Documentation:Streaming HowTo/Streaming over IPv6

Streaming over IPv6

This chapter covers the specifics of streaming over IPv6. You should still read the previous chapters if you are not confortable with streaming in general.

Requirements

You will obviously need an IPv6-aware operating system. That includes Windows XP/2003, Linux 2.6, Mac OS X (starting from version 10.2). Windows 2000 and Linux 2.4 are supported too, but their IPv6 stacks are not as good, so upgrade if you can. IPv6 must be properly configured and working on your system and network.

On Linux, the ipv6 kernel module must be loaded (or compiled-in). On Windows, the IPv6 protocols suite can be installed by running "ipv6 install" from the command line, or through the Network configuration panel.

Note: Under Windows 2000, you must add by hand a default multicast IPv6 route, with the following command:

# ipv6 rtu ff::/8 4

where the last number (4 in this example) is the number of your true IPv6 interface. To have a list of your IPv6 interfaces, run ipv6 if

Warning: Under Windows XP SP1, you may have problems with a hidden IPv6 firewall. To solve the problem, go to the list of Windows Services and stop the IPv6 firewalling service. You should consider upgrading to Service Pack 2 which provides an integrated IPv4/IPv6 firewall that can be configured through the GUI.

Warning: If you are using VMware under Linux, you will have to stop VMware and unload the VMware kernel modules, because we noticed it prevented IPv6 streaming!

Limitations

There are still some features of the VLC media player which do not support IPv6. In particular, it is not possible to use RTSP over IPv6 because the underlying library, Live.com, does not support IPv6 at the time of writing.

Additionnaly, note that at the moment, VLC defaults to using IPv4 mostly every, as it is what most people uses. That might be changed to something more transparent in future versions.

Streaming with VLC

With the Streaming Wizard (GUI)

The streaming wizard accepts IPv6 addresses between braces, for example: [2002:8ac3:802d:1242:211:11ff:fe25:e6b4]. If you specify a link-local address, you will most likely need to specify the networking interface to use. On Unix, that can be done this way: [fe80::211:11ff:fe25:e6b4%eth0] to attach to eth0. Similarly, on Windows, you may specify [fe80::211:11ff:fe25:e6b4%1] where 1 is the number of the network interface as defined by the operating system.

If you're streaming over HTTP, note that IPv6 is automatically used by default (so that both IPv6 and IPv4 clients will be allowed).

If you want to specify DNS hostname, keep in mind that the VLC defaults to IPv4 resolution. You must either specify hostnames that only resolves to IPv6 addresses, or enable the "Force IPv6" advanced option in Preferences / General Settings / Input.

From the command-line

The --ipv6 command line option force the use of IPv6 by default (ie. IPv6 is always attempted before IPv4).

% vlc -vvv video1.xyz --ipv6 --sout udp:[ff08::1] --ttl 12

where:

• video1.xyz is the file you want to stream (you can also put dvdsimple:/dev/dvd to stream a DVD or any other input configuration),
• ff08::1 is either:
  • the IPv6 address of the machine you want to unicast to;
  • or the multicast IPv6 address.
• 12 is the value of the TTL (Time To Live) of your IP packets (which means that the stream will be able to cross 11 routers).

Note: Under Unix/Linux, you may have to protect the square brackets around the IPv6 address:

% vlc -vvv video1.xyz --ipv6 --sout udp:\[ff08::1\] --ttl 12

Note: You may have to specify the output network interface:

% vlc -vvv video1.xyz --ipv6 --sout udp:[ff08::1%eth0] --ttl 12

where eth0 is the name of the network interface (under Linux the network interfaces are named ethX, under Mac OS X it's enX and under Windows it's X, where X is the appropriate number).

Receiving an IPv6 stream

With the graphical user interface

Select File / Open Network Stream. To receive an UDP/RTP unicast stream sent to your system, you should select the Force IPv6 option (and possibly adjust the destination UDP port). To receive an UDP multicast stream, select the UDP/RTP Multicast option, and specify the multicast address to subscribe to inside square brackets. The IPv6 addresses syntax is the same as that explained in the Streaming over IPv6 section of this chapter.

From the command line

As for streaming, the --ipv6 command line option force the use of IPv6 by default (ie. IPv6 is always attempted before IPv4).

% vlc -vvv --ipv6 udp:@[ff08::1]

Under Unix/Linux, you may have to protect the square brackets around the IPv6 address:

% vlc -vvv --ipv6 udp:@\[ff08::1\]

You may have to specify the output network interface:

% vlc -vvv video1.xyz --ipv6 --sout udp:[ff08::1%eth0] --ttl 12

where eth0 is the name of the network interface (under Linux the network interfaces are named ethX, under Mac OS X it's enX and under Windows it's X, where X is the appropriate number).

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