Like always, lazy and sleepy all thanks to KFC’s cheese fries. I’ve been in hibernation for too long. And now that i’ve finally woken up to write something, i would like to write about something that i’ve always liked IRCing, though iam not into it much these days but it still brings back memories. OK then no more talking, lets get back to the point.

hmm, IPv6……

Well IPv6 is the next generation protocol for the Internet. IPv6 is already being tested by a lot of organizations and universities. And for the answer to the first question "Why?", well we are running out of address space. The current internet protocol IPv4 can support a maximum 2³² (approx 4.3 billion) distinct addresses and even with things like NAT (Network Address Translation) we are still going to run out of addresses someday. Hence all the smart people around the world have come up with something called IPv6 (aka. IP version 6, as in TCP/IP? . IPv6 supports 5×10²⁸ addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people alive today. Unlike IPv4 addresses which look something like 192.168.1.2, IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits ex: 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:1428:57ab. Well enought talking getting back to our topic. People on IRC would love to show off l33t host names, something like "southpark.kicks-ass.net" (a.k.a Reverse DNS entries for IPs) instead of an IP when they join a channel and as with the case of IPv4, the people who own the rights to set these Reverse DNS entries are most likely your ISPs or if you own a dedicated server, your server provider. But with the case of IPv6, these rights can be all your, and wats better ITS FREE!!

Q: what do you need to have to get you started with IPv6? 

A: An IPv6 Tunnel (Which creates dynamic IPv6 tunnels between someone called the Tunnel Broker  (People who provide IPv6 tunnels) and your machine)

These Tunnels route your traffic over the existing IPv4 network and connect you the world of IPv6. So after you have setup an IPv6 tunnel your traffic would be routed something like this

<Your IPv6 Network/Host–>  IPv4 (Your ISP) <— IPV4 Network — > IPv6 Network.

In short all your IPv6 traffic would be tunneled through ur existing IPv4 infrastructure, hence these tunnels are also called "6to4" tunnels and visa versa.

Q: How do you create an IPv6 Tunnel?
A: There are lots of free IPv6 Tunnel providers, to name a few

    1. Hurricane Electric (http://ipv6tb.he.net)
    2. BT-exact (http://tb.ipv6.btexact.com)

refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_broker to get a list of tunnel brokers.

the easiest way to get started with IPv6 is to download the Gateway6 Client from http://www.go6.net/4105/download.asp formally known as freenet6. Register for an account at www.go6.com and install the Gateway6 client and run the client and provide your newly created account.

Once you startup the client, it would create a IPv6 Tunnel and install an Virtual IPv6 Tunnel adapter and you would instantly be assigned a IPv6 Address. 

To get started with Reverse DNS you must request an IPv6 Subnet by selecting "Enable Routing Advertisemen".  The next step is to assign a DNS Server that would handle reverse dns for you, again there are lots of free DNS provider out there that support creating IPv6 Zones like http://www.afraid.org and http://www.xname.org. In my case i’ve used ns1.afraid.org as the DNS server to represent afraid.org’s nameservers.

 after you have requested a subnet and the gateway 6 client is restarted, your virtual ipv6 adapter would have a new address added to it something like 2001:5c0:95ad::1 and in my case i own the subnet 2001:5c0:95ad::/48 so any address from 2001:5c0:95ad::1 to 2001:5c0:95ad:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff is all mine to cherish

now that you have the subnet we will start by creating a reverse dns zone at afraid.org (keep in mind they have very low tolerance on DNS abuse)
create an afraid.org account and login to it and create a new IPv6 Reverse Zone

 Under the "IPv6 Reverse" create a IPv6 Subnet with something like "2001:5c0:95ad::/48"

now add a new record for  2001:5c0:95ad::1 inside the subnet, make sure the hostname you specify has already an AAAA record pointing back to 2001:5c0:95ad::1 (Which can be setup from "Subdomain" section at afraid.org). So once the reverse DNS entry is setup you can start using your brand new host name to login to any irc network and when the irc server queries the reverse dns record for your IPv6 IP it will get hold of the hostname you just specified. PWNAGE!!

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