SYNOPSIS

auto6to4 [,OPTION/]... ,{start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}/

DESCRIPTION

auto6to4 sets up IPv6 using an IPv4 protocol 41 tunnel to anycast address.

-i <ip-addr>

Use given external IPv4 address (for use behind NAT)

-r

Disable radvd IPv6 route advertiser (if radvd is installed and this option is not given, an IPv6 subnet will be routed and advertised on the local network.)

-I iface0

Interface for IPv6 subnet (repeat for many; default: all)

-d

Debug (verbose output)

-h, --help

Print this help text and exit

-v, --version

Print version and exit

SUMMARY

This is a shell script to turn on/off an IPv6 tunnel using the tun6to4 interface, which exchanges IPv6 packets by encapsulating them in IPv4 packets and using protocol 41 to the IPv4 anycast address 192.88.99.1

Instructions for doing this typically discuss laborious manual configuration, tedious calculations, manipulation of various networking configuration files, and modifications when the host moves to a different IP address. Meaning basically no one does it. This script instead sets up the tunnel completely automatically, without monkeying with any networking configuration files. It attempts to be robust, for example, if the local host does not have a first-class IPv4 address the script simply exits with a cogent warning.

However, there are some options for unusual installations. In particular, if you are behind a NAT but have configured the NAT to route protocol 41 packets appropriately, you need to supply the externally apparent IP address using the -i option.

The invocation conventions are chosen to allow the script to be installed as /etc/init.d/auto6to4 using the standard mechanisms.

See the top of the script for additional instructions, dependencies, and configuration information, or invoke with the --help option for usage summary.

CAUTION

Unless disabled with the -r option, if radvd is installed an IPv6 subnet will be created, routed through the newly-created tunnel, and advertised on the local network. This should enable IPv6 automatically on other machines on the local network. (If the host is on more than one local network, one such network will be created, routed, and advertised for each local network.)

If IPv6 is not working as well as IPv4, and the other machines on the local network are configured to prefer IPv6 to IPv4 when both are available for a particular connection (as is the unfortunate default on most Linux and *BSD distributions), this can cause performance problems and enormous start-up latency when local machines try to use IPv6 to communicate with remote hosts for which both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are available.

EXAMPLE

 auto6to4 -r start
 auto6to4 stop

FILES

When radvd is used to advertise a subnet, the following temporary files are generated:
 /var/run/radvd/radvd-auto.conf
 /var/run/radvd/radvd-auto.pid

AUTHOR

Barak A. Pearlmutter

REPORTING BUGS

For the latest version, and to report bugs or suggest improvements, see http://github.com/barak/auto6to4

COPYRIGHT

Released under the GNU GPLv2+.