                                                          -*- text -*-
Gateway6 Client v5.0-RELEASE
============================
                                     Current Web home: http://go6.net/

What's New
----------

Take a look at the following release notes documents to know which 
bugs have been resolved, what are the known issues and what new 
features are included in this version:

  - HEX-DC-0007 Gateway6 Client Release Notes.
  - HEX-DC-0009 HAP6 Client Release Notes.

Description
-----------

TSP is a control protocol used to establish and maintain static 
tunnels. The Gateway6 Client is used on the host computer to connect 
to a tunnel broker using the TSP protocol and to get the information 
for its tunnel. When it receives the information for the tunnel, the 
Gateway6 client creates the static tunnel on its operating system.

The Gateway6 Client code is mostly identical for all client platforms.
However, creating the static tunnel is operating system dependent and 
is done by a script called by the Gateway6 Client. These scripts are 
located under the template directory in the Gateway6 Client 
installation directory.

The script executed by the Gateway6 Client to configure the tunnel 
interface is customized for each type of supported operating system 
and takes care of all specifics for the target operating system. 
On Unix systems, it is a shell script. This separation of the binary 
and script enables fast and easy additions of new operating systems, 
as has been shown by the community contributions for many operating 
systems.

Packaging
---------

The Gateway6 Client is available either as part of the operating system
distributions, such as Linux or FreeBSD; as downloadable software from 
the Web site of the tunnel broker service, such as Freenet6 
(http://www.go6.net); as included in the Gateway6 CD-ROM; or directly 
from Hexago (http://www.hexago.com).

Multi-site operation
--------------------

The Gateway6 Client may be used to connect to a single Gateway6 server 
or to multiple servers across different locations. This serves two 
purposes: providing better quality of service by having users connect 
to the closest server and also provide redundancy if one site is 
unavailable. The mechanism used by TSP to announce multiple sites is 
called a broker list or broker redirection (in the case there's only 
one element in the list). The client receiving a broker list will test 
which sites are available and their respective topological distance 
using echo messages. The client then connects to each broker in the 
list, the closest one first, until a successful connection is 
established.


Executing the Gateway6 Client
-----------------------------

The Gateway6 Client is executed manually by typing the command gw6c. 
If no keepalive is negotiated, the Gateway6 Client program exits after 
setting up the tunnel. If the keepalive mechanism is negotiated, the 
Gateway6 Client forks itself and runs in the background to carry the 
keepalive with the tunnel broker. Keepalives are mandatory for IPv6 in 
UDP IPv4 tunnels to keep the NAT mapping up, but are optional for IPv6
in IPv4 tunnels and IPv4 in IPv6 tunnels.


Please report bugs in the Gateway6 Client to <support@go6.net>.

MAINTAINER: Hexago, Inc (http://www.hexago.com/)

Copyright (C) 2007 Hexago, Inc.

See CLIENT-LICENSE.TXT for license information.
