IPv6 Essentials

Web Servers

If you want to surf the Internet over IPv6, you need web servers and a browser that supports IPv6.

There are different HTTP servers that already support IPv6. Probably the best known is Apache. Whatever HTTP server you use, you must be able to configure it to listen on the HTTP port (usually 80) over IPv6. If you are using proxy servers, you need to make sure that they are enabled for IPv6, too.

If you are looking for references on how to set up Apache 2 on Linux, refer to http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO. There is one chapter that explains configuration of different daemons, including BIND (named) and Apache 2 (httpd2).

Browser Support

What you need to browse IPv6 sites is to have DNS return an IPv6 address for the name of the web server you are trying to access. In some cases, you can also enter a literal IPv6 address (described in RFC 2732) in your browser. It would have the format http://[2010:836B:4179::836B:4179]. For instance, if you are using Windows NT 4 or 2000 with the IPv6 Technology Preview Stack, you can use this format. The IPv6 stack of Windows XP no longer supports literal IPv6 addresses.

If your browser is configured for a proxy server that is not enabled for IPv6, it cannot browse local or remote IPv6 web sites. In this case, you will have to disable the use of the proxy for your IPv6 trips.

If you want to experiment, you can find a list of IPv6-accessible web sites at http://www.ipv6.org/v6-www.html. For a list of IPv6-ready web servers ...