Ethernet shield and IPv6 support

Question

Have you heard about support for IPv6 protocol for any Ethernet shield? As far as I know only IPv4 is supported. Maybe some one would like to write library?

Answer 1

I have been working on an IPv6 library for Arduino, called EtherSia, that works with the ENC28J60 chip, but with a lower overhead compared with libraries that use Contiki / uIP. It is comparable to the EtherCard library for IPv4.

https://github.com/njh/ethersia

While the Wiznet chips do not support IPv6 natively, they do have a MACRAW mode that allows you to send Layer 2 Ethernet frames directly. I have managed to get IPv6 working with the Wiznet W5100 and W5500 chips, which is what the official Arduino Ethernet Shield and Ethernet Shield 2 use.

So it is possible...

Answer 2

There is no library, and there physically cannot be one. IPv4 is built into the Ethernet shield itself. (It has a Wiznet 510 chip.)

Shields based on the MicroChip ENC28J60 chip (such as those sold by Ekitszone and Nuelectronics) are suitable for the implementation of an IPv6 or dual IPv4/IPv6 stack. This approach requires the TCP state machine to be implemented in software and results in more complex arduino code.

Source: this tutorial. (You may find it useful, I'd recommenced reading it.)

There is this library for IPv6 on other hardware, not for the official Ethernet shield.