Do your devices behind the router get IPv6 addresses, or just the router itself?
I wouldn't be super surprised to see routers getting IPv6 addresses and doing a 6in4 NAT, so devices behind the router get IPv4 addresses.
I would be surprised and impressed if your devices were actually getting public IPv6 addresses.
IPv6 can be kind of unwieldy, but the bigger issue to me is that old and/or very cheap clients (like bargain-bin AliExpress IoT stuff) may not support IPv6 at all.
I believe you can run DHCP for both and let the client pick one, but then you're into running dual-stack routers, and I would be very surprised if ISPs had any interest in supporting them for home use.
I may well be wrong, though. I haven't looked into it in a few years, because my ISP doesn't support it.
edit: Okay I thought it did but apparently my router doesn't assign publically routable IPv6 addresses by default. I found a setting that would enable this though. Gonna leave it off for security reasons, but it's just a toggle, so still seems pretty easy. Also my local interface apparently has an (unrouted) ip in the same subnet as my router's public address, and I'm not sure how it got it.
Every device on my LAN that responds to Bonjour on `.local` uses link-local IPv6 without me having had to do any configuration or put any thought into it whatsoever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EDIT - Oh, you’re talking about public IPv6… similarly, my router (a TP-Link Archer 1200) gets assigned a prefix by my ISP, which it then auto-assigns inside devices IPs from, again without any explicit configuration or intervention on my part. Super easy.
Do you understand on what basis? Do you know enough to assign addresses in a way that you, not your router, wants?
Can you ssh/other forms of remote into any machine that accepts ssh on your local network using only ipv6?
Can you redirect ports to specific local machines using only ipv6 (that implies they keep constant addresses)?
Can you easily switch between two internet connections going through different routers that are plugged into the same switch for any machine on your local network using only ipv6?
Speaking of which, since the ISP decides on the addresses behind your NAT, can two separate ipv6 internet connections even exist on a local network?
This is all easily doable with ipv4 in like two afternoons without setting up anything beyond perhaps a dhcp server and some firewall rules. How many additional services do you need to do that with ipv6? And how enterprisey are they?
Do not "ssh/other forms of remote" using ip addresses. Use domain names or local domain. It is easier to remember, is more secure (if configured in DNS), and less prone to errors.
> Can you redirect ports to specific local machines using only ipv6 (that implies they keep constant addresses)?
Yes. Use domain names in configuration files. It more robust, easier to read, and is better protected against network changes on the local network.
I have been part of multiple ISP changes and searching through configuration files for ISP specific IP address ranges is never fun. It wastes time and is prone to errors. In enterprise settings domain names rarely changes and even when they do, the old primary name are usually retained for backward compatibility. An ISP can get replaced fairly quickly if an alternative is cheaper or provide a better service.
> Can you easily switch between two internet connections going through different routers that are plugged into the same switch for any machine on your local network using only ipv6?
Are you talking about BGP? BGP is a fairly complex protocol and uses some archaic configuration syntax, but even so there are generally no differences between ipv4 and ipv6. It is the same pain making sure both ipv4 and ipv6 switch between the two routes correctly.
I have absolutely no problem remembering the last byte of any machine on my network. Because that's all it takes with ipv4 on a sorta complex home network, no need for extra services.
> Are you talking about BGP?
No, with ipv4 i can just change the default route :)
Everything is NATed behind the two routers so changing the default route changes which connection that machine uses. You're thinking enterprise, and then ipv6 becomes ... fine. I just have a hack that works fine for me.
> Do you know enough to assign addresses in a way that you, not your router, wants?
If I want to manually assign addresses it's still pretty simple, but in the end I normally just don't care. I don't want to know what IP my printer is, I just want to reach it. Which isn't a challenge at all. Even for things at my home that are IPv4 only they're practically all DHCP. Because there's little reason to ever really care about something's address.
> Can you ssh/other forms of remote into any machine that accepts ssh on your local network using only ipv6?
I have no problems reaching any host on any of my networks even if they're running only IPv6. It's nice too because I can trivially reach any port I want globally as well with a basic firewall change. Even better I can have one host have many IP addresses with different services bound to each address if I want.
