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| Up to: | 8Mb/s | 8Mb/s | 24Mb/s* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tariff | Std | Prem | ADSL2+ |
| A | £18.99 | £31.00 | |
| C | £26.99 | £39.00 | |
| D | £34.99 | £47.00 | |
| E | £46.99 | £59.00 |
Setup £59.99 Full tariff list The package Max *ADSL2+ trial Extra charges
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The Internet Protocol (IP) that we use at present is version 4 (known as IPv4, IPv4). It had been around for many years, but does not scale well enough to last in the long term. The main problem is the address space - the number of IP addresses that exist. Whilst these are not running out quite yet, and careful management has meant they will last some time, they will eventually run out.
Existing IPv4 addresses use 32 bits which gives about 4 billion combinations. You may have seen IP addresses written like this, 192.168.1.2.
IPv6 is version 6 of IP (version 5 was allocated to an experimental resource control protocol called ST2+ which never got much use). It has a number of key changes, and some thought has gone in to the way the protocol works in the way that the world currently uses the internet. One of the key differences with IPv6 is the address space. It uses 128 bit addresses which is a lot of addresses (340282366920938463463374607431768211456 to be exact) - more than enough to give an address to every atom in the planet.
This is a good question, and for now there is not a good compelling reason. As time goes by more and more people will use IPv6 and more applications will support it, and some will start to require it. It does provide a lot of addresses. IPv6 also has various security aspects covered in the IP specifications, and the vast size of address space makes port scans by hackers virtually impossible.
Normally people would use a mixture of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses on their network, but eventually IPv6 only networks will start to be used.
Normally a company would received 1208925819614629174706176 addresses to cover up to 65536 sites.
We operate an IPv4 and Ip6 network. All of our servers have IPv6 addresses as well as IPv4 addresses. Most services we run use IPv6 happily, including email, web pages, and DNS. We provide IPv6 address allocations to customers (just ask support).
We can route your address allocations to your broadband line or lines as you wish. This can either be via an IPv4 tunnel (see below for typical setup instructions), or we can route IPv6 natively as IPv6 over PPPoA over ADSL (for which you would need a compatible router). IPv6 functionality is a key part of our new pipe development, which includes multiple line bonding uplink and downlink for IPv6 addresses in the same way as we do IPv4 addresses.
Where tunneling IPv6, we sent from IPv4 address 81.187.81.6. You can use this as the endpoint to which you send tunnel traffic. You can also send 6to4 traffic relating to any of your IPv4 addresses using the 192.88.99.X gateway address.
IPv6 is available for linux, windows and mac systems and many others. It is generally a optional item, and in some cases still under development.
If you search for IPv6 you will find lots of information. If you have any specific questions please ask us by email or in our newsgroup.
If you have a firewall and want to allow IPv6 tunnelled traffic, you will need to allow protocol 41 from 81.187.81.6. Note that your firewall will probably not have any facility to control IPv6 access. If you have a FireBrick you will need to change the UI settings to allow full protocol selection, and then in a filter you can select 41.
Just like IPv4 addresses, you can set the line or lines to which your IPv6 block is sent. The only extra field is the tunnel endpoint. If set, then all traffic to you is wrapped in an IPv4 wrapper and sent to that IPv4 address down your line(s). If not set, then the IPv6 traffic is sent natively over PPPoA to your router. Only some types of router handle this. Just like IPv4 routing settings, changes only take effect on the next connection of your line(s).
Note that the old way to do this invloved ticking the "S" box for a static route, this sent trafffic via our old, and now redundant, IPv6 router endless. You should untick this now and tick your line number(s) instead - if not, you will still receive incoming traffic, but outbound traffic will fail our source filtering, and so not work.
Just as with IPv4 addresses, we check the source address of traffic coming from your lines to ensure the source address is one of your addresses. This is done the same for native IPv6 packets. Also, any IPv6 packets wrapped in IPv4 wrappers sent to our IPv6 endpoint, or the generic 192.88.99.X endpoints will be unwrapped and the IPv6 source address checked.
You can use 6to4 addresses (2002::/16 prefix with an IPv4 address) either native or wrapped in an IPv4 wrapper. The IPv4 part of the IPv6 address is checked against your IPv4 allocations.
This helps ensure you will get the replies to your traffic, and that a misconfiguration cannot result in untracable nuisance traffic on the internet.
Add /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-tun0
TYPE=sit DEVICETYPE=sit ONBOOT=yes DEVICE=tun0 BOOTPROTO=none IPV6INIT=yes IPV6ADDR=2001:8B0:1234:5678::1/64 (your IPv6) USERCTL=no PEERDNS=no IPV6TUNNELIPV4=81.187.81.6 IPV6TUNNELIPV4LOCAL=217.169.0.1 (your IPv4) MTU=1400In /etc/sysconfig/network, add
NETWORKING_IPV6=yes IPV6_DEFAULTDEV=tun0
We then suggest editing /etc/radvd.conf and running radvd service to announce your IPv6 block to machines on your LAN.
Windows 2000 IPv6 info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/sdks/platform/tpipv6.asp
IPv6 not supported by MS on 98/ME/95. but can purchase 3rd party stacks from: http://www.trumpet.com.au/ipv6.htm
Windows XP IPV6 info: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/administration/ipv6/default.asp
If you have a linux box or similar on your LAN acting as an IPv6 gateway, perhaps tunneling IPv6 as described above, and you have RADV set up (to announce the IPv6 network to the LAN), then setting up additional boxes couldn't be simpler!
Modern linux clients just pick up the IPv6 announcements and start using it by default - no work needed.
Even the Nokia 9500 mobile phone picks up an IPv6 address from the LAN with no configuration changes using the RADV announcements!
On windows XP it is pretty simple - just go to the protocols section on the interface settings and add protocol IPv6. Then, your windows machines simply picks up an IPv6 address from the LAN by RADV and just works!
On a non IPv6 network but with real IP addresses allowing IPv6 tunnel wrappers over IPv4 to pass (such as a windows machine with ADSL modem connected directly), windows XP will happily work with 2002::/16 prefix 6to4 addresses, although the default outgoing tunnel enpoint appears to be a microsoft server in the US.
Whilst IPv6 does not have have much in the way of advantage over IPv4 just yet, it does fool some security systems. This may be good or bad, depending on your point of view. If setting up a firewall you may want to consider IPv6 and IPv6 wrapped in IPv4 traffic. At an IPv4 level all you see if this IPv4 protocol 41 traffic to a single IPv4 endpoint - no separate sessions or ports or protocols.
For example, IPv6 bypasses all of the security on at least one common parental control package - Netintelligence. Anyone installing Netintelligence needs to consider if IPv6 is available. Bearing in mind that IPv6 installation on windows XP is a doddle, and it will work without any ISP support using IPv4 tunnels and 2002::/16 prefix address space!
If you think this is only a problem for accessing web sites that have IPv6 addresses, think again. There are IPv6 proxies, like sixxs.org, where simply suffixing any normal IPv4 web site with .sixxs.org allows access via an IPv6 proxy, so any site can easily be accessed, and not forgetting www.ipv6porn.com.
