IPv6

Resources

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) resources:

IPv6 - Wikipedia

Information about IPv6 maintained at the Wikipedia web site.

Usage Notes

Determine IPv6 Address

Use the ifconfig command to show the IPv6 address associated with a particular interface (look for the line labeled: "inet6 addr:").

Using ifconfig to Find the inet6 addr

[root@taco ~]# ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:C9:D5:1A  
          inet addr:192.168.0.138  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1293164 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1878939 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:151619640 (144.5 MiB)  TX bytes:642030150 (612.2 MiB)
          Interrupt:17 Base address:0x1400 

[root@taco ~]#

In the above example, the IPv6 address is: "fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a". The double colons (::) in the address represent 3 groupings of zeros. Hence, "fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a" is the short hand equivalent of: "fe80:0:0:0:20c:29ff:fec9:d51a".

Ping a IPv6 Address

The following demonstrates how one can ping a IPv6 address:

Using ping6 to ping a IPv6 Address

[root@taco ~]# ping6 -I eth0 -c 3 fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a

PING fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a(fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a) from fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a eth0: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.361 ms
64 bytes from fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.935 ms
64 bytes from fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.349 ms

--- fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:d51a ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.349/0.548/0.935/0.274 ms

[root@taco ~]#