IPv6 and the future of DC online

[brourke228]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine none of the Dreamcast games support IPv6. Which would likely mean, once everything is converted over the games will no longer be able to contact servers which are using IPv6 ip addresses and online functionality will stop working. If this is the case we might need to set up a community VPN at some point down the line to tunnel IPv4 over IPv6 to continue online gameplay.

[Aleron Ives]

BlueCrab has already begun taking this into consideration for PSO by adding IPv6 support to Sylverant and writing a proxy to let the game connect over IPv6. Other BBA-compatible games could likely be preserved the same way, but modem-only games may be doomed, unless there's a way to achieve the same effect with a DC-PC bridge.

[everynewday84]

::sells BBA::

[BlueCrab]

I'm sure there'd be a way to do something similar with a DC-PC connection over a modem. It might be a bit more work, but it shouldn't be that much more difficult to do something similar using it.

That said, I don't know that I'd be that concerned with it for the time being. I wouldn't be surprised to see IPv4 around for at least the next decade.

But yeah, I did add all kinds of stuff to Sylverant to support IPv6 as well as a proxy that deals with any issues with PSO's protocol and IPv6. Both Iselia and Altimira support IPv6 without any problems.

And not that this topic is about that, but KallistiOS supports IPv6 just as well as IPv4 for any Dreamcast homebrew that might ever end up being online.

[Alec1382]

Ah, good. You guys had me concerned that DC online gaming would die, which would suck since I've never played it and I'm about to obtain the means to.

[Favrenation]

If you are using a PC-DC connection the dreamcast is still using ipv4 right? Like your server will give it a v4 address but u could still have an actual v6 address on ur pc?

[BlueCrab]

If you are using a PC-DC connection the dreamcast is still using ipv4 right? Like your server will give it a v4 address but u could still have an actual v6 address on ur pc?

Well, your PC can have both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address (actually several of each).

But lets say that it only has an IPv6 address at some future point in time. As long as there is some way to tunnel the IPv4 connection through IPv6 for the game in question, it won't be a problem. This could be accomplished in one of two ways:
1) The server itself could support IPv6 and offer a proxy program to let the game continue to think that it is working on IPv4. This is the approach that I've taken with Sylverant and PSO. The game simply thinks that the server is on the local network, and makes its connection there over IPv4. The proxy then makes a connection to the real server over IPv6.
2) The server itself could stay as only supporting IPv4, and some sort of tunnel relay that is connected both on IPv4 and IPv6 could be used. In this way, the IPv4-connected relay could make the connection for you and you wouldn't ever have to worry about anything. The Dreamcast wouldn't know any better, nor would the game server. This approach itself is much more general and deals with things much more easily both to the client and the server. However, this tunneling approach isn't generally seen in the IPv4 over IPv6 direction, but rather the other way (IPv6 over IPv4). I suspect that this will be the approach that will be used by most things.

Both of these approaches still require there to be one machine that is connected in some way both on IPv4 and IPv6. The first approach only requires this on the local side, where the second approach requires it on both sides of the tunnel. With both approaches, the local side's IPv4/IPv6 host only actually needs IPv4 connectivity on the local side, whereas with the second approach the machine on the remote end of the relay needs an actual IPv4 connection to the Internet (unless of course the relay endpoint is on the local network or machine of the server, which is entirely possible).

[brourke228]

With PSO we have the benefit of you having coded the server though. I'm not sure if we could do what you're saying with q3 and max pool. With 4x4evo and starlancer though we would most certainly need to tunnel the connection because both of those games are p2p and we have no control of the server on a PC. Which is why I think a VPN would be the best way to go. This would have to exclude regular dial up users because there is no way to tunnel that without something in-between the DC and the internet. It would only work with PC-DC or the netopia setup i have.