Linux System Administration

Gateway Services

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it from ever entering the mainstream, enough applications and environments require

it that the tide is turning in its direction.

An extensive discussion of IPv6 is, again, out of this book’s scope; for

more information on the IPv6 protocol and daemon, as well as on

obtaining public IPv6 addresses, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

IPv6 addresses often include the hardware addresses of network cards. This property

allows IPv6 users to obtain static IP addresses without requiring any configuration

on the server side to support those addresses. Automatic assignment of IPv6

addresses can be done with the help of the router-advertising daemon radvd.

Fedora users can install the radvd-0.9.1 package from their Yum repositories.

Debian users can install the radvd package and read the file /usr/share/doc/radvd/

README.Debian.

radvd listens to router solicitations and sends router advertisements as described in

RFC 2461, “Neighbor Discovery for IP Version 6 (IPv6).” Hosts can automatically con-

figure their addresses and choose their default routers based on these advertisements.

radvd supports a simple protocol. You’ll also find its configuration simple. An exam-

ple of a fully configured /etc/radvd.conf file looks like this:

interface ethO

{

AdvSendAdvert on;

prefix 0:70:lfOQ:96::/64

{

};

};

If you wish to use radvd, you’ll need to change the prefix to the one for your net-

work and set