IPv6 is a version of the Internet Protocol (IP) that is designed to succeed Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The reason to switch to IPv6 is the shortage of IPv4 numbers. The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than in IPv4. The length of an IPv6 address is 128 bits, compared to 32 bits in IPv4. The address space therefore supports 2<sup>128</sup> (or approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4×10<sup>38</sup>) addresses.

February 2011 IANA (Global IP registrar) ran out of IPv4 space to hand out to the RIRs (Regional IP Registrars). The fist RIR to ran out of IPv4 numbers was APNIC (Asia/Pacific/Australia) in April 2011. Ripe (Europe) is expected to be the next to run out of IPv4 space (expected September 2011). When a RIR runs out of space ISPs within their region cannot obtain new IPv4-addresses anymore, so their stack will run out too. From that point on ISPs has to take countermeasures for their customers to deliver Internet connectivity over IPv6. Some ISPs would deliver their services over NATted IPv4, but in a few years all ISPs has to deliver IPv6 natively.

For the customers who have a working Internet connection right now, don't worry, you IPv4 address will not disappear on short term.More likely is that your connection will be upgraded somewhere in time to dual-stack (IPv4+IPv6). This may still take years for that to happen.

For the customers who have a working Internet connection right now, don't worry, you IPv4 address will not disappear on short term. More likely is that your connection will be upgraded somewhere in time to dual-stack (IPv4+IPv6). This may still take years for that to happen.

First of all you need to have WDlxTV release version 5.0 or higher. Second of all this will only work on a Live box, not on a Plus!

''Beware: By using a tunnel the firewall on your router is bypassed for the IPv6 traffic. The tunnel is legitimate and therefor the IPv6 packets within the tunnel will not be inspected anymore. IPv6 is not using NAT, so the IPv6 address your WDlxTV is getting is public IPv6 space. So beware you are running a firewall on your PC's and change your password on the WD (telnet and GUI).''

'''Warning: If you enable the app.bin on a wdtv without the kernel installed, it will cause problems at startup (the ipv6 module will fail to load) and will cause network issues. Because of this the OSD might not start! If this happens, disable/remove the app.bin from the USB drive and reboot.'''

This should show both fe80:: address as well as 2 x 2xxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx address (even 3 when you use fixed IPv6 too). 1 address is generated out of your MAC-address, 1 address is a temporarily address. The fe80:: address is a link-local address and is always needed by IPv6. This is a non-routable IPv6 address. If you only see a link-local address, but know you should get an address through autoconfiguration, check the webend that autoconfiguration is enabled (by default all settings are off). Save the changes and reboot and it should work.

You should now be able to test if IPv6 is working with your browser. Remember the IPv6 address has to be placed between brackets like this: http://[2001:1234:5678:abc::boob:babe:cafe]

This should show 3 interfaces, eth0, lo and a tunnel interface. This tunneled interface can be called tun (when the WDlxTV is behind NAT) or sit0.

To see if the router-advertisements are advertised you can type radvdump on the CLI to see the output. This can take a while. Press CTRL-C to exit radvdump.

When you expect troubles with the freenet6.net tunnelbroker, please check [http://gogonet.gogo6.com/page/service-status their status page]

The kernel with IPv6 support is an experimental kernel compiled by somebody at WD. It does support IPv6 and iptables/netfilter, but doesn't support some wifi cards. You can get the kernel from here: [http://downloads.wdlxtv.com/IPv6/wdtvlive.fff], repace the wdtvlive.fff that comes with your flashable firmware and do a firmware upgrade (even if the actual firmware remains the same). You can find how to flash your firmware over [http://wiki.wdlxtv.com/Quickstart here] and over [http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=491 here]