Posted on 2008-04-12 09:00:09, modified on 2008-04-12 09:00:00
Tags: IPv6, Networking
In a whimp last month I decided to apply for a chunk of IPv6 IP space at APNIC. Why? No idea, but it was influenced by the advertisements of APNIC about IPv6 training in Sydney and a request of PIPE Networks about searching for people who want to do IPv6 on their regional internet exchanges in Australia. It took some time before I my hands on it, mostly due to incorrect configured webservers whose emails get blocked because their SMTP envelope from addresses are not verifiable. But that's being taken care of by APNIC :-)
Last thursday I got an email that I have been allocated a chunk of IPv6 IP space:
Woohoo! This /48 is mine.[~] edwin@k7>whois -A barnetwork-ap-20080410 % [whois.apnic.net node-2] % Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html inet6num: 2001:DF0:9::/48 netname: barnetwork-ap-20080410 descr: BarNetwork Pty Limited, Internet Service Provider, Sydney, Austral ia country: AU admin-c: EG46-AP tech-c: EG46-AP mnt-by: APNIC-HM status: ASSIGNED PORTABLE remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters. remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account remarks: name in the subject line. remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080410 source: APNIC
A /48 is big. If you take into consideration that an IPv6 address is 128 bits, then it's very big. But luckely that IPv6 subnets are the upper /64 of an address, so we only have (in the old IPv4 terms) an IPv4 /16. An IPv4 /16 is big too, it's 65536 subnets we can allocate now. 65535 subnets of the size of an /64 is bigger, It's something like 1.2 * 1024.
Anyway, how good are we at this IPv6 stuff? Our FreeBSD and Linux servers will have no problem with it. Windows boxes also will be fine, the ones that run Windows 2003 that is. Our Extreme Networks backbone network equipment is fine with it. Our Juniper IPSec routers do support it. Our Cisco Call Manager based telephone system does not support it. Oh well, enough to play with.
The first thing I need to do is to get APNIC to create DNS NS records for 9.0.0.0.0.f.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa to our nameservers. I keep you posted on the progress!
| Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter