IPv6 - Part 3 - FreeBSD IPv6 configuration for Vodafone (ex-UPC)

Vodafone is one of the internet providers I use in my home lab setup here in Czechia.

I have been told they can enable IPv6 in my modem/router on request and it is not enabled by default. Anyway, it took them few minutes to reconfigure my modem/router to support IPv6. After this reconfiguratio, I connected my FreeBSD machine to the network segment we use as point-to-point (P2P /30) for IPv4. For IPv6, there is /64 subnet, where I can connect my IPv6 device.

Logical Network schema is depicted below.

Logical Network Schema

Let's start with configuration.

Public DNS Servers (Resolvers)

While writing my blog post series about IPv6, I realized it would be useful to document publicly available DNS servers. 

In this blog post I will documente DNS IP addresses of DNS Servers from Google, Clouflare, Quad9, Cisco's OpenDNS.

There are weel know IPv4 DNS addresses like 8.8.8.8  and 8.8.4.4, but there are others. DNS Servers are nowadays very usefull for secuurity protection like Phishing Protection, Optional content filtering, etc.

And last but not least, do you know IPv6 addresses of those DNS services.

IPv6 - Part 4 - FreeBSD IPv6 configuration for Starnet

Starnet is one of the internet providers I use in my home lab setup here in Czechia.

I have been told they are IPv6 ready, so I connected my FreeBSD machine to the network segment we use as point-to-point (P2P /30) for IPv4. For IPv6, there is /64 subnet, where I can connect my IPv6 device.

Logical Network schema is depicted below.

Logical Network Schema

 

Let's start with configuration.

 

FreeBSD and Edimax N150 Wi-Fi USB network interface

I have found old Edimax N150 Wi-Fi USB network interface and would like to use it in FreeBSD 14.2. for some IoT project. I have not used Wi-Fi on FreeBSD for ages, so let's try it.

It is worth to mention that Wi-Fi network interface can be in three different modes

• Station (client) - ifconfig wlan0 mode sta
• Monitor - ifconfig wlan0 mode monitor
• Access Point - ifconfig wlan0 mode hostap

Access Point (ifconfig wlan0 mode hostap) is great in situations you would like to allow multiple Stations to connect, but the rtwn driver in FreeBSD does not support Access Point (hostap) mode.  

Monitor mode on a wireless interface (ifconfig wlan0 mode monitor) is a special mode used primarily for passive packet capturing and wireless debugging, not for normal network communication. This mode should be supported by rtwn driver in FreeBSD, but I did not tested.

Station/Client (sta) mode is supported and it is actually the only mode we will cover in this blog post.

Let's do a configuration, setup, and some performance tests ...

FreeBSD Update and Upgrade process

The Base FreeBSD System vs Third-Party Software

First of all, it is important to understand that FreeBSD hase The Base FreeBSD system and Third-Party Software.

The Base FreeBSD System is the core part of FreeBSD that includes the kernel, standard system utilities, libraries, configuration files, and essential tools required to run and manage the system. You manage it using Admin Tool freebsd-update. Tool freebsd-update is still widely used, but the FreeBSD project is gradually moving toward pkgbase tool where The Base FreeBSD System is splited into packages like FreeBSD-runtime, FreeBSD-lib, FreeBSD-kernel, etc. You will be able to manage the base system with pkg just like third-party software. It will be more modular and modern than freebsd-update, but pkgbase is not yet officially supported on RELEASE versions, therefore freebsd-update is still production ready tool for update and upgrade of The Base FreeBSD System.

Third-Party software in FreeBSD is any application or tool not included in the base system, such as web servers, editors, databases, programming languages, and desktop environments. You manage it using the pkg package manager or by Ports Collection (source code + make).

Picture is worth 1,000 words, so I have prepared visualization to understand the difference between The Base FreeBSD System and Third-Party Software.

The Base FreeBSD System and Third-Party Software