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IPv6 communication

The Dante distribution has support for IPv6 in the server part (the socksify client part does currently not support IPv6).

Communicating via IPv6

IPv6 in Dante is to a large extent handled automatically based on the address types found in the server configuration file. In most cases, no changes will be required to existing IPv4-only based Dante configurations, but in some cases, changes will be necessary. These cases are described below.

IPv4-only configurations

Dante configurations that only use IPv4-addresses in their sockd.conf file will generally not need to consider IPv6. IPv4 rules will process SOCKS requests for IPv4 addresses while IPv6 traffic will be blocked unless there are specific IPv6 rules that allow it.

Note however that if any rules are specified using hostnames or interface names, rather than explicit IPv4-addresses, the hostnames or interfacenames might expand to IPv6 addresses. In this case, you do not have a IPv4-only configuration, and you need to take care to understand the implications IPv6-support in Dante entails for your configuration.

Changes to sockd.conf in an IPv4-only usage scenarios are only necessary if either of Dante's internal or external interface addresses are specified in sockd.conf using interfacenames (e.g., external: eth0) or hostnames (e.g., internal: dante-int.example.com), and these interfacenames or hostnames now, or possibly in the future, will contain IPv6 addresses.

The Dante server will by default use all addresses found on an internal interface if the interface is specified by it's name (rather than by one of its IP-addresses). If the interface has one or more IPv6 addresses, this will result in the Dante server also using the IPv6 addresses.

Unless the sockd.conf file is changed to also accept IPv6 traffic, or includes hostnames that resolve to IPv6-addresses in Dante's ACL rules, all connections made to any IPv6 address will however be blocked, so this should have no practical security related consequences. If it is desired to only listen to IPv4 addresses, the internal keyword in the sockd.conf file should however, if possible, explicitly specify the IPv4 address the server should bind to, instead of using a interface name or hostname.

Similarly, the external keyword in the sockd.conf file should explicitly specify the IPv4 address the server should bind to on the external side, instead of using the interface or hostname. This will prevent Dante from opening any IPv6 connections.

Mixed IPv4/IPv6 configurations

For a Dante server to accept requests on both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, it is necessary to specify either a network interface that has both types of addresses as an argument to the internal sockd.conf keyword, or specify the keyword multiple times with different addresses. For example:

#accept SOCKS requests on 10.0.0.1 (IPv4) and fc00::01 (IPv6)
internal: 10.0.0.1 port = 1080
internal: fc00::1  port = 1080

Dante's config file will also need rules for both address types.

#accept connections from any IPv4 client
client pass {
        from: 0.0.0.0/0 to: 0.0.0.0/0
}

The above is an example of a rule for IPv4 addresses that will allow any IPv4 client to connect to the Dante server. An equivalent rule for IPv6 can look like the following:

#accept connections from any IPv6 client
client pass {
        from: ::/0 to: ::/0
}

Both of the above rules match only one address type, the first only IPv4, the second only IPv6. To add a rule that accepts any address, regardless of address family, the following special Dante-specific address syntax can be used (0/0):

#accept connections from any client
client pass {
        from: 0/0 to: 0/0
}

The rule above will match both IPv4 and IPv6 clients, connecting to either Dante's internal IPv4 address (if any) or Dante's internal IPv6 address (if any).

IPv6-only configurations

As with the IPv4-only configurations described above, allowing only IPv6 clients to connect can be achieved by using rules that only match IPv6 addresses and fully specifying the IPv6 addresses that the server should bind to on the internal and external interfaces, rather than using interfacenames/hostnames.

Specifying an interfacename as the value for an internal keyword will result in the Dante server listening to both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, if that interface has both types of addresses.

No IPv4 clients will however be accepted unless the client pass rules in the configuration file also allow access by clients using IPv4 addresses.

Interface-level control of address family

NOTE: This functionality is only found in Dante 1.4.1 and later.

When an interface is used with the internal or external keywords to specify the interface addresses, Dante will by default use all available addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, but this behavior can be controlled with the internal.protocol and external.protocol keywords.

These keywords accept any combination of the values ipv4 and ipv6, for example:

#use any ipv4 and ipv6 addresses found on eth0 for the internal side
internal.protocol: ipv4 ipv6
internal: eth0

#use only ipv4 addresses found on eth0 for the internal side
internal.protocol: ipv4
internal: eth0

#use only ipv6 addresses found on eth0 for the internal side
internal.protocol: ipv6
internal: eth0

For the external side, the behavior is the same:

#use any ipv4 and ipv6 addresses found on eth1 for the external side
external.protocol: ipv4 ipv6
external: eth1

#use only ipv4 addresses found on eth1 for the external side
external.protocol: ipv4
external: eth1

#use only ipv6 addresses found on eth1 for the external side
external.protocol: ipv6
external: eth1

Note that the order of the keywords is important; the protocol specification must always precede the interface specification. Failure to do this will result in an error when starting the server.

The default behavior is as follows:

#default behavior; both ipv4 and ipv6 addresses used, if available.
internal.protocol: ipv4 ipv6
internal: eth0

#default behavior; both ipv4 and ipv6 addresses used, if available.
external.protocol: ipv4 ipv6
external: eth1

It is in other words only necessary to specify the protocol family if only one address family is wanted on either the internal or external side.

Limiting the protocols in use will result in the following behavior:

  • Internal side: The server will not listen to the address family not specified. For example, specifying internal.protocol: ipv4 will cause the server to only bind to IPv4 addresses; no requests from IPv6 clients will be accepted.

    This includes the use of hostnames in the configuration file. If the internal keyword has a hostname argument that resolves to both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, only the address families specified by the protocol keyword will be used.

  • External side: The server will not forward requests to any excluded address family. For example, specifying external.protocol: ipv4 will result in client requests to IPv6 addresses being blocked.

The protocol specifications can be changed for a running server by updating the configuration file and sending SIGHUP to the server. No change will be made for existing clients, but new requests should use the new values.

Additional notes

  • IPv6 addresses can be specified in several different ways, as is usual for IPv6 addresses. All the following lines refer to the same (any/wildcard) address and are all valid addresses for use in Dante configuration files:

    ::
    ::0
    0::0
    0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0
    0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 
    
  • IPv4 mapped IPv6 addresses are mapped internally in the Dante server to IPv4 addresses and access control is done on the IPv4 address. There should never be any reason to specify IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses anywhere in Dante's configuration file, and Dante will complain if an attempt is made.

  • IPv6 is fully supported by the Dante server, while the following additional Dante components do not currently support IPv6:

    • The standalone SOCKS client code implementation and socksify tool. Not related to Dante server operation.
    • The TCP Option 28 hostid code, which only supports IPv4 addresses.

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