Archive teredo tunnel article

It is originally a report for Dr. Giang Anh Tuấn's Computer Network course.

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+rss = "Teredo Tunnel Simulation"
+date = Date(2020, 6, 5)
++++
+@def tags = ["ipv6", "tunnel", "fun"]
+
+# Teredo Tunnel Simulation
+
+Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the most recent version of
+the Internet Protocol, was developed by the IETF to deal with
+the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion.  Despite being
+superior to IPv4 in multiple aspect (e.g. larger address space,
+extension headers), IPv6 has not been widely adopted, although it has been
+semi-standardized in 1998 and fully-standardized in 2017.[^rfc8200]
+
+During the transition period, teredo tunneling has been used to give
+IPv6 connectivity for IPv6-capable hosts that are on the IPv4 Internet
+but have no native connection to an IPv6 network.[^rfc4380]
+In this article, I will demontrate a way to set up such tunnel up
+on virtual machines, then examine the packets being sent by IPv6 nodes
+connected by the tunnel.
+
+\toc
+
+## Configuration
+
+~~~
+<figure style='text-align:center'>
+  <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_27uyw9CF24>
+    <img src=/assets/teredo.png alt=Screenshot>
+  </a>
+  <figcaption>Teredo Tunnel Simulation Speedrun</figcaption>
+</figure>
+~~~
+
+### Virtual Machines
+
+In order to simulate Teredo tunneling, one needs two IPv6 nodes and two routers
+with both IPv4 and IPv6 access.  In total, there needs to be four
+virtual machines to be set up, thus I went for Void Linux, which is known
+for its low memory foot print thanks to using `runit` instead of `systemd`.
+To minimize resource usage and speed up the setup process, I chose the barebone
+live image which uses `musl` instead of `glibc`.  At boot, the image uses only
+40 MB of memory.
+
+For virtualization, I used `vert-manager`, simply because it is available
+in Debian's repository (my host OS).  For some reason, on `amd64`, the kernel
+refuses to boot until I give it over 200 MB, but apparently that is still
+a really modest number.  Networking is provided to the guest OSes via NAT
+with default configurations.
+
+It is worth mentioning that through `virtio`, one may use SSH to log into
+the guests systems from the host OS.  I find this especially convenient as
+it enables me to copy and paste not only commands but also IP addresses between
+host and guests as well as between guests.
+
+For convenience, from now on, the outside nodes will be referred to as PC A and
+PC B, on the other hand the routers are named Router A and Router B.  Upon boot,
+they were given an Ethernet interface `eth0` with the following addresses.
+
+| Node     | MAC address       | IPv4 address    |
+| -------- | ----------------- | --------------- |
+| Router A | 52:54:00:f0:85:c7 | 192.168.122.127 |
+| Router B | 52:54:00:2b:01:cc | 192.168.122.134 |
+| PC A     | 52:54:00:3b:82:36 | 192.168.122.86  |
+| PC B     | 52:54:00:7b:ed:c0 | 192.168.122.255 |
+
+Local IPv6 addresses were also given but we are not going to need them.
+
+### Teredo Tunnel Setup
+
+First, I set up a IPv4 tunnel between the two routers:
+
+```sh
+# On Router A
+ip tunnel add tunn mode sit remote 192.168.122.134 ttl 255
+ip link set tunn up
+# On Router B
+ip tunnel add tunn mode sit remote 192.168.122.127 ttl 255
+ip link set tunn up
+```
+
+For this tunnel to be able to act as a Teredo one, the two routers needs
+to have IPv6 addresses prefixed by `2001::/32`.[^rfc4380]
+
+```sh
+# On Router A
+ip -6 addr add 2001:2::1/64 dev eth0
+# On Router B
+ip -6 addr add 2001:3::1/64 dev eth0
+```
+
+Finally, I fellback all IPv6 lookups to the tunnel and enabled IPv6 forwarding:
+
+```sh
+ip -6 route add default dev tunn
+sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1
+```
+
+### Teredo Tunnel Usage
+
+The IPv6 addresses of the PCs were set up as follows
+(`0x8067` is `PC` in ASCII).
