The Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) can be described as the “Internet standard of the future”. On 8th June 2011, the world's first practical test took place and many large websites were available for the new IPv6 standard. We at Astaro also participated in the experiment and as everything ran so smoothly, we don’t even feel the need to switch back to IPv4. We have to thank our partner Telemaxx, who provided us with the new IPv6 lines and helped make this transition possible.
The Internet connects about two billion people today. If it continued to only connect people, four billion IPv4 addresses would probably suffice for quite a while. But in recent years, the Internet has become so much more – now supporting new technology such as smartphones, iPods and TVs connected directly to the Internet. All equipped with their own IP addresses.
IDC believes that the digital universe as we know it today will increase by a factor of 44 until the year 2020. This is why an alternative standard to the common IPv4 had to be found. Astaro is confident that IPv6 will soon become the Internet standard of the future and joined the International IPv6 Day in order to test how far we are away from completely switching over to IPv6.
Markus Hennig, Astaro Chief Technology Officer:
“The experiment has shown whether routers, computers and specific Web browsers can deal with IPv6. Thus, we changed our website to the new Internet standard. In parallel, we wanted and still want to offer our customers the opportunity to test IPv6. As we did not encounter any problems we are still running on the IPv6 standard.”
For all those who still want to test their IPv6 readiness:
Here is a short guide on how to enable IPv6 on your Astaro Security Gateway.
Step 1: Get a IPv6 tunnel broker
Your ISP will not support the native IPv6 standard, so you will probably need to first get an IPv6 tunnel broker. For Internet access with dynamic IP addresses, we recommend the tunnel brokers from freenet6 or SixXS because they do not change the assigned IPv6 subnet. For Internet access via fixed IP addresses, you can also opt for the 6to4 as a tunnel broker as it can be activated with a single click and without prior registration.
Step 2: Create a Freenet6 account
Create a Gogo6 Account first: http://gogonet.gogo6.com/main/authorization/signUp
Then you can register for a freenet6 Account for the IPv6 Tunnel Broker Service: http://gogonet.gogo6.com/page/freenet6-account
Step 3: Adjust your ASG settings
Go to the column “Interfaces & Routing” on your ASG and click on “Enable IPv6”. Now choose “user” for the field “authentication” of your tunnel broker mask and select “Freenet6” in the field “broker”. Enter your tunnel ID and password as username and click “apply”.
On the tab “Global”, you can now see your current status and your IPv6 subnet. You now have full IPv6 connectivity! Web Security users with a current HTTP proxy can now connect to IPv6 addresses such as http://www.test-ipv6.com, although they only have IPv4.
Step 4: Client configuration
To roll out IPv6 to your clients, you must configure IPv6 on your internal network. For your first IPv6 supporting internal interface you can choose, for example, the first IP from the first available subnet (eg 2001:0 db8: 85a3: eb00:: 1 / 64).
Clients can be either configured via pre-installed Advertisments or via DHCPv6. For best compatibility please go in the column “Prefix Advertisments” on “IPv6” and activate the pre-installed Advertisments on your internal network interface.
Most of your existing packet filter rules are probably already IPv6-compatible. Depending on your configuration, you may still need an additional rule that allows IPv6 traffic between your internal network and the Internet, such as web traffic.
Step 5: The test
ipconfig in the Windows command line shows if the Advertizing works and which IP address was assigned to you.
In order to finally test IPv6, start your browser and go to http://www.test-ipv6.com.
You Can Learn More About the Astaro Internet Security Product Line By Going to www.FirewallShop.com/Astaro.
The original article/video can be found at Worldwide IPv6 Day – Business As Usual for the Astaro Security Gateway