On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Tanstaafl <tansta...@libertytrek.org> wrote: > On 2011-06-08 9:25 PM, Paul Hartman wrote: >> After that, machines on my local network (including wifi) can get both >> IPv4 and IPv6 addresses from the router and can talk to the outside >> world on either network. > > I'm getting a headache... > > Is there a decent guide that explains IPV6 for noobs who don't speak IP? > Meaning, in plain english, how to set it up and make it work, without > having to understand all of the granular technical aspects?
Short version - if your ISP and your networking hardware (gateway/router/firewall/whatever) already support IPv6, you simply need to enable all the IPv6 stuff in your kernel, enable "ipv6" USE flag in your /etc/make.conf and rebuild affected packages. If you use DHCP/autoconfig it should just work automatically. Otherwise, you need to jump through the hoops we're talking about to establish tunnels or other means of getting IPv6 over a network that is not IPv6-capable. You can decide if you care enough about that kind of thing to shed your noob-ness and get into it more. :) The only real benefit of being on IPv6 at the moment is that every device has an internet-accissble address. That means no more NAT forwarding from your router to ports on certain devices. Otherwise, there's basically no perceivable benefits from using IPv6, other than the geek cred you earn by saying you're on IPv6. :) Another benefit, a side-effect of the fact that that most places are NOT ready for IPv6 yet, means many internet filters and loggers ignore IPv6 packages entirely. I've read that using IPv6 is one way to get around the great firewalls of oppressive regimes like China, Iran and universities. :) I don't expect that to last very long once more people start using it. For an unscientific example of how many people are using IPv6, the Mainline DHT network shows several million clients connected on IPv4 but only 78 clients on IPv6... > Also - how long is it going to be before there are parts of the internet > that you can't get to without speaking IPV6? There are some v6-only sites now, but they are basically sites that also exist on ipv4 internet and are used for testing/proof-of-concept. Given the billions of non-v6-capable devices on the internet, it would be commercial suicide for a company to leave the IPv4 Internet any time soon. I would guess you should be fine for another 10 years using IPv4-only.
