Deploying IPv6 (IPC Munich 2018)

Many developers are stuck in the world of old-school IPv4 because it is an easy, comfortable place to be! However, IPv4 is not long for this world. Major network allocations have already run dry, and broadband and 4G mobile networks are steadily expanding the availablility of native IPv6 connectivity. This talk covers the basics of understanding IPv6, what you need to do to get your services working on IPv6, and the changes you need to make in your PHP apps and related services to accomodate IPv6.

This talk was given on October 17th 2018 at the International PHP Conference 2018 in Munich, Germany.

Transcript

1. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   Marcus Bointon
   Technical director,
   Synchromedia Limited &
   Smartmessages.net
   Deploying IPv6
   

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2. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   What is IP?
   Acronym for Internet Protocol
   Low-level networking protocol
   Underlies many other protocols - OSI model
   ★TCP, UDP, ICMP
   ★HTTP, SMTP, FTP, DNS etc
   Provides addresses that identify individual devices
   It’s the stuff the internet is made of
   

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3. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   The past - IPv4
   Mature, stable - RFC791 1981!
   It’s been awesome!
   32-bit addressing
   ★~4 billion addresses
   We have run out of IPv4 addresses
   ★Ugly workarounds
   

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4. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   The present & future - IPv6
   Mature, stable - RFC2460 ratified in 1998!
   Streamlined protocol headers - bigger but simpler
   Stateless autoconfiguration
   Built-in security (IPSec)
   Jumbograms to reduce overhead - 4Gb packets!
   Unicast / Multicast / Anycast
   More stuff that you don’t need to care about…
   128-bit addressing
   

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5. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   128 bits gives you…
   340,282,366,92
   0,938,463,463,3
   74,607,431,768,
   211,456
   

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6. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   So how big is that?
   With a 0.25mm pixel to display each available address,
   how big an area would you need to display them all?
   ★IPv4: about the size of a tennis court
   ★IPv6: 100,000 times the size of the solar system
   A ratio a million billion billion times bigger than a
   drop of water to all the world’s oceans
   So yes, it’s big!
   

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7. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   Why IPv6?
   IPv4 is just not enough for tomorrow’s internet
   IoT expected to reach 50 billion devices by 2020
   Bigger, faster, simpler, more scalable, more secure
   IPv6-only networking is mandatory for iOS apps
   It’s much less scary than you think
   You won’t have to change again!
   

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8. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   IPv6 Address Allocation
   Just like IPv4, but bigger
   Your ISP will probably give you a /64 subnet
   So you have 4 billion internets to yourself!
   Great for virtual hosting, SSL, docker containers
   DNS becomes more critical
   

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9. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
   IPv6 Notation
   We’ve got very used to IPv4’s decimal dotted-quad
   pattern: 192.168.0.1
   ★That’s just not practical for IPv6
   Hexadecimal for greater density
   Colons to delimit 16-bit chunks for readability
   Square brackets to make it unambiguous
   [2001:0000:0000:EF22:0000:1234:5678:0001]
   

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10. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 Notation Shortcuts
    It’s all about the zeros
    Replace one sequence of 0000 chunks with ::
    Collapse other 0000 chunks to 0
    Strip leading zeros: 0023 -> 23
    e.g.
    2001:0000:0000:EF22:0000:1234:5678:0001
    ★Simplifies to 2001::EF22:0:1234:5678:1
    

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11. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Familiar Addresses
    IPv4 Localhost: 127.0.0.1
    IPv6 localhost:
    [0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001]
    ★Becomes simply: [::1]
    All addresses: [::], like 0.0.0.0
    Link-local addresses [FE80…] like 169.254.0.0/16
    CIDR-style networks: [2001::EF22:0:1234:5678:0/96]
    IPv4-mapped [::FFFF:192.168.0.1]
    

