I do thank those that have replied with comments and suggestions. In my confusion, I feel forced to go back and re-assess some of my unspoken assumptions about IPv6 addresses and routing.
On my small home network with Apple Airport router configured as tunnel to tunnelbroker.net, my MacOSX machines can connect to IPv6 (www.kame.net) but my OpenBSD 5.0 machine can't. I don't know why. I'd like it to work, but I also hope to learn more about networking along the way. I think my basic questions to make sure of my footing are: - Am I right that - if my ifconfig only has an inet6 link-local address, then I won't be able to connect to IPv6 hosts outside my local network? - If my 'ifconfig re0' shows this: re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 lladdr 00:30:48:dc:75:df priority: 0 groups: egress media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex,master, rxpause,txpause) status: active inet6 fe80::230:48ff:fedc:75df%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 inet 10.0.1.8 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255 then I won't be able to connect to global IPv6 hosts outside my network? - If my router advertises the prefix 2001:470:1f07:15cc::/64, then the appropriate global address would be: 2001:470:1f07:15cc:230:48ff:fedc:75df ? - Does StateLess Address AutoConfiguration refer to the configuration of just the link local address fe80::230:48ff:fedc:75df, or does it also include the global address 2001:470:1f07:15cc:230:48ff:fedc:75df ? - If 'netstat -f inet6 -rn' shows the row: 2001:470:1f07:15cc::/64 link#1 UC 0 0 - 4 re0 then that indicates my machine is seeing the router advertised prefix? - Since my first post, I think I have realized that - in /etc/hostname.re0 the line 'rtsol', does _not_ mean that at boot time the program /sbin/rtsol handles / performs SLAAC. The 'rtsol' in hostname.re0 triggers certain actions in /etc/netstart, correct? 'rtsol' does not configure address on interfaces, correct? - (I admit I do not understand shell scripts) /etc/netstart processes settings, and does both setting of address on interfaces, and configures routes? - The actual tool to set address is /sbin/ifconfig, correct? - When hostname.re0 has 'rtsol', is /etc/netstart supposed to (A) use the MAC or lladdr to configure the IPv6 link-local fe80::230:48ff:fedc:75df _and_ (B) listen for route advertisement with prefix, and then configure the global IPv6 address with prefix:lladdr ? - If (B) is true, then if my machine is correctly configured, I should get ifconfig to show both: inet6 fe80::230:48ff:fedc:75df%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 and something like: inet6 2001:470:1f07:15cc:230:48ff:fedc:75df%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 - If (B) is not true, then what is the right way to get the global address configured at boot time? - Will the global address need to be an 'alias' one, in addition to the link-local one? Thanks so much.