On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 10:48 -0400, John E. Perry wrote:
James Knott wrote:
John E. Perry wrote:
OK, I've been watching this thread with great interest, and I still don't understand well enough to know the answer: Thank you, James; you seem to be the only one who understood my question... My home network is based on a wifi/router/firewall. I buy one line from Cox. As I understand it, more IP addresses would cost correspondingly more; I know this was true for my previous IP. According to the spec, the ISP is supposed to give you a huge block of addresses (/64?), so you won't have to pay more. This was the first point of my question: I don't want to have to buy half a dozen addresses. (BTW, I just saw my error below -- I of course meant 192.168.x.x).
Knott is correct. And I guess we assume that ISPs are going to follow the spec. Once your router knows its /64 than it announces that via ICMPv6 and any hosts on the network should auto-configure themselves into that IPv6 subnet. They should automatically be completely addressable Internet nodes, it really is an awesome improvement over IPv4. There isn't any reason for ISPs to be stingy as an ISP should get a [or multiple] /48 giving them each 2^16 /64 subnets for customers. And there are (2^32)-1 /48s inside just 2002::/16 [off the cuff calculation].
So it's very convenient for me to buy one address, connect my Netgear to it, and use dhcp for the half-dozen devices I have in my home. Since 198.162.x.x addresses cannot pass through a router, my network is private, and the firewall, set up to ignore all attempts at external access, makes me invisible to the Internet unless one of my computers initiates a transaction. How does ipv6 handle this? IPv6 includes local network ranges that are not passed over the internet. One range can be routed internally and another cannot. Either of those can be used, according to your needs. You also do not need a DHCP server as your addresses (yes, you can have more than one) are based on your MAC address.
IPv6 interfaces naturally support multiple addresses, unlike IPv4 where you have stupidity like alias interfaces eth0:1, eth0:2, etc... For example an IPv6 interface here has an fe80: (link local), an fdb5:: (internal), and a public address.
And this took care of the second point. I do not, and do not intend to, implement a public server of any kind, or manage my network remotely, or do anything else that might require me to open any of my network to externally initiated transactions.
Just set your IPv6 enabled firewall to block all incoming connections.
So, I have no reason, apparently, not to go ipv6 except that my wireless router (Netgear WPN824v2) doesn't support it. If I ever want to change it out, I won't have to ignore ipv6 offerings, then.
A WAP that knows nothing about IPv6 should still be able to handle IPv6 traffic, it is just a magical bridge afterall. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org