OpenSUSE Network :: Playing With IPv6 On LAN?

I decided to enable dual stack on my home 11.3 machine and play with IPv6. I use ifup to assign static addresses to eth0. FYI here are some things I found:

1. YaST doesn't seem to support associating IPv6 addresses to interfaces, it complains that the address is invalid. However you can edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 manually and specify it like this:

Code:
LABEL_0='V6'
IPADDR_0='FEC::10.1.1.1/64'
SCOPE_0='site'

and when you restart the networking you will see an additional IPv6 address associated with eth0. Fortunately YaST doesn't mangle the entry when you look at it, but you can't edit it.

2. The SCOPE qualifier is documented in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template, but seems to have no effect. Site local addresses in IPv6 are supposed to start with FE[CDEF] according to this:

The TCP/IP Guide - IPv6 Special Addresses: Reserved, Private (Link-Local / Site-Local), Unspecified and Loopback

Once bound, you can connect to services using the IPv6 address just like normal. You have to use ping6 instead of ping though.

I added an AAAA record to my nameserver and that seems to work. Whether the client software tries the IPv6 address varies. It depends on whether the software asks for the AAAA record and uses it. It seems my web browsers don't. I'm not surprised, since few people have IPv6 tails from their ISP. I'm going to look and see if there is some browser setting I have to adjust. I also have to figure out a way of making sure that only LAN destinations use IPv6.