Can FC5 Route/Work With IPv6 Addresses?

[Jay Cliburn]

David Desscan wrote:
> Very interesting topic.  I'm including some links for FYI. I know that some
> websites are IPv6 enabled and if you are on an IPv4 network, you can't
> access them. Others have gateways which can encapsulate IPv4 packets from
> outside and allow access to their IPv6 network.  However this involves
> processing at the gateways and would not be a problem if we all use
> IPv6. Most of the the relay routers are only IPv4 and don't even have the
> ability to encapsulate IPv4 packet in IPv6 and vice versa to reach the
> different network.  Now the other question is about what are the other
> protocols and applications which can understand and process IPv6 packets.
> http://en.linuxreviews.org/Why_you_want_IPv6
> http://www.ipv6.org/
> http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/
> 
> Rgds
> David
> On 8/30/06, Robert L. Cochran <cochranb at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>>
>> I might need to set up an FC5 box as a router. I see from the Netfilter
>> website that iptables can't currently handle IPv6 packets. Will it be 
>> able
>> to, at any time in the near future?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Bob Cochran

Netfilter (ip6tables) *can* filter IPv6 traffic, it just can't yet 
filter packets based upon state (NEW, RELATED, ESTABLISHED, etc.).  It 
therefore can't do "stateful packet inspection."  Unfortunately, the 
default Fedora ip6tables configuration, when activated, will cripple 
your ability to communicate via IPv6 at all because the ip6tables rules 
are nothing more than a clone of the (stateful) IPv4 rules.  You'll have 
to manually alter /etc/sysconfig/ip6tables to fix this condition.  See 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=190590 for details. 
  It doesn't look like anything is going to be done about it soon.

If you're interested in IPv6 in Fedora, the easiest solution is to 
establish a free account with an IPv6 broker, like Hexago 
(freenet6.net).  You'll be given a global address prefix and a daemon 
(called tspc) to configure.  The daemon establishes an IPv4 tunnel to 
the broker that encapsulates your IPv6 packets so they'll pass through 
your IPv4-only ISP middleboxes.  At the broker tunnel endpoint, your 
IPv6 packets will be set free, so to speak, and you'll be able to 
communicate to the wider IPv6 internet.

Jay