How to configure Windows to use an IPv6 connection?

"Looking towards IPv6":

...we're pleased to let you know that Google search is also available over IPv6 at ipv6.google.com (you'll need an IPv6 connection to view it).

I tried visiting http://ipv6.google.com/, but the page could not be displayed:

What must be done for the computer to render the website http://ipv6.google.com?

Solution 1:

First the good news. Your computer is probably perfectly able to do ipv6. And now the bad news, this probably has more to do with your ISP and less to do with your OS. All current versions of modern OSs have support for ipv6 (Linux, Mac, Windows 7). You'll need to tunnel ipv6 traffic from your computer past your ISP (that doesn't yet support it) out to the internet at large.

There are a few basic technologies for getting your traffic out to ipv6 networks:

• ISATAP (not really useful, let's ignore it)
• 6to4 (Windows as of Vista turns this on if it has a public ipv4)
• 6rd (requires your ISP to run a 6rd relay, could be unlikely)
• Teredo (high-overhead tunneling, can work through NATs)

What you're really looking at is a choice between 6to4 and Teredo. You may have more luck using Teredo at the cost of higher overhead.

There was a great presentation for my local LUG that explains a lot (in pretty good detail) here is a link to the presentation materials.

Solution 2:

This page from the IPv6 Day event has quite a lot of information and references to address this question.

I think most relevantly, they state:

What if I have a problem connecting to a participating web service. What can I do?

It's very unlikely you will be impacted by IPv6 Day. Current estimates are that 0.05% of users may experience connectivity issues, and participating organizations will be working together with operating system manufacturers, home router vendors and ISPs to minimize the number of users affected. You can test your Internet connection ahead of IPv6 Day here. In the unlikely event you have problems on IPv6 Day, the best thing to do is to contact your ISP for support. In the coming months, participating organizations will be working together to publish help guides with more specific instructions for diagnosing and addressing potential issues.

I recommend you start by trying to factor out your home network from the equation. I would plug a computer directly in to your modem from your ISP and see if you can communicate with that IPv6 website. Hopefully you don't have one of those jerky ISPs that makes you register your MAC address with them, as that'll slow ya down.

From what the reference I've given already says, if your OS is totally up to date, and you can't hit IPv6 stuff through your connection, then you may have an ISP that's not ready for IPv6 yet. I'd call their tech support and ask them if/when they will support IPv6.

Once you've got those two ends going, you can focus on your home network. That gets in to the domain of whatever your home equipment is. You may have to perform firmware updates to get everything IPv6 compliant. In my case, my router had a check box I had to enable to "permit IPv6" traffic. I'd like to think it's unlikely your hardware doesn't support it, since IPv6 has been talked about for well over 10 years now.. But maybe you'll need to buy a new router or something..

Anyway, hope that helps get ya on the right track.

Have fun!

Solution 3:

You need to make sure Windows has IPv6 support enabled...

C:\> netsh interface ipv6 install

...then obtain some sort of IPv6 connectivity:

• Native IPv6: If your ISP, your router and your OS all support IPv6, it should "just work". Unfortunately, most ISPs don't yet provide IPv6 for home connections. Call yours and ask.

• You can set up a tunnel through another computer that already has IPv6 connectivity. The easiest way is to obtain a tunnel account at Tunnelbroker or SixXS, which also provide instructions on how to configure your system.

  Since tunnelled IPv6 data is wrapped in IPv4 packets (with SixXS, even UDP/IPv4) and then relayed through a remote server, this won't be as fast as direct IPv4 or native IPv6 to the same end location. But with a carefully chosen tunnel server you shouldn't even notice the decrease – as long as you don't run BitTorrent or the like over the tunnel.

The following options should only be used when you know what you're doing, as the connectivity provided sometimes is not of the best quality.

• If your computer has an "external" IP address (meaning, not behind a router/NAT), Windows will automatically configure a 6to4 tunnel using publicly available servers, which can be slower than a manual tunnel (but good enough for web browsing and the like).

• Teredo: If you are behind a router/NAT (with an "internal" IP address assigned), Windows will use tunnel servers managed mostly by Microsoft. (From my experience, this is noticeably slower than other tunnel types or IPv4.)