Laboratory manual for IPv6 Installation and Testing

Centre for Electronics Design and Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Introduction:
IP version 6 (IPv6) is a new version of the Internet Protocol, designed as the successor to IP version 4 (IPv4). The changes from IPv4 to IPv6 fall primarily into the following categories:

IPv6 Addresses-Larger and Different:

The larger 128-bit IPv6 address (versus the 32-bit IPv4 address) allows more flexibility in designing newer addressing architectures, as well as providing large enough address spaces for predicted future growth of the Internet and Internet related technologies. A new addressing format, called the Aggregatable Global Unicast Address Format, has been developed to help solve route complexity scaling problems with the current IPv4 Internet. The current IPv4 provider-based addressing used in the Internet relies on separate IPv4 addresses being assigned to ISPs in contiguously numbered blocks for routing efficiency; that is, the routers need to carry fewer routes.

Header Format Simplification:

The IPv6 header has a new format that is designed to keep header overhead to a minimum. This is achieved by moving both non-essential fields and optional fields to extension headers that are placed after the IPv6 header. The streamlined IPv6 header is more efficiently processed at intermediate routers.

Stateless Address Autoconfiguration:

Automatic configuration of IPv6 end systems (hosts) is one of the most important features of IPv6. In the current IPv4 Internet, you must either manually configure IP address, network mask, and default gateway, or rely on having a DHCP server. With IPv6, this process can take place automatically, even in the absence of a router; hosts on the same link can automatically configure themselves with link-local addresses and communicate without manual configuration.

Windows XP
Enabling IPv6:
1. Log on to the computer with a user account that has privileges to change
network configuration. 2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Network Connections. 3. Right-click any local area connection, and then click Properties. 4. Click Install. 5. In the Select Network Component Type dialog box, click Protocol, and then click Add. 6. In the Select Network Protocol dialog box, click Microsoft TCP/IP version 6, and then click OK. 7. Click Close to save changes to your network connection. Alternately, from the Windows XP desktop, click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt. At the command prompt, type netsh interface ipv6 install.

Example:

Figure 1: Install IPv6 using CLI

netsh is a command-line scripting utility that allows either locally or remotely, display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running.

Add/Remove IPv6 address:

Manually add/remove an IPv6 address on your Local Area Connection interface using netsh command netsh interface ipv6 add/delete address<interface-name> <Global ipv6 address>

Example:

Figure 2: IPv6 address configuration

Display and identify existing IPv6 address:

From a CLI run the following commands: ipconfig/all netsh interface ipv6 show interface ipv6 v if

Ipconfig is a command line utility available on all versions of Microsoft Windows. This utility allows you to get the IP address information of a Windows computer. It also allows some control over active TCP/IP connections.

Example:

Figure 3: TCP/IP Configuration

In the IPv6 protocol, the zone ID for link-local addresses is typically the interface index from the display of the netsh interface ipv6 show interface command. The interface index is defined locally on each IPv6 host. Because of this, the interface index used by Host A to reach Host B might not be the same as the interface index used by Host B to reach Host A.

Add/Remove IPv6 default gateway:

Manually add/remove an IPv6 route on your Local Area Connection interface using netsh command netsh interface ipv6 add/del route ::/0 Local Area Connection <default gateway address> . Verify the configuration using netsh interface ipv6 show routes command. Where as ::/0 is the prefix.

Example:

Figure 4: Default Gateway

Verify IPv6 configuration using some IPv6 related tools:

Ping:
Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. It works by sending ICMP echo request packets to the target host and listening for ICMP echo response replies. Ping local/global IPv6 address using ping -6 in Command Line Interface.

Example:

Figure 5: Ping the interface

Traceroute:
Traceroute is a computer network tool used to determine the route taken by packets across an IP network. It works by increasing the "time-to-live" value of each successive batch of packets sent. When a packet reached a destination host, it discards the packet and sends an ICMP time exceeded packet to the sender.

Example:

Figure 6: Trace the route taken by packet

Linux Ubuntu (7.10, 8.04 & 9.04)

Verify IPv6 support in Linux:
Modern Linux distributions already contain IPv6ready kernels, the IPv6 capability is generally compiled as a module. To check whether your current running kernel supports, or not, IPv6 the following file must exist: /proc/net/if_inet6 It's possible that the IPv6 module is not loaded automatically on startup. So, verify that the module is running by listing the current loaded modules: lsmod |grep ipv6

Add/Remove IPv6 address:

In Ubuntu there is only one file to be edited, /etc/network/interfaces. In terminal type the following: Desktop# sudo su Root-Desktop# gedit /etc/network/interfaces Add the following: iface eth0 inet6 static address 2001:0e30:1c04::13 netmask 126 gateway 2001:0e30:1c04::11 Once the file has been saved, run "/etc/init.d/networking restart", to bring the changes into effect. Where, iface is used to identify an interface. eth0, identifies the Ethernet port defined as eth0. The inet6 indicates the internet protocol version 6.

Display and identify existing IPv6 address:

From a CLI run the following commands: Ifconfig Ifconfig displays the status of the currently active interfaces. If a single interface argument is given, it displays the status of the given interface only; uses of ifconfig include setting an interface's IP address and netmask, and disabling or enabling a given interface.

Example

Figure 7: IPv6 address verification

Verify IPv6 configuration using some IPv6 related tools:

Ping:
Ping6 is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network; It is similar to windows XP. Ping6 estimates the round-trip time, generally in milliseconds, records any packet loss, and prints a statistical summary when finished.

Example:

Figure 8: Ping link-local address

Figure 9: Ping Global address Where as I in the Figure: 6 is the source packets with the given interface address. This flag applies if the ping destination is a link-local/site-local unicast address.

Tracepath:
It traces path to destination discovering MTU along this path The last line summarizes information about the entire path to the destination; it shows detected Path MTU, amount of hops to the destination.

Example:

Figure 10: Trace Route

Add/Remove IPv6 default gateway:

Route manipulates the kernel's IP routing tables. Its primary use is to set up static routes to specific hosts or networks via an interface.

Example:

Figure 11: Default Gateway

Linux Redhat
You need to update and configure following files for IPv6 configuration: 1. /etc/sysconfig/network : Turn on networking in this file. 2. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 : Set default IPv6 router IP and server IP address in this file. Open /etc/sysconfig/network file, enter: # vi /etc/sysconfig/network

Append following line: NETWORKING_IPV6=yes Open /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (1st network config file) # vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 Append following config directives for IPv6: IPV6INIT=yes IPV6ADDR=<IPv6-IP-Address> IPV6_DEFAULTGW=<IPv6-IP-Gateway-Address> Where,

NETWORKING_IPV6=yes|no - Enable or disable global IPv6 initialization. IPV6INIT=yes - Enable or disable IPv6 configuration for all interfaces. IPV6ADDR= Specify a primary static IPv6 address here. IPV6_DEFAULTGW=Add a default route through specified gateway.

Save and close the file. Restart networking: # service network restart Verify your configuration by pinging ipv6 enabled site such as ipv6.google.com: $ ping6 ipv6.google.com Traces path to a network host, enter: $ traceroute6 ipv6.google.com Routing Table: $ route -n -A inet6