The 6bone is a test Internet that you can use to test your IPv6 connectivity. This experimental IPv6 network is layered on top of portions of the physical IPv4-based Internet. The 6bone is made up of islands that can directly support IPv6 packets, linked mainly by virtual point-to-point links, called tunnels. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) coordinates the experimental activities on the 6bone to provide feedback.

The simplest way to connect to the 6bone is to use the IPv6 Helper service that is included with the IPv6 protocol for Windows Embedded CE. You can use the IPv6 Helper as one of the devices shown in the following list:

• 6to4 host
  
  
• 6to4 router, by enabling Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on a computer that is connected to the Internet
  
  

The IPv6 Helper service automatically configures itself with the appropriate 6to4 addresses and uses a specific 6to4 relay router on the Internet.

For more information, see IPv6 Traffic Between Nodes in Different Sites Across the Internet (6to4).

The following illustration shows the implementation of a host that is using 6to4 to communicate on the 6bone through a 6to4 relay router.

With 6to4, you can ping other computers on the 6bone, for example, ping -6 ipv6.research.microsoft.com.

The IPv6 Web site provides a list of IPv6-accessible servers that communicate on the 6bone. Additionally, the 6bone registry contains the names of other 6bone computers. Some 6bone sites might be inaccessible. You might also experience connectivity problems.

For more information about the test Internet (6bone), see the 6bone Web site .

Note:
Web addresses can change, so you might be unable to connect to the Web site or sites mentioned here.

See Also