IPv6

Ok I am a luddite and haven't a clue what IPv6 does or should I look into it.

I have just had FTTP installed with BT and use an Asus RT-AX88U router and see it has the ability to setup IPv6 but not a clue what settings to put in or should I leave it alone.

All my life I have been in the camp of "If it isn't broke don't fix it"

Do I gain anything by setting up IPv6.

Educate me guy's.

IPv6 is the next gen version of IPv4, you know the network addresses, 192.168.3.21.
To be honest i am still trying to understand them, not that I have tried much, but if everything is working then leave it alone.

I thought more providers would have started to use IPv6 since we have no more IPv4 addresses or very few, even the new up to date Fibre system coming here seems not to use IPv6.

For me over 60% of my traffic goes over IPv6 now so it is becoming more widespread and supported. However without having IPv6 nothing much changes and your Internet still works the same as all sites and services, if they support IPv6, also support IPv4.

It can simplify some things that otherwise have problems negotiating NAT, but NAT has been around so long most issues with NAT are overcome, often using a bit of a hack yes, but they work. For some people wanting remote access or other certain use cases then having their own pool of trillions of internet addresses they can use, rather than just one that is the norm with IPv4, is useful.

At this point in time though you gain little, except perhaps improving your own knowledge if you choose to learn about it and implement it, at some point in the future you may need it to access certain services that are IPv6 only, but I suspect that is some way off yet.

Whats the quickest way for anyone to check they have it? is there a good site to ping for example?

https://ipv6-test.com/

Also https://test-ipv6.com/ Gives a bit more info I think under tests run tab.

Edited by E300 (Thu 03-Dec-20 10:37:48)

I find it hard to get my head around the numbers. My current allocation of IPv6 addresses gives me 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 individual and unique IP addresses on the internet on just one subnet, however I've been allocated 65,535 subnets so have 65,535 x 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses unique to me. Repeat that for everyone and it gives an indication as to just how large the IPv6 address space is.

To me it just seems a waste to have all these IP addresses that I will never ever use, but that is just how big the address space is. Coming from IPv4 where we usually only have one IP, it takes a bit of a mental adjustment!

Hi Tim

If you decide to go any further with IPv6 then the following may be of interest

How to set up IPv6 in ASUS Router

In reply to a post by E300:

Also https://test-ipv6.com/ Gives a bit more info I think under tests run tab.

Virgin Media = 0/10

In reply to a post by dect:

Hi Tim

If you decide to go any further with IPv6 then the following may be of interest

How to set up IPv6 in ASUS Router

Thanks dect to be honest I found that link yesterday and it gives you some idea on the steps through but where do you get the addresses from for my particular usage.

Reading what you guy's have already written I think it's best left alone as there are no advantages it seems by having IPv6.

Many thank for the replies so far.

In reply to a post by busterboy:

Thanks dect to be honest I found that link yesterday and it gives you some idea on the steps through but where do you get the addresses from for my particular usage.

The addresses are assigned by your ISP, and are handed out dynamically just like your IPv4 address. If you used the router supplied by BT then it would almost certainly have been preconfigured for IPv6.

In reply to a post by busterboy:

Reading what you guy's have already written I think it's best left alone as there are no advantages it seems by having IPv6.

Sure, there's almost nothing on IPv6 that isn't also accessible by IPv4, and will be the case for many many years. Web sites are not going to cut off their users.

For the large mobile operators, IPv6 has the advantage of reducing the load on their NAT boxes, and hence improving performance. Although the number of websites accessible by IPv6 is still small, the big ones like Google/Youtube/Facebook/Twitter are on there, and account for a large proportion of traffic volume between them.

For home networks, it can be useful to have IPv6 for accessing remote IPv6 networks, or allowing access to your own servers, without having to mess with VPNs or port forwarding. Some peer-to-peer games work better over IPv6.

You made my mind up.

Leave well alone.

Except that once you have configured it it just works. Most of the time you are not aware that you are looking at a site in ipv6 rather than ipv4. Had it here for 3 or 4 years.

In reply to a post by E300:

I find it hard to get my head around the numbers.

If you like silly comparisons... consider a lump of iron.

A very big lump of iron, a solid sphere of it ~1976 metres diameter, ie just 24 metres short of 2 kilometres.

Every atom of it could have its own IPv6 address



(edited for clarity and a stray apostrophe!)

Edited by billford (Thu 03-Dec-20 20:19:43)

In reply to a post by dsergeant:

Except that once you have configured it it just works. Most of the time you are not aware that you are looking at a site in ipv6 rather than ipv4. Had it here for 3 or 4 years.

