[Xorp-users] XORP IPv6

[Pavlin Radoslavov]

> Currently, I'm on the process of exploring XORP using IPv6. Though I'm quite
> familiar with IPv6, I really don't have much knowledge on setting up an IPv6
> network specifically in the scenario of running dynamic routing protocols
> using XORP. For IPv4, I had two XORP boxen and one client behind each XORP
> machine. Connectivity is confirmed once the end clients can ping to one
> another by using dynamic protocols in each XORP router to establish network
> discovery. Would this setup still suffice in an IPv6 scenario? Would someone
> be kind enough to guide/show me the setup of a simple IPv6 topology so that
> I can explore further?

Off the top of my head, there is nothing drastically different from
IPv4 when configuring XORP for IPv6.
Some protocols/modules (e.g., FEA, BGP, StaticRoutes) capture both
IPv4 and IPv6 within a single instance/process.
Other protocols (e.g., RIP/RIPng, OSPFv2/OSPFv3, IGMP/MLD, PIM-SM)
require configuring a separate instance for IPv6.

In most cases the configuration is very similar between IPv4 and
IPv6. The XORP User Manual should capture both configurations.

One thing you should be aware is the usage of the IPv6-specific
link-local (unicast) addresses.
Some of the routing protocols need to use the link-local address of
each interface. Typically, this address is automatically assigned by
the kernel when the interface is configured.
However, currently XORP (the FEA to be specific) doesn't take into
account this address (this should be fixed in the
future). Therefore, in your IPv6 interface address configuration you
need to compensate for that by either explicitly configuring the
IPv6 link-local address (it should match the address from the
kernel) or simply by using the "default-system-config" configuration
statement.

In any case, after you run ./configure, make sure that HAVE_IPV6 is
defined in the auto-generated config.h. If it is not, then either
your system doesn't have IPv6 (not very likely on modern OS-es), or
there was something IPv6-specific in the build environment that was
missing. If the latter, please let us know so we can investigate.

Hope that helps,
Pavlin