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8.15: IPv6-to-IPv4 Connectivity

  • Page ID
    11166
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    What happens if you switch to IPv6 completely, perhaps because your ISP (or phone provider) has run out of IPv4 addresses? Some of the time – hopefully more and more of the time – you will only need to talk to IPv6 servers. For example, the DNS names facebook.com and google.com each correspond to an IPv4 address, but also to an IPv6 address (above). But what do you do if you want to reach an IPv4-only server? Such servers are expected to continue operating for a long time to come. It is necesary to have some sort of centralized IPv6-to-IPv4 translator.

    An early strategy was NAT-PT (RFC 2766 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2766.html]). The translator was assigned a /96 prefix. The IPv6 host would append to this prefix the 32-bit IPv4 address of the destination, and use the resulting address to contact the IPv4 destination. Packets sent to this address would be delivered via IPv6 to the translator, which would translate the IPv6 header into IPv4 and then send the translated packet on to the IPv4 destination. As in IPv4 NAT (7.7 Network Address Translation), the reverse translation will typically involve TCP port numbers to resolve ambiguities. This approach requires the IPv6 host to be aware of the translator, and is limited to TCP and UDP (because of the use of port numbers). Due to these and several other limitations, NAT-PT was formally deprecated in RFC 4966 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4966.html].

    The replacement protocol is NAT64, documented in RFC 6146 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6146.html]. This is also based on address translation, and, as such, cannot allow connections initiated from IPv4 hosts to IPv6 hosts. It is, however, transparent to both the IPv6 and IPv4 hosts involved, and is not restricted to TCP (though only TCP, UDP and ICMP are supported by RFC 6146 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6146.html]). It uses a special DNS variant, DNS64 (RFC 6147 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6147.html]), as a companion protocol.

    To use NAT64, an IPv6 client sends out its ordinary DNS query to find the addresses of the destination server. The DNS resolver (7.8 DNS) receiving the request must use DNS64. If the destination has only an IPv4 address, then the DNS resolver will return to the IPv6 client (as an AAAA record) a synthetic IPv6 address consisting of a prefix and the embedded IPv4 address of the server, much as in NAT-PT above (though multiple prefix-length options exist; see RFC 6052 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6052.html]). The prefix belongs to the actual NAT64 translator; any packet addressed to an IPv6 address starting with the prefix will be delivered to the translator. There is no relationship between the NAT64 translator and the DNS64 resolver beyond the fact that the former’s prefix is configured into the latter.

    The IPv6 client now uses this synthetic IPv6 address to contact the IPv4 server. Its packets will be routed to the NAT64 translator itself, by virtue of the prefix, much as in NAT-PT. Upon receiving the first packet from the IPv6 client, the NAT64 translator will assign one of its IPv4 addresses to the new connection. As IPv4 addresses are in short supply, this pool of available IPv4 addresses may be small, so NAT64 allows one IPv4 address to be used by many IPv6 clients. To this end, the NAT64 translator will also (for TCP and UDP) establish a port mapping between the incoming IPv6 source port and a port number allocated by the NAT64 to ensure that traffic is uniquely reversable. As with IPv4 NAT, if two IPv6 clients try to contact the same IPv4 server using the same source ports, and are assigned the same NAT64 IPv4 address, then one of the clients will have its port number changed.

    If an ICMP query is being sent, the Query Identifier is used in lieu of port numbers. To extend NAT64 to new protocols, an appropriate analog of port numbers must be identified, to allow demultiplexing of multiple connections sharing a single IPv4 address.

    After the translation is set up, by creating appropriate table entries, the translated packet is sent on to the IPv4 server address that was embedded in the synthetic IPv6 address. The source address will be the assigned IPv4 address of the translator, and the source port will have been rewritten in accordance with the new port mapping. At this point packets can flow freely between the original IPv6 client and its IPv4 destination, with neither endpoint being aware of the translation (unless the IPv6 client carefully inspects the synthetic address it receives via DNS64). A timer within the NAT64 translator will delete the association between the IPv6 and IPv4 addresses if the connection is not used for a while.

    As an example, suppose the IPv6 client has address 2000:1234::abba, and is trying to reach intronetworks4.cs.luc.edu at TCP port 80. It contacts its DNS server, which finds no AAAA record but IPv4 address 162.216.18.28 (in hex, a2d8:121c). It takes the prefix for its NAT64 translator, which we will assume is 2000:cafe::, and returns the synthetic address 2000:cafe::a2d8:121c.

    nat64.svg

    The IPv6 client now tries to connect to 2000:cafe::a2d8:121c, using source port 4000. The first packet arrives at the NAT64 translator, which assigns the connection the outbound IPv4 address of 200.0.0.1, and reassigns the source port on the IPv4 side to 4002. The new IPv4 packet is sent on to 162.216.18.28. The reply from intronetworks4.cs.luc.edu comes back, to ⟨200.0.0.1,4002⟩. The NAT64 translator looks this up and finds that this corresponds to ⟨2000:1234::abba,4000⟩, and forwards it back to the original IPv6 client.


    This page titled 8.15: IPv6-to-IPv4 Connectivity is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Peter Lars Dordal.

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