Point-to-Point Layer 3 GRE tunnel interface

This guide describes how to establish an unencrypted and unauthenticated IPv6-over-IPv6 tunnel on OpenBSD, see gre(4) EXAMPLES for similar setups.

Configuration

Let A be the local OpenBSD host and D the remote peer, assume public DNS names and IPv6 reachability.

Let fd42:: and fd42::1 be the IPs of A and D respectively where both are allocated as /127 subnet from one of the peer's DN42 prefix.

pseudo interface

Populate /etc/hostname.gre0 with:

tunnel A.example.com D.example.net
inet6 fd42::/127
This will resolve FQDNs at parse time, set A's and D's IPs as source and destination tunnel address and set A's assigned IP as point-to-point address on the interface.

Replace hostnames in the tunnel line with literal IPs if DNS is not available (at system boot).

Reboot or run sh /etc/netstart gre0 to bring up the tunnel.

miscellaneous

Populate /etc/sysctl.conf with:

net.inet.gre.allow=1
Reboot or run sysctl net.inet.gre.allow=1 to allow GRE packet processing.

Security

GRE may be protected with IPsec to encrypt and authenticate traffic, OpenIKED can be used to establish an IKEv2 session between A and B.