> Can you redirect ports to specific local machines using only ipv6 (that implies they keep constant addresses)?
Why do any port redirection at all? Just set the firewall rule and things can hit it. And yeah, they can keep constant addresses. They can have dozens, hundreds of static host addresses if I want.
> Can you easily switch between two internet connections going through different routers that are plugged into the same switch for any machine on your local network using only ipv6?
If that's something you're really wanting, Network Prefix Translation can be done pretty easily. But the vast majority of home users aren't using dual WAN anyways.
> This is all easily doable with ipv4 in like two afternoons
Sounds like your setup with IPv4 took more work than mine with IPv6, as mine only took me an hour or so while yours took multiple days.
> as mine only took me an hour or so while yours took multiple days.
Yeah, because the first time I had no idea what I was doing, except vague feelings about ipv4 works. Did you factor in your pre existing ipv6 knowledge when you counted just an hour?
> Network Prefix Translation can be done pretty easily.
What's "easily"? How many services do I need to setup? Some other helpful HNer tried to explain to me once and the list was like 2 or 3 daemons in addition to dhcp, firewall etc.
Your standard was "It's unusable on your fucking home network."
I've set up and managed IPv6 at work before, yes. I don't know if I'd call them "complex" networks though. Either way I set it up at home several years before. And I had been running IPv6 at home before I even bothered setting it up in a way I wanted, as my ISP's box previously had a decently competent SLAAC and IPv6 firewall setup in their CPE router. So that took me 0 minutes of time past plugging it in.
As for this disdain of running such complicated systems like "DNS", so many things support mDNS these days and plenty of home routers will automatically update their local DNS with DHCP entries. I didn't have to manually configure a DNS entry for my printer, I just gave it the hostname "brother" when I first set it up and now when I need to add it, I just do "brother" on a new computer and boom it finds it wherever it is. If I want to check the toner level, I open a browser and go to http://brother and its there. And even though I've radically changed my networking setups over the years, all my configurations pointing to "brother" still just work.
But hey just complain about how it's just impossible and takes so much work instead of actually learning new things.
From the sibling comment:
> No, with ipv4 i can just change the default route :)
Are you suggesting you're running around and changing the default route on all the devices on your network when a gateway goes down? What a nightmare. Just have your router have multiple WAN connections and have it do the failover for you.
> I have absolutely no problem remembering the last byte of any machine on my network
If you want, you can do the same with IPv6. You could set your stuff to have your IP addresses be fd12:3456::1, then fd12:3456::2, then fd12:3456::3, then fd12:3456::4, then fd12:3456::5, etc. Remembering 123456 as your home ULA prefix isn't too challenging, is it? You can then set up an NPT rule like the one above on your router to translate this prefix fd12:3456::/64 with whatever your public prefix is from your ISP. Most wouldn't do this though, as its essentially the Fisher Price of networking designs.
> As for this disdain of running such complicated systems like "DNS"
Disdain? I run a few bind instances for my own domains. On rented servers where they belong. I'm just opposed to having one required for my local network.
"NPt makes perfect sense for SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments." Wait, they agree with me. That there are SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments. Who would have thought?
> running around and changing the default route on all the devices on your network when a gateway goes down? What a nightmare. Just have your router have multiple WAN connections and have it do the failover for you.
It used to be that but I don't think any of my internets has failed since like 2010... mostly keeping them out of inertia. So I've never felt the need to fix the manual failover. It's not all devices anyway, just the one I'm using at the moment.
> But hey just complain about how it's just impossible and takes so much work instead of actually learning new things.
Too many new things to be exact. Most of them needless. However either people have figured out by now how to work around the ipv6 commitee to simplify things, or they were always there but whoever tried to explain ipv6 to me before had a fetish for enterprise solutions. I distinctly remember being told I need to set up at least 2-3 extra services for my dual wan setup.
