[GRLUG] IPv6: My views

[detrix42 at gmail.com]

Hello everyone.  About three months ago I look around to see if there were
any IPv6 ready home routers.  Did not see any, until about a month ago.  At
Target, the one I got (not the top of the line model) was under $100. A
Linksys wireless/wired router.

So For about a month I have been researching this IPv6 stuff, and here are
my views on it.

     Because every device on this planet can now have its own IP address,
there is no NAT.  Which is a small security issue.  This will require one
to actually implement a real firewall on their computer.  Thanks to the
Linux community there is a very easy to use firewall called "ufw" and comes
with ubuntu. (I use Linux Mint right now, so I assume the other flavors of
Ubuntu also come with ufw.)  The graphical front which will need to be
install, is "gufw" ( You could have guess that, right ).  The old firewall
called "firestarted" has not been updated in a long time and is not IPv6
ready.

     Besides needing a IPv6 home router, your ISP also needs be be IPv6
compliant.  If it is, your router will  be given an IPv6 64bit prefix.
IPv6 addresses are 128bit. The other 64bits are randomly chosen by your
home router.  As far as I understand, these 64bits don't have to be
random.  They can be anything you want.  For example:

My prefix: 2606:100:cf42:1897
So for my main computer at home I use an address such as:
2606:100:cf42:1897::1      Just need to remember the prefix, which is
daunting
2606:100:cf42:1897::2      for my other desktop
2606:100:cf42:1897::1:1   for my wifes netboot (wifi)

For those who don't know the :: just means there are zeros in between.

If you have any questions please ask, but I am not an expert, I have only
been looking in to this for about a month.

detrix42
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20120608/c96015c0/attachment.html>