IPv6 for home use with both desktop and laptops

[ant177]

I will be getting an Asus RT-N66U router soon that I will be configuring with my newly acquired /64 from HE... I want to host various servers within my home network all with their own IPv6 address so that they are accessible from outside my home.

All well and good so far but the question I have is how do I deal with accessing the IPv6 world when I'm away from home using my laptop? My laptop will need an IPv6 address to then access my servers at home...

Would the best solution be to configure my laptop independently from the rest of the home network and assign it its own IPv6 tunnel through HE? This seems horrifically wasteful but I think that is just an old fashioned mindset from more limited IPv4 days! The other issue here is that the laptop's IPv4 address will obviously change as I connect to different networks on my travels, I would need to update that address then.

I don't have my new router yet so I haven't tested anything but how will Windows cope on the laptop when I have a tunnel configured but the wireless link detects that it can grab an IPv6 from my router? Will I just end up with two different interfaces with IPv6 addresses?

I am sure a lot of these questions will resolve themselves once I can experiment but I thought I would ask these questions to see if anyone had any suggestions; it might save me pain once I start setting things up.

Thanks!
Anthony

[cholzhauer]

My laptop will need an IPv6 address to then access my servers at home...

Right.

Would the best solution be to configure my laptop independently from the rest of the home network and assign it its own IPv6 tunnel through HE? This seems horrifically wasteful but I think that is just an old fashioned mindset from more limited IPv4 days! The other issue here is that the laptop's IPv4 address will obviously change as I connect to different networks on my travels, I would need to update that address then.

That would work as long as where ever you were supported passing protocol41.  I think in this case, you'd be better off using something like GoGo6 that's able to punch through firewalls. 

I don't have my new router yet so I haven't tested anything but how will Windows cope on the laptop when I have a tunnel configured but the wireless link detects that it can grab an IPv6 from my router? Will I just end up with two different interfaces with IPv6 addresses?

It would still work OK; it would act the same as IPv4 would.  If you went with the GoGo6 solution, it's an on demand connection, so you just wouldn't start the connection while you were at home.

[ant177]

Thank you for pointing me to gogo6 - that on demand client does indeed look like it ought to do the trick.
This is more of a general how long is a piece of string question but what sort of performance hit should I expect to experience when accessing services through various tunnels? There will be the tunnel from my home network to HE and then the tunnel from my laptop through gogo6. I'm just wondering if this is going to have any sort of noticable impact on accessing the home network over the link; FTP, HTTP, VNC etc.

[cholzhauer]

In theory the speed through a tunnel is a little slower, but most people don't notice.  GoGo6 has had problems with server stability and speeds for the last few months, but I don't use them enough to be able to speak to what end users are seeing.

[kasperd]

All well and good so far but the question I have is how do I deal with accessing the IPv6 world when I'm away from home using my laptop? My laptop will need an IPv6 address to then access my servers at home...

What you are asking about here is one of the few use cases I have come across, where Teredo can actually be a really good solution. Often I recommend against Teredo, but it can work well in some situations.

On your router at home you configure a tunnel just the way you plan to. Additionally on that router you run a Teredo relay, and that is crucial to get a good result. Without your own Teredo relay you will be relying on somebody else to run a Teredo relay for you.

Your laptop then needs to be configured to use a Teredo client, whenever it cannot get a native IPv6 address. When it is on your home network, it gets a native IPv6 address and does not use Teredo. When it is on an IPv4 only network behind a NAT, it uses a Teredo client to get an IPv6 address. When communication is going on between your laptop and your home, a couple of packets will first be transmitted using the Teredo server and the tunnel server. But after those have been exchanged, the Teredo client on your laptop will connect directly back to the Teredo relay on your router at home, and you will have a tunnel directly home for the rest of the IPv6 packets.

All the other tunnel protocols suggested relies on the packets going through one or two tunnel providers. Teredo is the only solution I know of for your scenario, where the tunnelled IPv6 packets take the direct IPv4 path between your laptop and your home.