3.1. Bi-directional IPv6 Connectivity

The ESP Thread Border Router allows the devices on the Wi-Fi/Ethernet and the Thread network to reach each other with IPv6 addresses.

Hardware Prerequisites

To perform bi-directional IPv6 connectivity, the following devices are required:

An ESP Thread Border Router
A Thread CLI device
A Linux Host machine

The Border Router and the Linux Host machine shall be connected to the same Wi-Fi network and the Thread device shall join the Thread network formed by the Border Router.

Validate the IPv6 Connectivity

The Linux Host machine needs to be configured to accept the router advertisements from the Border Router:

Setting accept_ra to 2 allows all RAs to be accepted:

sudo sysctl -w net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/accept_ra=2

Setting accept_ra_rt_info_max_plen to 128 allows all kinds of prefix length in RAs to be accepted:

sudo sysctl -w net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/accept_ra_rt_info_max_plen=128

A global address will be assigned to the Thread CLI device. The Linux Host machine can reach the Thread device with an address that can be obtained by running the command ipaddr on the CLI device.

ipaddr

The command would produce the similar output:

> ipaddr
fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a
fd87:8205:4651:27c8:0:ff:fe00:0
fd87:8205:4651:27c8:e65a:3138:745a:df06
fe80:0:0:0:2433:db2e:62c:b2e4
Done

The Linux Host reachable address is fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a, you can ping this address from Linux Host using the following command:

ping fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a

You well get these output:

$ ping fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a

PING fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a(fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a: icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=187 ms
64 bytes from fd66:afad:575f:1:744d:573e:6e60:188a: icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=167 ms