IPv6

Over the past couple of days, I’ve decded to try giving IPv6 (the next generation internet protocol) a whirl. Mainly so I could get a first-hand feel for how it works, how to configure it, etc. Getting my MacBook Pro to use IPv6 is a snap: at work, I can set up a “6 to 4” interface, which lets you use IPv6 on the endpoints of a network, with the middle being IPv4. At home, I’ve set up my a Linux box to auto-configure IPv6 on the computers inside my home network.

Since my internet connection at home doesn’t have a static IP, my IP address can change. With that in mind, I chose to go with an IPv6 “broker” that can handle the situation. I chose go6 to do the job. The reasons are simple: go6 supposedly gives you the same IPv6 address, so it’s ‘permanent’. And that IPv6 address doesn’t change when the IPv4 address changes - which is important, as that address does change. While it’s nice to set everything up yourself, I didn’t want to have to deal with having to do it over & over each time my ISP changes my IPv4 address. And the go6 client (known as tspc in Debian), handles this gracefully.

One of the advantages of IPv6 is that it’s got a horrifyingly large number of addresses. This means that each device on my home network can get its own IPv6 address. The upside is this means that any system on my home network can have a permanent, routable IP address - and I can connect to it directly from anywhere on the internet. The downside is that any system on the internet (with IPv6) can connect to any of my devices. So I’ll have to learn some security-related things for IPv6. Still, it’s a start

In other news, I had an issue where I wasn’t able to publish to .Mac from iWeb. I ended up having to delete the site and upload it from scratch. At least it’s working now.