For multiple decades the Internet has been running on the Internet - Protocol version 4 (IPv4). You may know IPv4 addresses like 192.0.2.1. - IPv6, the Internet Protocol version 6, is the successor to that and has - a larger address space and longer addresses like - 2001:db8:4672:6565:2026:5043:2d42:5344. A dual-stack (DS) system - supports both address families, IPv4 and IPv6. Dual-stack is the - default for &os; releases shipping at this time and has been since 2003. - An IPv6-only system is one that has been configured to use only IPv6 - support; IPv4 support is completely removed from the system. Providing - IPv6-only snapshots of &os; shows that it has no strict internal - dependence on Internet Protocol version 4, and is ready to run in a pure - IPv6 environment. -
- -The IPv6 only kernel has started as a research project in 2008 when &os; - Jails - gained IPv6 support and it became possible to have jails without IPv4.
- -The FreeBSD kernel has long been able to be compiled for dual-stack or - without INET6 support. - It was time for feature parity in that area as well. - As an intermediate step there were efforts to get the kernel compiling - without any IP support at all, which helped to narrow down the - problematic cases.
- -As of - SVN r221353 - it is now possible to compile the kernel without INET but with INET6 - support. -
- -There are two ways to get this:
-In a time where you hear numbers that about 4% of end users could - actually successfully access IPv6-only services it may indeed sound - strange. The BSD network stack however was used as a reference - implementation for the first time of TCP/IP and again was for IPv6 and - there are some parts of the world already that are limited to IPv6-only. - Over time, as IPv6 deployment proceeds, we expect to see a lot more of - this.
- -On the other hand having the IPv4 fall back option of dual-stack hides - a lot of IPv6 errors and omissions. Supposedly IPv6-ready software - breaks when running without IPv4. We want to help early in the process - to catch and fix these problems and want to encourage other software - developers to do the same. FreeBSD is used in embedded device and - targeting servers while at the same time people build desktop systems - with it. This entirety allows us to provide a turnkey solution, an - ideal platform for thorough testing. -
- -Yes we do. It is as simple as: -
--include GENERIC -ident GENERIC-IPV6ONLY -makeoptions MKMODULESENV+="WITHOUT_INET_SUPPORT=" -nooptions INET -nodevice gre -- -
- &os; ships with a lot of applications running fine on command line. - If you prefer to test on a preconfigured graphical desktop, - PC-BSD, a &os; derived desktop - distribution is providing IPv6-only snapshots as well. -
- -No. - While we provide the kernel and parts of user space for you to start - with, a lot of open sources and commercial software running on a - UNIX® or - UNIX®-like operating system - (e.g. ®Linux) should be able to - compile and run on FreeBSD with minimal efforts. Also see the next - question. -
- -While are doing our best, some things are not yet working without - IPv4. Very few parts of the kernel still depend on IPv4 and we are - working on these. In user space you can find three different categories: -
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