[Lincoln LUG] IPv6 followup and future topics

[Terry Froy]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the warm reception I received last night - 'twas good to meet everyone and hope to get know you all better at future meetings!

I have collated a few points from my talk (with links to other resources) which you may wish to read and digest in your own time:

* Impending IPv4 exhaustion - the Chief Scientist at APNIC, Geoff Huston, publishes an automated report which details the amount of address space left in the various world regions which gives approximate run-out dates - the report can be found here: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/

APNIC = Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre; the folks who distribute IPv4/IPv6 addresses to ISPs in the Asia-Pacific region.

* Too much 'techie guff' from me - to those who made the very valid point to me of "Why should I as a user need to care about IPv6 ?", the 6UK website does a very good job of answering that question - http://www.6uk.org.uk/

* To those who wanted to know what their current ISP is doing about IPv6: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/uk-isps-respond-to-readiness-fears-on-world-ipv6-launch-day.html

If your ISP isn't listed on here, you should ask them directly - if the front-line support staff don't know, I can probably find out for you so please ask me on-list (as my reply can then be seen by others who may also wish to know the answer).

* Obtaining tunneled IPv6 connectivity:

Tunnelled IPv6 (or 6in4) is a mechanism by which you are able to encapsulate (or 'wrap') an IPv6 packet within an IPv4 packet and transmit that to a remote endpoint; who will then de-encapsulate (or 'unwrap') the IPv6 packet from the IPv4 packet and then relay it for you over the IPv6 Internet.

Return traffic follows the same process but in reverse.

In simple terms, tunnelled IPv6 connectivity lets you IPv6-enable your network without needing your current ISP to do anything.

There are several tunnel brokers who will provide free tunnelled IPv6 connectivity:

http://www.sixxs.net/
http://www.tunnelbroker.net/

Depending on the tunnel broker you use, you may need to make changes to your router configuration in order to allow the return traffic through - most routers don't support forwarding specific IP protocols (such as IP Protocol 41) but SixXS will allow you to tunnel IPv6 in UDP.

For those who use Windows (spit!), there are nice GUIs which will set it up for you - for those using Linux, I can provide the raw 'ip' commands required to set a tunnel up on an ad-hoc basis and the required config files for use on a CentOS/Fedora box to ensure they are permanent; other operating systems are likely covered on the tunnel brokers' website or by a quick Google(tm) search.

* How does IPv6 subnetting work ?

Someone (sorry, I forgot your name!) asked me how subnetting works in IPv6; the following RIPE CIDR charts explain that quite well:

http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/training/material/LIR-Training-Course/LIR-Training-Handbook-Appendices/CIDR-Chart-IPv4.pdf
http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/training/material/LIR-Training-Course/LIR-Training-Handbook-Appendices/CIDR-Chart-IPv6.pdf

If anyone wants a handy pocket-sized copy of these charts, as my business is a RIPE member, RIPE will supply these to us FOC and I am happy to give them to anyone who wants them at a future LUG meeting.

Obviously, if anyone has specific IPv6 questions - nothing too simple or too complex - feel free to post them on-list and I'll answer them as soon as I see them.

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With regards to other topics I could potentially cover, we use Linux primarily as a server-side operating system with heavy focus on DNS, firewalling/QoS, routing, web hosting (but *not* Apache - the reason for that would be a talk in itself!), databases (primarily MySQL), virtualization using any of KVM/Xen/OpenVZ, reverse proxies/web acceleration, VoIP using open technologies (SIP not Skype!), high-availability solutions and emerging technologies such as DNSSEC, etc.

We also do a lot with FreeBSD for reasons which I'd be happy to elaborate on when Tom does his 'Why Linux sucks!' presentation ;-)

I would also be happy to co-ordinate PGP key signing parties at future meetings - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party - for those who don't know what I am talking about.

... and an IRC channel would also be very nice... do we want one as I can sort that rather easily ?

Regards,
Terry