Configuring IPv6-Enabled Interfaces on Servers

When you plan for IPv6 addresses on a server, you must make a few decisions as you enable IPv6 on the server's interfaces. Your decisions affect the strategy to use for configuring the interface IDs (tokens) of an interface's IPv6 address.

How to Enable IPv6 on a Server's Interfaces

The following procedure describes how to enable IPv6 on your network's servers. Some of the steps might vary depending on the manner in which you want to implement IPv6.

1. Enable IPv6 on the server's IP interfaces.

   For step-by-step instructions, see Configuring IPv6 Interfaces.

2. Ensure that an IPv6 subnet prefix is configured on a router that is on the same link as the server.

   For more information, refer to Configuring an IPv6 Router in Configuring an Oracle Solaris 11.2 System as a Router or a Load Balancer .

3. Choose from one of the following strategies for assigning an interface ID to the server's IPv6-enabled interfaces.

   By default, IPv6 address autoconfiguration uses the MAC address of an interface when creating the interface ID portion of the IPv6 address. If the IPv6 address of the interface is well known, swapping one interface for another interface can cause problems. The MAC address of the new interface will be different. During address autoconfiguration, a new interface ID is generated.

   • For an IPv6-enabled interface that you do not plan to replace, use the autoconfigured IPv6 address.
   • For IPv6-enabled interfaces that must appear anonymous outside of the local network, consider using a randomly generated token for the interface ID.

     For more information, see How to Configure a Temporary IPv6 Address

   • For IPv6-enabled interfaces that you plan to swap on a regular basis, you can use static configuration, or you can create tokens for the interface IDs.

     For more information, see How to Configure a User-Specified IPv6 Token.