HOWTO: D-Link DIR-655 and tunnelbroker.net using Windows XP (and 2003)

[ykok]

This is meant as a guide to setup IPv6 using tunnelbroker.net, D-Link DIR-655 router and Windows XP. Probably this is not done the most efficient / correct way, so I hope anyone with better ideas will reply. Update: Read the update in the bottom first.

Here's my information from tunnelbroker.net:



And here's how I used that information on my router:

The internal IP address is just the first in the range I'm given by tunnelbroker.net. The DNS servers are googles.

Configuring your computer
Now, you'd think that this would make your Windows XP or at least your Windows 2003 able to get an IPv6 address within your scope (in my example 2001:470:28:a6c) - think again. Neither operating systems reacted on the router. I tried different commands that should renew or reset the IPv6 address, but all in vain. Notice that using statefull (DHCPv6) doesn't work either - as far as I know it's not supported by Windows XP nor Windows 2003.

If you just have an Windows XP and you just want it to work, you can specify the address and the route manually using either the "ipv6" command (only in Windows XP - think it is obsolete in Vista and Windows 7) or using "netsh"

Guides
Guide for using "ipv6" command for routing can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_ip_v6_pro_rt_add.mspx?mfr=true
With a general ipv6 guide here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_ip_v6_add_utils.mspx?mfr=true

Guide for using "netsh":
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc740203(WS.10).aspx#BKMK_6

What I did
Using "ipv6" to specify route with my configuration I had to type:
ipv6 rtu ::/0 4/2001:470:28:a6c::1

Where "::/0" means that every destination can use this route, "2001:470:28:a6c::1" is my routers inside IP (see above), and 4 is my "Local Area Connection" cards interface number, which can be found using the command:
ipv6 if

Using netsh, I believe I should have typed:
netsh interface ipv6 add route ::/0 "Local Area Connection" 2001:470:28:a6c::1

To add an IPv6 address you can use the same command tools, here's an example using "netsh":
netsh interface ipv6 add address "Local Area Connection" 2001:470:28:a6c::42
The address 2001:470:28:a6c::42 is just a random in the address space given by tunnelbroker.net

If you have a server at hand and want to avoid manually configuring clients
If you want you can use Windows Router Advertisement Server (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wradvs/). This tool will route IPv6 messages though your server (which I would like to avoid), but will actually work stateless with Windows XP (automaticly assign IPv6 and routes to clients, hooray). If anyone finds a way to make Windows XP work statelessly and route directly through the router, let me know.

Great - but I still don't get an IPv6 DNS server configured statelessly
Neither do I. Either configure it manually or just use your IPv4 DNS server - they'll normally work fine for translation to IPv6 (at least googles does).

UPDATE
It seems that the problems I had where all fixed in a later firmware upgrade. While writing the above I had firmware version 2.00. Since I'm an Danish (European) customer later firmwares where not directly available. However at least one later firmware can be downloaded from d-link German ftp site. I found it here:
ftp://ftp.dlink.de/dir/dir-655/driver_software/

It should be possible to use the American firmwares as well as the European(according to some forum I went by - no, I don't remember which), but they are named diffidently.

After using firmware 2.01 IPv6 works with stateless autoconfiguration in windows XP as well (without a routing server in between).

[cholzhauer]

Cool, I guess mine must have come with the later firmware then.  I checked the other day and there wasn't an upgrade for mine yet...I assume there probably wont be either

[dougransom]

Non-obvious to me was that I had to add 1 to the Routed/64 value for the Lan IPV6 Value

[ykok]

@dougransom

Yeah - that's true. I'm not really sure if it uses that address at all - I think it only uses the prefix. So I believe that's non-obvious to us all.