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Connecting to the SixXS IPv6 POP in 7 easy steps

SixXS has been running a IPv6 POP at HEAnet for some time. It is not a public POP as HEAnet only allows tunnels onto the POP that have an IPv4 endpoint that is directly connected to INEX or to users that are in the near vicinity. The user count is still low and actually I would really like to see more users.

It is free, the only 'hard' part is signing up. This tutorial hopes to address that.

SixXS supports true dynamic tunnels, using the heartbeat protocol and of course 'normal' static proto-41 tunnels.

While waiting for approval one can read the presentations especially the bottom one from Steve Deering contains much information about IPv6 in general so should be a good read (the article is in Dutch, the presentations in English).

1. Get a 6bone handle with the 6bone handle creator.
   This can be skipped if you already have a 6bone or RIPE handle. Enter your full valid information concerning yourself and submit it. Follow the instructions at that URL and then mail the generated message to the auto-dbm address shown.
2. Sign up for an account at http://www.sixxs.net/signup/.
   Fill in the NIC handle that you just created here. As a reason note something like:
   "I want to experiment with IPv6 and Linux in Ireland"
3. Check your email.
   There should be a email containing a link, follow it, you have now verified your account. The SixXS Staff will now manually verify it, depending on hours of the day this can be in <10mins but could take some hours too, so be patient.
4. Wait for the approval mail to come through.
   If you get it, you will have a password to go along with the NIC handle and you can login onto the site. URLs are in the email.
5. Request a tunnel
   If the HEAnet POP is not available from the list your ISP does not peer on INEX with HEAnet so select another one and enter for a reason that you rather have the HEAnet POP.
   You can select either a dynamic tunnel, which requires the heartbeat software, or a static tunnel for truly static endpoints. If your IP changes every 3 months or so it is static enough BTW.
6. Now wait for the approval mail, just like before.
   It will contain all the information to setup the tunnel. This information will also appear in your user home.
7. Configure the static tunnel as shown in this FAQ.

For heartbeat tunnels one also needs to download the heartbeat config from the tunnelpage, change it for their settings and start the tool, it will then notify the POP every minute of it's current IP so that the POP knows where to point the tunnel at. You can sigHUP it to immediatly send a heartbeat btw, handy in dhcp up/down scripts.

Now check that it works by going to the IPv6 Calculator. If all is well it will state that you are now using IPv6.

If it doesn't work:

• Check your settings
• Check your settings again

On Linux it is best to check:

 ip tun sho

 ip -6 addr sho

 ip -6 ro sho

Then start by pinging ::1, local IPv6 endpoint, remote IPv6 endpoint.
Do this with ping6 of course, not the usual ping utility. Many other such common network utilities usually have IPv6 counterparts: traceroute6 for example.

ping6 ::1

NB: It could take up to 15 minutes after you enabled the tunnel through the webinterface before it becomes active.

Hope that is clear enough and otherwise, check the FAQ and (ab)use the forums.

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