Your answers are almost devoid of acronyms and "helper" services that i need to set up and learn because it sounds professional. You almost only included firewall rules :)
This was not my opinion of ipv6 before. Maybe I'll give it a chance in the future. My current setup still works "just fine" though so I need to be very bored to fuck it up.
> "NPt makes perfect sense for SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments." Wait, they agree with me.
Well yeah, without implementing BGP and controlling your public prefixes its the only way to have multi-WAN deployments, and chances are home users aren't messing with BGP. Most users will get by fine just adopting their WAN-issued prefixes.
> I don't think any of my internets has failed since like 2010... mostly keeping them out of inertia.
So next time you do some big network maintenance just drop your redundant WAN connection, sounds like you haven't really needed it in 14 years (imagine the thousands of dollars you'll save not keeping it another decade and a half!). Just adopt whatever public prefix you have, and life will be simple.
> Your answers are almost devoid of acronyms and "helper" services
Largely because there aren't really many "helper" services needed if you're willing to adopt some pretty basic network designs. Add DNS/mDNS, and suddenly you don't need to care about the specific numbers of things. Just accept SLAAC, which comes with any Linux/BSD distro/MacOS/Windows/whatever IPv6 embedded stack you've got comes out of the box for the last decade+, and suddenly you'll get publicly routable IP addresses. If you want to access SSH on a box, add a firewall rule for its IP and register its IP in a public DNS, and suddenly its accessible anywhere. You can make any host in your network accessible if you want to. Its nice.
> This was not my opinion of ipv6 before. Maybe I'll give it a chance in the future.
I get there's a lot of new acronyms with it digging deep in docs. I get it sounds like there's a million ways to deploy it. There's a lot to know, if you want to get deep in it. Honestly, if you just kind of loosen your reins a little bit, accept the things that are already shipping on the things you've been running for a decade will just work with the newer dynamic stuff, and adopt DNS, it'll probably be perfectly fine. You probably don't need to install/configure dozens of additional things.
> imagine the thousands of dollars you'll save not keeping it another decade and a half!
Uh well, i'm in eastern europe and the fiber i would give up on is in a package with the cell phones and the tv channels, so i think i wouldn't even notice it missing from the bill. And it's all iptv so I don't think I can have tv without the fiber.
The other pipe is business ish (symmetrical, no restrictions on servers) so I'm not giving up on it, I'm using it to give stuff to customers etc.
> I get there's a lot of new acronyms with it digging deep in docs. I get it sounds like there's a million ways to deploy it.
As i said, last time I asked on some forum (maybe hn, maybe ars technica) i got drowned in acronyms. Most of them for extra daemons to handle ... some config for a larger network, i guess.
And believe it or not, I didn't know until today that you can ignore your ISPs prefix and do address translation with ipv6 :) I thought you use what you get and that's all. Because that was the promise of ipv6 wasn't it? No more NAT.
Lots of machines at home and yet having DNS tied to DHCP or running mDNS is too much of a hassle.
I would hate to have to remember even the last octet of all my machines in my house. Instead it's just the simple names. The numbers underneath can all change whenever, it doesn't matter. Until I start calling my kids by an octet a name will be easier to remember instead of "is that north camera 101 or 105 or 113 or..." versus "north-camera.my.net" or "is my pool controller 10.7 or 10.8 or..." Instead it's just pool-pump.my.net.
I mean why would anyone really care to deal with DNS anyways, just a bunch of fluff. Real IT admins just memorize IP addresses. Why would I bother dealing with all that DNS hassle?
If its easier to remember this site by its name, why wouldn't it also be easier to remember what your file share's host is by just remembering its name instead of some collection of digits? Do you remember people by their phone numbers or by their names?
Having functional local DNS is not complicated these days. On tons of systems it comes out of the box, you almost have to go out of your way to not make it work. You need to actively try to not use it.
What you forget is on your average home network only the last byte matters. The first 3 don't change. It's always 192.168.x.y, x is fixed so you only need to remember the y.
Yes, that's the problem. It's unusable on your fucking home network.
Please, don't post again the 10 "concise" 50+ page documents that you "just" need to read to set up ipv6...