+
+```sh
+# On PC A
+ip -6 address add 2001:2::8067/64 dev eth0
+# On PC B
+ip -6 address add 2001:3::8067/64 dev eth0
+```
+
+By giving both Router A and PC A addresses prefixed by `2001:2::/64`
+(similarly for Router B and PC B), I implied that they can find each other
+through the local IPv6 network, for example on PC B:
+
+```console
+$ ip -6 route | head -n1
+2001:3::/64 dev eth0 proto kernel metric 256 pref medium
+```
+
+To use the newly created tunnel,
+the PCs simple had to be routed directly to the routers:
+
+```sh
+# On PC A
+ip -6 route add default via 2001:2::1
+# On PC B
+ip -6 route add default via 2001:3::1
+```
+
+The connection could then be verified by running on PC A:
+
+```console
+$ traceroute 2001:3::8067
+traceroute to 2001:3::8067 (2001:3::8067), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets
+ 1  2001:2::1 (2001:2::1)  0.572 ms  0.441 ms  0.328 ms
+ 2  2001:3::1 (2001:3::1)  0.906 ms  0.888 ms  1.049 ms
+ 3  2001:3::8067 (2001:3::8067)  1.325 ms  1.174 ms  1.091 ms
+```
+
+## Analysis
+
+To gain further understanding on how packets are transferred over
+the Teredo tunnel, I captured and took a closer look at some of them.
+
+### Packets Capturing
+
+Fortunately for me[^ipfs], all traffic of guests OSes were wired
+to an separate interface named `virbr0`.  To capture going through
+the tunnel, I simply had to tell Wireshark to listen to the interface,
+while letting PC A ping PC B though IPv6: `ping -c1 2001:3::8067`.
+I then skimmed through the packets sent between the two nodes and looked for
+the IPv6-in-IPv4 ones.
+
+### Packet Contents
+
+Catured IPv6-in-IPv4 looks exactly like how I would imagined it to be.
+The content of the ping request can be partially decoded as follows.
+
+#### Ethernet Header
+
+* `52 54 00 2b 01 cc`: MAC address of Router B (destination)
+* `52 54 00 f0 85 c7`: MAC address of Router A (source)
+* `08 00`: EtherType of IPv4
+
+#### IPv4 Header
+
+* `45 00 00 7c 9b 43 40 00 ff`: Some flags
+* `29`: Protocol of *IPv6*
+* `69 be`: Checksum
+* `c0 a8 7a 86`: IPv4 address of Router B (destination)
+* `c0 a8 7a 7f`: IPv4 address of Router A (source)
+
+#### IPv6 Header
+
+* `60 00 07 e7 00 40`: Some flags
+* `3a`: Next header (ICMPv6)
+* `3f`: Hop limit of 63
+* `20 01 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 67`: PC A's IPv6 address
+* `20 01 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 67`: PC B's IPv6 address
+
+#### ICMPv6
+
+* `80`: Type of ping request
+* `00 cf be 03 d9 00 01`: Some flags
+* `e3 0d fe 5e 00 00 00 00 bc d6 0e 00 00 00
+  00 00 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b 1c 1d
+  1e 1f 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2a 2b 2c 2d
+  2e 2f 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37`: Binary data to be echoed
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Via the activities elaborated above, the procedure to set up a Teredo tunnel
+and the content of the packets travelling through it could be well understood.
+These understanding may help facilite the adoption of IPv6, even for IPv6 nodes
+having no native connection to an IPv6 network.  I hope that the IPv6 will grow
+fast enough that I can see the day measures like this tunnel can soon
+be deprecated.
+
+[^rfc8200]: [RFC 8200](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8200)
+[^rfc4380]: [RFC 4380](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4380)
+[^ipfs]: Aside from web browsing, I also run an IPFS node and a bunch of local servers.  I probably need to retire some of them soon since they really clutter the traffic.