Start enjoying the benefits of IPv6

Start enjoying the benefits of IPv6 now! With the many benefits of IPv6 including IPsec for added authentication and an additional layer of encryption (as well as the use of TLS), there is little reason to delay using IPv6. Although there are still a number of websites that are not using IPv6 yet, they should be. But that's no reason for you to not be able to enjoy the benefits of using IPv6 right now! In this tutorial, I will show you how.

The benefits of using IPv6 over IPv4

More efficient routing as well as more efficient packet processing

A much greater pool of available IP addresses.

Simplified header structure, reducing processing overhead and speeding up internet connection speed

Eliminate network address translation (NAT)

Enhanced security using IPsec, including better data integrity, authentication and encryption

Enable or disable IPv4

You can easily disable IPv4 so that you can visit websites using IPv6 as long as they have an IPv6 addresss. The down side is that many websites are not yet IPv6 ready. This is unfortunate. If you really MUST visit a particular website that isnt IPv6 ready, then you can easily turn IPv4 back on. Or, you can choose to only visit websites that are IPv6 enabled.

The following command will get you an IPv6 address if you don't already have one. The second command will disable your IPv4 address, thereby forcing the use of IPv6.

# ifconfig re0 inet6 autoconf
# ifconfig re0 -inet

If you have disabled IPv4 and you want to use it again, you can get it back using the following command. re0 is just an example interface name. You can check yours using ifconfig.

# ifconfig re0 inet autoconf

Enable IPv6 address on boot

If you do not have an IPv6 address, simply add the following line to your /etc/hostname.if file (i.e, /etc/hostname.re0) whereas your interface name is re0. You can find your interface name by typing ifconfig

inet6 autoconf

Once you have made changes to /etc/hostname.if, you can restart the network like this

# sh /etc/netstart

Check to see if a website has an IPv6 address.

If you want to check the quad-A (AAAA) record of a particular website to see if they have an IPv6 address or not, you can use the following command

# dig +short AAAA openbsd.mywire.org

Click here to see your IPv6 address

This concludes this tutorial on IPv6. I hope that you have enjoyed this tutorial, found it informative and will start reaping the benefits of using IPv6 today!