Hi, I'm experimenting with using IPv6 via a tunnel broker provided by an ISP. The tunnel works, but I want to confirm my understanding of the commands they gave me to set it up. These are the commands:
ifconfig gif0 tunnel 50.1.94.112 72.52.104.74 ifconfig gif0 inet6 alias 2001:470:1f04:204::2 2001:470:1f04:204::1 prefixlen 128 route -n add -inet6 default 2001:470:1f04:204::1 The first and third commands make sense to me; they set up an IPv4 tunnel interface and a default route for IPv6. After reading the ifconfig(8) man page) I think I sort of understand what the second one does. Side note: the two IPv6 addresses provided by the tunnel broker are defined, in their terminology, as follows: <prefix>::1 is the "server IPv6 address" and <prefix>::2 is the "client IPv6 address". Given that, I think the following is true: - <prefix>::1 is the local address of the interface on the IPv6 network. - The "alias" parameter is superfluous in this case. I tried it without that and got the same result: an operating tunnel. - Because gif0 is a point-to-point interface, <prefix>::2 (the server IP) is interpreted as the "dest_address" parameter mentioned in the ifconfig(8) man page. - "dest_address" is the far end of the tunnel and, for point-to-point links, serves as the gateway. In this case, it leads to the broader IPv6 universe. Any confirmation, clarification or correction is much appreciated. Chuck
