Technology, Theology, and Anything In Between

I have been trying to configure my home network to use IPv6 for some time now.  I finally figured out how to do it, and wanted to pass the information along.

First, the part that I had the most trouble finding how to do, is that you MUST configure your Residential Gateway (RG) to be in “DMZPlus mode”.  I do not have the TV service anymore, and I’m not sure if the TV setup will still work if this mode is used.  Please proceed at your own risk.  You will want to be running your own router, and you need to go into the firewall options, and select the IP of the router connected to the RG, and then place this in DMZ plus mode.  Once this setting is adjusted, you must reboot or otherwise cause the router to renew its DHCP lease.  When this is complete, your router will now get the public IP address that U-Verse assigns.  This is crucial to making sure that IPv6 will work correctly.

I also run a router capable of doing 6to4 networking, the Apple TimeCapsule.  In the AirPort utility, go to the Advanced Tab, and then choose IPv6.  The “mode” should be set to “Tunnel”, and “Configure IPv6″ should be set to “Automatically”.  You can also check the box above to enable the IPv6 firewall, which I would recommend if you are concerned about intrusions.

One of the reasons that this was so difficult for me is that Apple doesn’t give much documentation (or at least I couldn’t find it) about how all the IPv6 settings work, or some examples on how to configure.  As far as I can tell, the settings mentioned about put the router into a 6to4 mode, where it is sending packets back and forth to the anycast 192.88.99.1 address.

Once all this was configured in the TimeCapsule, I was then able to renew some DHCP leases of IPv6-capable machines on my network.  They autoconfigured themselves, and I was able to browse several IPv6 sites (including my own).  I don’t know how quickly web hosting companies will be adopting this; some already have, which is how I have an IPv6 website.  One such company which offers IPv6 in addition to regular v4 addresses is nerios.net.  I’ve had good luck with them so far, and as of now they are providing a /64 block of addresses with their VPS servers.