With the exhaustion of IPv4 address space looming sometime in 2012; probably earlier rather than later, it makes sense to ease on into IPv6 land. Without straying into tunnel broking and endpoint shenanigans 6to4 is a method of wrapping up IPv6 inside of IPv4.
(note that MySQL does not currently support IPv6 itself – but what we’re discussing here is about externally facing systems, like your web/application servers)
6to4 performs three functions:
- Allocates an IPv6 address block to any host/network that has a global IPv4 address.
- Wraps up IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets for transmission over IPv4 using 6in4 (traffic is sent over IPv4 inside IPv4 packets whose IP headers have the IP protocol number set to 41; IPv6-in-IPv4. ) …