Tomorrow, Windows Vista will be available in stores. According to press reviews, this operating system will have IPv6 enabled by default with support for automatic Teredo when native IPv6 is not available.
Teredo tunnels allows a computer plugged to a IPv4-only network to efficiently talk with computers using IPv6 addresses. IPv6 proponents such as myself are pleased with this move: while I don’t like Microsoft at all, I am happy to see them embrace IPv6 and give this protocol the chance it deserves.
However, I don’t use Windows on my laptop (or anywhere else, if that matters), I use the Gentoo Linux free operating system. When my laptop is plugged into my home or work networks, it gets automatic IPv6 connectivity. However, when I am traveling, I usually use IPv4-only networks; an automatic tunnel would really be useful to reach my home computers, some of them being IPv6 only.
Fortunately, there exists an excellent automatic tunneling software for Linux and FreeBSD called Miredo. This program is already included in Debian GNU Linux and FreeBSD.
Arne Mejlholm packaged Miredo for Gentoo back in February 2005 after Daniel Webert suggested it. I submitted an updated version in June 2006. However, it has never been integrated into Gentoo’s portage system and my question on the next step to do (if any) never got answered.
As I am tired of chatting with myself on the Gentoo ticket tracking system, I will not submit a new version of the Miredo package that is likely to be ignored as well. But as I do not want my currently-favorite Linux distribution to lag behind Windows, my Miredo package is available from a Mercurial repository located here. To get it, install dev-util/mercurial and run:
% hg clone http://www.rfc1149.net/mercurial/gentoo-overlay-ipv6
I hope Gentoo developers will handle ticket 77603, even if only to tell what is wrong with it.
Related posts:
Are you aware that Teredo is mostly a Microsoft protocol, which means it may lock down people into having IPv6 connectivity through a protocol developed by and for Microsoft?
Also, isn’t Gentoo development a bit hazy now, because the leader left to work for Microsoft? Why bet on a limping horse?
Olive: from what I understand, the main problem does not lie with the protocol part — it’s been published as RFC 4380, author C. Huitema (a well known Microsoft employee).
The main problem as I see it is that Miredo requires a Teredo server somewhere, and it’s not clear to me who provides that. Is it a free service provided by Microsoft? It’s not clear to me from this document. Maybe Samuel can explain some more.
By the way, did anyone notice that miredo is actually doremi reversed?
Pierre: RFCs (especially RFCs on the standards track like 4380) have a complete peer-review and therefore are not the expression of the will of one entity, not even their author.
For instance, the well-known Francis Dupont appears in the list of reviewers and he is certainly not a Microsoft slave.