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System Administration Guide: IP Services

Considerations for Tunnels to a 6to4 Relay Router

6to4 relay routers function as endpoints for tunnels from 6to4 routers that need to communicate with native IPv6, non-6to4 networks. Relay routers are essentially bridges between the 6to4 site and native IPv6 sites. Because this solution might be insecure, by default, the Solaris OS does not enable 6to4 relay router support. However, if your site requires such a tunnel, you can use the 6to4relay command to enable the following tunneling scenario.

Figure 10–7 Tunnel From a 6to4 Site to a 6to4 Relay Router

This figure shows a tunnel between a 6to4 router and 6to4 relay router. The following context further describes the figure.

In Figure 10–7, 6to4 Site A needs to communicate with a node at the native IPv6 Site B. The figure shows the path of traffic from Site A onto a 6to4 tunnel over an IPv4 network. The tunnel has 6to4 Router A and a 6to4 relay router as its endpoints. Beyond the 6to4 relay router is the IPv6 network, to which IPv6 Site B is connected.

Packet Flow Between a 6to4 Site and a Native IPv6 Site

This section describes the flow of packets from a 6to4 site to a native IPv6 site. This scenario uses the topology that is shown in Figure 10–7.

  1. A host on 6to4 Site A sends a transmission that specifies as the destination a host at native IPv6 Site B. Each packet header has a 6to4-derived address as its source address. The destination address is a standard IPv6 address.

  2. Site A's 6to4 router encapsulates each packet within an IPv4 header, which has the IPv4 address of the 6to4 relay router as its destination. The 6to4 router uses standard IPv4 routing procedures to forward the packet over the IPv4 network. Any IPv4 routers that the packets encounter forward the packets to the 6to4 relay router.

  3. The physically closest anycast 6to4 relay router to Site A retrieves the packets that are destined for the 192.88.99.1 anycast group.

    Note –

    6to4 relay routers that are part of the 6to4 relay router anycast group have the IP address 192.88.99.1. This anycast address is the default address for 6to4 relay routers. If you need to use a specific 6to4 relay router, you can override the default and specify that router's IPv4 address.

  4. The relay router decapsulates the IPv4 header from the 6to4 packets, revealing the native IPv6 destination address.

  5. The relay router then sends the now IPv6-only packets onto the IPv6 network, where the packets are ultimately retrieved by a router at Site B. The router then forwards the packets to the destination IPv6 node.