv4. Just run a local
DNS server and let your hosts do DDNS to update it. BIND is quite happy
to do DDNS over IPv4 or IPv6, and the DHCP clients for DHCPv4 and DHCPv6
can all do DDNS for the client. Or do manual DNS updates; it really
depends on how many hosts you have and how much manual configuration you
can stand to do :-)

If you want to make sure that your local hosts speak with each other
directly, you have several options. If they have DNS names, just use the
IPv4 names, and the communication will be direct. If they don't have
names, use the IPv4 addresses. Or set up a local IPv6 network using ULA
addresses, put their names in your DNS, and all your local comms will
start going over IPv6. It's pretty cool when that starts happening
too :-) Don't put ULA addresses into a globally visible view though,
that would be bad. Well, not bad, but uncivilised.

> I don't think my router does ipv6, it is a Netgear DG834Gv4

The point of using a tunnel is that your router doesn't have to "do
IPv6". The router just moves IPv4 packets like it always has.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://www.biplane.com.au/blog

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