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

In reply to a post by billford:

If you like silly comparisons... consider a lump of iron.

A very big lump of iron, a solid sphere of it just (~24 metres) under 2 kilometres across.

[puzzled]isn't a sphere of ~24 metres of any dimension usually under 25 metres across too?[/puzzled]

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

[puzzled]isn't a sphere of ~24 metres of any dimension usually under 25 metres across too?[/puzzled]

Poorly phrased on my part, sorry

Diameter of sphere is ~1976 metres... ie ~24 metres less than 2 kilometres.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

So did I, especially from the top 5, (Sky, BT, Plusnet, Virgin, talktalk). I think only Sky & BT have managed it. Virgin keep talking about it, but nothing has appeared, and Plusnet did a trial, but that ended and nothing happened.

Each of these providers seems to have enough IPv4 for their growth projections, so it will be when websites are only on IPv6 that they will lose customers to those than can provide connectivity. At the moment I don't think any popular english language websites are only on the 6 net.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

So did I, especially from the top 5, (Sky, BT, Plusnet, Virgin, talktalk). I think only Sky & BT have managed it. Virgin keep talking about it, but nothing has appeared, and Plusnet did a trial, but that ended and nothing happened.

Each of these providers seems to have enough IPv4 for their growth projections, so it will be when websites are only on IPv6 that they will lose customers to those than can provide connectivity. At the moment I don't think any popular english language websites are only on the 6 net.

Oh it's worse than that for Plusnet. They ran a trial but then decided to undertake a major network upgrade. That upgrade apparently broke the IPv6 servers so the trial was ended. But their parent company - BT - offer IPv6.

I'm with IDNet and they've been offering IPv6 for many years now.

In reply to a post by dect:

Whats the quickest way for anyone to check they have it? is there a good site to ping for example?

Launch the TBB speed tester. It will tell you immediately with a yellow label at the bottom left.

And of course it says on the results themselves:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by E300:

Also https://test-ipv6.com/ Gives a bit more info I think under tests run tab.

Virgin Media = 0/10

IDNet 10/10

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

So did I, especially from the top 5, (Sky, BT, Plusnet, Virgin, talktalk). I think only Sky & BT have managed it. Virgin keep talking about it, but nothing has appeared, and Plusnet did a trial, but that ended and nothing happened.

Each of these providers seems to have enough IPv4 for their growth projections

And it doesn't really make a difference anyway. These providers *must* continue to provide IPv4 service whatever happens; if they gave a customer an IPv6-only service then it would be broken.

Given that it's a choice between IPv4-only, or IPv4+IPv6, then providing IPv6 doesn't help one iota in the ISP's IPv4 address depletion problems today. They still have to either buy enough IPv4 addresses, or share IPv4 addresses using some version of NAT.

That is at least until some hypothetical time far in the future when 99%+ of the Internet is reachable by IPv6, and so IPv4 can be dropped without major consequence.

Currently only about 25% of Alexa top 1000 sites are reachable via IPv6. Even the BBC isn't, and they're not short of either technical expertise or funding. There's just no driver for it.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

so it will be when websites are only on IPv6 that they will lose customers to those than can provide connectivity. At the moment I don't think any popular english language websites are only on the 6 net.

That's not going to happen for a very long time, if ever.

Address depletion simply isn't a problem at the content-provider side: they have been happily sharing IP addresses, using virtual hosting and reverse proxies, for years. Most of the big content is served via CDNs like Cloudflare and Akamai, and again, they can serve unlimited numbers of sites using the same set of IPv4 addresses.

Content providers depend on customers being able to reach them to make money, either via sales or from advertising eyeballs. If they put their content on IPv6-only, it wouldn't be reachable by the majority of their customers. Again, this won't change until 99%+ of the customers have IPv6.

So it's a chicken-and-egg situation. Content providers have no need to put content on IPv6, and access providers have no need to provide IPv6 access.

In reply to a post by E300:

I find it hard to get my head around the numbers. My current allocation of IPv6 addresses gives me 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 individual and unique IP addresses on the internet on just one subnet, however I've been allocated 65,535 subnets so have 65,535 x 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses unique to me. Repeat that for everyone and it gives an indication as to just how large the IPv6 address space is. adjustment!

I know what you mean. When I set my mail server up I wanted to give it 0000:0001 because it was the first server Sadly I could never get Windows static IP Address working so had to settle for a fixed address derived from the MAC.

There are still several aspects of IPv6 that I struggle with but I understand enough to have my mail server accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 03-Dec-20 22:03:10)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by dect:

Whats the quickest way for anyone to check they have it? is there a good site to ping for example?

