Our great sponsors
-
I follow systemd-networkd development in order to utilise advanced functionality as it lands, as well as proposing or following other issues that provide desirable functionality.
Recently I was following issue #17380 [0] "No router advertisements sent out over wireguard link" which resulted in PR #21692 [1] "network: wireguard: allow to start ndisc or radv".
Shortly after the issue was closed Jason Donenfeld (alias zx2c4 - author of Wireguard) added a comment [2]:
"Please revert this. WireGuard does not work with LLv6 by design."
As a strong proponent and designer/developer/operator of IPv6-only networks and services I was unpleasantly surprised by this comment since we rely on IPv6 link-local functionality and also use Wireguard extensively including with link-local addresses and try to ensure everything we deploy is conformant with industry standards to ensure inter-operability.
I thought I may have misunderstood the IPv6 standards from RFC4291 "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture" section 2.1 "Addressing Model" [3] which says:
"All interfaces are required to have at least one Link-Local unicast address (see Section 2.8 for additional required addresses)."
After mentioning this in the issue zx2c4 replied with:
"I'm aware of that text. It doesn't change the fact that this isn't how WireGuard works."
In my mind point-to-point tunnels like Wireguard are closely aligned with link-local addressing so this was somewhat of a surprise!
Which leaves us with a dilemma - if we can't rely on standard IPv6 link-local behaviour on Wireguard links what similar tunnelling options should we consider? I did recently reconsider IPSec since it was originally designed as part of IPv6 although ended up being an optional extra and can be much more complex to manage.
What alternatives would the Linux-focused network professionals recommend ?
[0] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/17380
[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/21692
[2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/17380#issuecomment-1008323004
[3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4291#section-2.1
Related posts
- What is Systemd?
- sometimes when I turn off the computer it doesn't come out of this screen. sometimes I can't shut down or restart the machine either (when I click on the option to shut down or restart nothing happens)
- Problems with AR3012 bluetooth adapter in bullseye
- How do I get Pop!_OS to use grub instead of systemd-boot on uefi?
- Sometimes my laptop won't turn off, only if I force by holding the power button.