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Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel

IPv6 needs no introduction, but if you are unaware, it replaces the more popular IPv4 protocol, which uses 128-bit hexadecimal addresses instead of 32-bit decimal ones.

Hurricane Electric is an internet service provider. Among its other services, Hurricane Electric runs the free Tunnel Broker service to give IPv6 connectivity behind IPv4-only networks.

Introduction

Thanks to the IPv4 depletion, a need for an expanded IP addressing space has arisen in the form of IPv6. However, many networks still lack IPv6 support due to the ubiquity of Network Address Translation (NAT). Because of this, Hurricane Electric offers IPv6 tunnels.

Prerequisites

Getting an IPv6 tunnel

First, create an account at tunnelbroker.net.

When you have an account, select Create Regular Tunnel in the User Functions sidebar:

HE.net sidebar

Then enter your public IPv4 address, select your endpoint location, and click Create Tunnel.

Setting up the IPv6 tunnel

The good news is that an IPv6 tunnel only needs one command:

nmcli connect add type ip-tunnel ifname he-sit mode sit remote IPV4_SERVER ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method manual ipv6.address IPV6_CLIENT ipv6.gateway IPV6_SERVER

Replace the following with the details from your Hurricane Electric portal:

  • IPV4_SERVER with the Server IPv4 Address
  • IPV6_SERVER with the Server IPv6 Address
  • IPV6_CLIENT with the Client IPv6 Address

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer, Ganna Zhyrnova