IPv6 readiness

**JFekete9076** · February 12th, 2011

How much does Windows XP support IPv6?

**lemming465** · February 13th, 2011

You can run "netsh interface ipv6 install" and get a v6 stack that can send and receive packets. I don't think it will do DHCPv6, and all the DNS queries are made over v4, so you can't run it as v6-only, not that you'd want to. I suspect the multicast support may be below par, but don't actually know. It probably won't be as aggressive about tunneling as windows 7, either. Reports from places like ARIN which have run XP dual-stack with native v6 using stateless address autoconfiguration from the router advertisements say it works OK.

**movieman** · February 13th, 2011

Originally Posted by JFekete9076

How much does Windows XP support IPv6?

Poorly, in my experience. It rejects some perfectly valid IP addresses, and doesn't support IPSEC; I don't know whether it works over the Internet as well as a LAN because we don't have IPV6 out of the house.

Edit: that said, I never managed to get IPSEC working over IPV6 in Ubuntu with Racoon either; it works fine with IPV4, but never seems to find the relevant configuration when it gets a request to set up a tunnel from an IPV6 address.

**JFekete9076** · February 15th, 2011

Originally Posted by lemming465

Finding out if your current gear supports v6 takes some doing; look up the exact model on-line and see if it's mentioned as a supported feature.

Can you suggest me a website for this?
I've been experiencing that it may be difficult to look for the specifications of a device.

**lemming465** · February 15th, 2011

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any sites with good, up to date lists of which devices support v6. Your best bet is to check the vendor site for your devices, and see if the technical specifications for your model mention v6. Probably they don't, which you should interpret as "v4 only, no v6 support", and start making plans to replace them. You have 1-4 years before that becomes a pressing issue, so there is no rush.

In the meantime, you can resort to v6 over v4 tunneling technologies such as 6in4 with a tunnel broker point to point link, or miredo.