Launch the TBB speed tester. It will tell you immediately with a yellow label at the bottom left.

And of course it says on the results themselves:

Unfortunately there is a growing thread elsewhere on the Forum (https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/newsite/f/4667197-... noting that for a number of users the yellow label only appears sporadically even though the IPv6 connection is up.

I normally check using http://v6.testmyipv6.com/ which throws an error if you are not able to connect through IPv6.

I use an AX88U on BT although with VDSL, but guess the settings will be the same.
On the AX88U there is a button towards bottom left of the interface that says IPv6

Mine works fine with Connection Type : Native
Interface: PPP

and everything else at their default.

In reply to a post by adrenalize_:

I use an AX88U on BT although with VDSL, but guess the settings will be the same.
On the AX88U there is a button towards bottom left of the interface that says IPv6

Mine works fine with Connection Type : Native
Interface: PPP

and everything else at their default.

Oh heck.... What have I done.

Thanks to adrenalize this could be working.

What happens now.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Oh it's worse than that for Plusnet. They ran a trial but then decided to undertake a major network upgrade. That upgrade apparently broke the IPv6 servers so the trial was ended. But their parent company - BT - offer IPv6.

I'm with IDNet and they've been offering IPv6 for many years now.

Sounds about right.
This new fibre network that is coming here don't seem to have IPv6 either, which is very strange.

In reply to a post by busterboy:

Oh heck.... What have I done.

Thanks to adrenalize this could be working.

What happens now.

You just use the net as normal.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Oh it's worse than that for Plusnet. They ran a trial but then decided to undertake a major network upgrade. That upgrade apparently broke the IPv6 servers so the trial was ended. But their parent company - BT - offer IPv6.

but as candlerb posted, it doesn't actually impact anyone, so neither Plusnet nor Virgin Media are having any customers complaining. Until they do, nothing will change.

Who dares wins

I don't know enough about IPv6 but could it put you at risk posting a link in a public forum to a shot showing your IP?

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

I don't know enough about IPv6 but could it put you at risk posting a link in a public forum to a shot showing your IP?

Ideally you wouldn't show publicly your IPv6 address but if you did it isn't a major issue and depends which one you show. Remember you don't just have one IPv6 address (unlike IPv4), you usually have trillions and trillions!

For security most operating systems assign a temporary IPv6 address for use on the web, after a day or so the computer gets a new temporary IPv6 address, for the old one to likely never be used again in a billion years. Anyone with that old IPv6 address isn't going to get very fair with it. Even if they saw the IPv6 address whilst it was still live and tried to hack in then the firewall would block it and they'd not know if it was a live IPv6 address or not.

Also IPv6 gets attacked much less often if at all, because there are so many IPv6 addresses you can't possibly scan them all looking for open ports.

Of course turning on IPv6 doesn't make your network more secure as IPv4 is still the weaker link.

@E300

Thanks for the explanation.

Two things adding to what E300 said, The IP address that was shown was of course that of the device asking the question. Not the router. The same (misunderstanding) occurs when asking "What is my IP" from the thnkbroadband Main Site, or when setting up an IPv6 BQM.

The (static?) WAN IPv6 address of the router has to be established and substituted into the BQM field. In the case of AAISP it isn't even the same /48 as the one assigned to the punter.

Also one would hope that the router has a firewall which at the very least will block inbound connections and unsolicited packets.

IPv6 is slightly less secure than IPv4 in one respect because without NAT an attacker does at least have an IP address to aim for but any half-way decent firewall will see random attacks off so it's a very minor vulnerability and probably more than offset by other aspects of IPv6 such as the use of temporary addresses.

In Windows unless you disable the option your public ipv6 address (each computer on your network) changes every 24 hours. As pointed out it is pretty useless if hacked. I would take great delight when confronting one of the phone spammers who says 'your IP address has been compromised' of asking him which of my ipv6 addresses that was...

So if you run IPv6 on all you home devices how do you make contact with devices that keep changing their addresses?

I ask, although it does appear that most network devices I have at home can't run IPv6!

Because they have a fixed one as well, that is not broadcast. Plus an ipv6 LAN address on the equivalent to IPv4 192.168 ..... That starts with fe80:

Edit: Typo/brain-slip corrected.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 05-Dec-20 09:47:09)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plus an ipv6 LAN address on the equivalent to IPv4 192.168 ..... That starts with fe04:

IPv6 addresses beginning fe04: are not valid.

Every interface on a device has one link-local address, only valid and unique on that single link (comparable to the auto-configuration addresses 169.254.0.0/16 of IPv4), these have a fe80::/10 prefix.

