cjdns/tunnel

IpTunnel - Tunneling IPv4 and IPv6 through a cjdns network

IpTunnel is designed to make it easy to access The Old Internet through cjdns. The way you get to the internet is via "gate" nodes which hand you an address the same way as a traditional VPN service would. TOR users might think of it as "exit nodes" for cjdns, the main difference is with cjdns you need to ask permission from the gate operator before (ab)using their gateway.

Updating your cjdroute.conf

First compare your cjdroute.conf file to a newly generated one, if your cjdroute.conf file is old, there are two changes which you will need to include. In the router section you will need to add a subsection called IpTunnel.

    // System for tunneling IPv4 and ICANN IPv6 through cjdns.
    // This is using the cjdns switch layer as a VPN carrier.
    "ipTunnel":
    {
        lots
        of stuff here
        see the real version
        by running ./cjdroute --genconf
    },

You may also have to modity the setuser section in the security block, there is a new field called exemptAngel which needs to be set in order for cjdns to have permission to set the IPv6 and IPv4 addresses on the TUN device.

    // Change the user id to this user after starting up and getting resources.
    {
        "setuser": "nobody"

        // Exempt the Angel process from setting userId, the Angel is a small
        // isolated piece of code which exists outside of the core's strict
        // sandbox but does not handle network traffic.
        // This must be enabled for IpTunnel to automatically set IP addresses
        // for the TUN device.
        "exemptAngel": 1
    }

Connecting to a gateway

To connect to an IPv6 gate, you must first ask the operator of the gate to add your key to his gate, once he has added it, add their key to the outgoingConnections section of the IpTunnel block in your cjdroute.conf like this:

"outgoingConnections":
[
    // John's gate
    "d5d0wu0usrkuThisIsJustAnExampleThisIsFake63uqlnk2kb0.k"
]

Then restart cjdns and after a few moments you should see it add IP addresses to your TUN device by running ifconfig for example:

tun0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          inet addr:192.168.10.4  P-t-P:192.168.10.4  Mask:255.255.255.255
          inet6 addr: fc88:dfd0:89d4:abfe:de2:a17a:6ed5:6fb1/8 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: 2a02:2498:e000:20::144:4/0 Scope:Global                 <--- new address
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1312  Metric:1
          RX packets:22950 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:22891 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:500
          RX bytes:22689370 (22.6 MB)  TX bytes:2460363 (2.4 MB)

Then you can try pinging a computer out on the internet like ipv6.google.com and see if it works.

Running a gateway

Running your own gateway is not automated, so you will want to implement some scripts to set the addresses for you. Lets imagine your ISP has given you the IPv6 prefix 1111:1111:1111:1111::/64 and your ISP's router is 1111:1111:1111:1111::1. Your ethernet card is probably set to 1111:1111:1111:1111::2 so you'll begin allocating above that. First you will have to reserve one address (eg: 1111:1111:1111:1111::3) for your tun0 device's address, then each client can have an address, so the first client will be issued 1111:1111:1111:1111::4, the second 1111:1111:1111:1111::5 and so on.

First edit your cjdroute.conf and add the clients who will be connecting to your gate. It's always a good idea to add some identification with the connect block so you know who it is for later.

        "allowedConnections":
        [
            // Bill Smith's connection
            {
                "publicKey": "f64hfl7c4uxt6krmhPutTheRealAddressOfANodeHere7kfm5m0.k",
                "ip6Address": "1111:1111:1111:1111::4"
            }
        ]

When you start cjdroute, the IP address for the TUN device will not be set automatically, so you must set that next with the following command:

ip -6 addr add dev tun0 1111:1111:1111:1111::3

Now that your tun device has an address, your client may or may not be able to connect and ping 1111:1111:1111:1111::3, but it definitely won't be able to reach the rest of the world until you add a static route to your ISP's router's address: 1111:1111:1111:1111::1. This will make it route over the ethernet device and add a static route to allow the rest of your /64 to route down the TUN device. Once you're finished, you'll want to set a default route via your ISP's router's address so outgoing IPv6 packets are forwarded correctly.

ip -6 route add dev eth0 1111:1111:1111:1111::1
ip -6 route add dev tun0 1111:1111:1111:1111::0/64
ip -6 route add default via 1111:1111:1111:1111::1

Finally you will need to enable IPv6 forwarding, to do this, run:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/forwarding

and to make it permanent, edit your /etc/sysctl.conf file and uncomment the line which says:

#net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1

Connect the client to the gateway using cjdns and wait a few moments until you've obtained the ipv6 address associated with the tunnel. Now, test the connection by attempting to ping the ipv6 address associated with the gateway on the tunnel, and if this succeeds you can try to ping an external ipv6 address like ipv6.google.com too if you're expecting internet traffic to be routed through.

Now if all went well your job is done, but if the connection isn't working yet you should continue on to the next section and try to figure out why.

It doesn't work

First, check to make sure you don't have any iptables rules against forwarding or ones that might be blocking your connection in any way. You should also make sure a processes called 'radvd' isn't running (at least to rule out as a cause until you have things working) since it seems to be capable of causing some routing issues.

Now ensure the client is still connected to the gateway through cjdns, and that it still has an ipv6 address associated with the tunnel, then try pinging the gateway or an internet ipv6 address again with the client. On the gateway, run tcpdump -n -i tun0 to see if any packets get as far as the tun device, and if nothing scrolls with the ipv6 associated with your client's on the tunnel, you should check your routes to make sure they're correct by running ip -6 route. The output should include four lines that look similar to the ones below (take special note of which device is associated with each line).

1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1 dev eth0 metric 1024 1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:3 dev tun0 proto kernel metric 256 1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:0/64 dev tun0 metric 1024 default via 1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1111:1 dev eth0 metric 1024

If your routes are correct and things still aren't working, continue to let the ping process run on the client and run tcpdump -n -i eth0 icmp6 on the gateway to check the traffic flowing through its ethernet device. Look for any connections to or from the ipv6 address associated with your client on the tunnel, and if you see any with strange messages about "neighbor solicitation" or "neighbor advertisement", the problem is that your ISP's equipment is dropping replies instead of routing return traffic despite the addresses in use being allocated to you. This problem exists because of something called NDP (Neighbor Discovery Protocol), in which a request for 'neighbours' is made, and traffic isn't allowed to be sent back unless the ISP receives a response. Thankfully, there is a workaround available that involves running a daemon called npd6, which provides a response that satisfies NDP. Install npd6 through your distro's package management system if it's available, (recent debian based distrobutions may be able to install the package located here: http://code.google.com/p/npd6/downloads/list) otherwise you'll have to download and build it yourself by doing the following:

wget http://npd6.googlecode.com/files/npd6-1.0.0.tar.gz
tar -xf ./npd-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd npd6-1.0.0/
make && sudo make install

Once this is built, copy npd6-1.0.0/etc/npd6.conf.sample to /etc/ndp6.conf, and change the prefix to 1111:1111:1111:1111:0000:0000:0000:0002/64 (2 because you're announcing 1111:1111:1111:1111::2 and higher, but not 1111:1111:1111:1111::1 which belongs to your ISP's router). Note that in this particular instance, you can't ignore 0s when writing out your ipv6 or npd6 will complain when you attempt to run it. If npd6 fails to start, try running npd6 -l npd6.log to write a log in the local directory.