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12. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in Linux
    Add an IPv6 address dynamically using iproute2:
    ★ip -6 addr add 4a00:1098:0:80:1000:2a:f:
    1/64 dev eth0
    Add it to /etc/network/interfaces - no need for alias
    ★iface eth0 inet6 static

    address 4a00:1098:0:80:1000:2a:f:1

    netmask 64
    Check it with ip a
    

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13. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in Linux - netplan
    network:
    version: 2
    renderer: networks
    ethernets:
    eth0:
    addresses: [ "4a00:1098:80:1f::1/64" ]
    nameservers:
    search: [ example.net ]
    addresses: [ "4a00:1098:0:80:1000:3b:0:1",
    "4a00:1098:0:82:1000:3b:0:1" ]
    

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14. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Deploying IPv6 - DNS
    Name servers on IPv6 (NS/Whois)
    AAAA records in your DNS
    Reverse DNS for mail servers
    ★Don’t forget SPF
    Check other sources - CDNs too
    

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15. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    NAT64
    IPv6
    IPv4
    NAT64
    

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16. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    NAT64
    IPv4 address like 192.0.2.1
    Prefixed with IPv6 space, often 64:ff9b/96
    Resulting in 64:ff9b::c000:201
    Alternative notation:
    ★64:ff9b::192.0.2.1
    

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17. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    DNS64
    DNS64 Server
    IPv6 server Internet
    AAAA Lookup AAAA Lookup
    A Lookup
    Fail
    64:ffb9::c000:201
    NAT64 Translation
    192.0.2.1
    

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18. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in PHP
    PHP and all host OSs have full IPv6 support
    PHP shows support in phpinfo()
    Provide IPv6 addresses in square brackets for network
    functions
    ★e.g. fsockopen(‘tcp://[fe80::1]', 80…);
    Change validations to allow IPv6:

    FILTER_VAR_IPV6, FILTER_FLAG_NO_PRIV_RANGE
    

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19. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in MySQL
    IPv4 only: bind_address = 0.0.0.0
    IPv4 and IPv6: bind_address = ::
    

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20. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in MySQL
    If you’re using strings for storing IPs, stop it now!
    UNSIGNED INT for IPv4, unsafe on 32-bit OS
    Use MySQL 5.6+
    Use VARBINARY(16) for an elegant, unified solution for both
    IPv4 and IPv6 in the same field
    Convert to / from strings with INET6_ATON and INET6_NTOA
    Similar PHP functions inet_ntop and inet_pton, with one
    function wrapper needed
    

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21. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in MySQL + PHP
    http://php.net/inet-ntop
    Convert IPv4 or IPv6 from MySQL binary format
    to a string
    function inet6_ntop($ip) {

    $l = strlen($ip);

    if ($l == 4 or $l == 16) {

    return inet_ntop(pack('A'.$l, $ip));

    }

    return '';

    }
    

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22. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 in PostgreSQL
    Has 2 built-in field types for IP addresses
    cidr: for IPv4 and IPv6 cidr networks (/32, /64)
    inet: for IPv4 and IPv6 hosts and networks
    

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23. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Deploying IPv6 - Networking
    Servers need IPv6 addresses
    ★Your ISP must support it
    ★or you can tunnel until they do
    ★Hurricane Electric, SixXS, or your ISP
    Amazon EC2 doesn’t do IPv6, but can via ELB
    Clients need IPv6 addresses
    ★All LTE 4G mobiles support IPv6
    

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24. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Testing IPv6
    ip a, ping6, dig aaaa, wget -6
    IPv6 addresses work in /etc/hosts
    https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ipv6/health-check
    Chrome/Firefox plugins for connection status -
    IPvFoo
    

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25. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    IPv6 Checklist
    Get addresses allocated
    Bring up interfaces
    Listen on IPv6 addresses
    Configure DNS & proxies
    Alter apps & databases
    Test!
    

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26. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Questions
    

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27. Marcus Bointon @SynchroM: IPv6
    Thank you!
    Marcus Bointon
    marcus@synchromedia.co.uk
    @SynchroM
    Synchro on GitHub & Stack Exchange
    

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