It is possible to have unique local addresses (ULAs) which are intended for local communication only (comparable to IPv4 private addresses 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16, but not intended to be used for NAT), these have a fc00::/7 prefix.

Typically one or more global unicast addresses (GUAs) which are intended for general communication (comparable to IPv4 public addresses), these have a 2000::/3 prefix.

In reply to a post by tdw42:

IPv6 addresses beginning fe04: are not valid.

The BQM checker agrees with you.

I have the address beginning with fe80::
and it is throwing up stating it's not a valid IP address so will not let me create a BQM over IPv6

In reply to a post by busterboy:

In reply to a post by tdw42:

IPv6 addresses beginning fe04: are not valid.

The BQM checker agrees with you.

I have the address beginning with fe80::
and it is throwing up stating it's not a valid IP address so will not let me create a BQM over IPv6

Well it is actually a valid IP address but it's a link local one, so equivalent to 192.168.???.???(*). So for a utility like the BQM fe80 is rejected since there is no way devices outside your LAN can ping it.

IPv6 is a funny thing though. I just checked this laptop and it currently has six global IP addresses, one is preferred, the other five are temporary and deprecated. It also has a link-local address.

(*)Or that portion of that range which is private anyway.

Edited by Andrue (Sat 05-Dec-20 09:03:59)

Oops! Corrected, thanks.

Brain was tired, and it's nearly two years since I ditched my landline and AAISP.

Typo apart, the whole point of the fe80 is that it is private on your LAN. That's what I thought I was saying.

Furthermore, even setting up a BQM to the non-temporary IPv6 address of your device is useless if the device is off. You need to find the WAN address of your router. Or if it's your phone running on mobile data rather than wifi from your router it'll be a completely different address.

IPv6 addresses are not behind NAT. They are assigned to individual devices, like ones in blocks of IPv4 can be but with without the hassle.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Well it is actually a valid IP address but it's a link local one, so equivalent to 192.168.???.???(*).

Almost. fe80:... is indeed link local, which means it's only valid on a single link, but the IPv4 equivalent is 169.254.x.x. You'll see that if you bring up a network interface on a link where the DHCP server is missing, so the devices are forced to pick their own addresses.

The equivalent to 192.168.x.x in IPv6 is Unique Local Addresses (ULA), which start fcXX: or fdXX:. You're unlikely to come across them, but if you wanted to build an entirely private IPv6 network without connecting to the Internet, that's what you'd use.

End of public service announcement

Edited by candlerb (Sat 05-Dec-20 10:27:51)

This post in your BQM topic gives one way to get at the full IPv6 address you need to run the BQM.

[IMG]http://img2.ipv6-test.com/speedtest/result/2020/12/0...[/IMG]

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

So if you run IPv6 on all you home devices how do you make contact with devices that keep changing their addresses?

DNS. If you host any services (whether over IPv4 or IPv6) you might have come across DDNS. Nobody is manually typing out IPv6 addresses because this very quickly becomes unmanageable.

If you are manually typing out addresses though it should still work as long as you pick a "stable" address instead of a "temporary" address. A stable address is guaranteed to stay the same (at least until your ISP decides it's time to rotate the IPv6 prefix assigned to you).

Yes, I realised that when it was pointed out, but it is also part of geek-land.

The normal user such as myself and I think the OP rarely sees a 169 or 127 address, and similarly a 10 one, unless something has gone badly wrong, usually in a third-party server.

On domestic networks the IPv4 address is the single WAN one, be that static or dynamic, given to their router by their ISP, and their "private" as opposed to public LAN addresses are 192.168.nnn.mmm

That WAN address being what BQM needs to know.

I was simply trying to explain at that level why he should not, could not, set up a BQM to an fe80 address! And furthermore should not set one up to a device IPv6 address. Neither a temporary one or the "permanent" one visible from ipconfig.

Furthermore, in non-geek, I disagree fundamentally.

On IPv4 a user sees their (router) WAN address when using a "What is my IP address" service. Everything on their LAN is 192.168.nnn.mmm

On IPv6 when using such a service they see a short-term WAN /128 from their assigned /56 (from most ISPs I have seen), and their LAN is entirely fe80s showing in ipconfig /all.

192.168 and fe80 are therefore equivalent to non-techies, and that's all they need to know.

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

This post in your BQM topic gives one way to get at the full IPv6 address you need to run the BQM.

Yes I read it thanks.

Edited by busterboy (Mon 07-Dec-20 23:32:23)

I have BT FTTP & AX88U This is my set up

Connection type: Native
Interface: PPP
DHCP-PD Yes
Accept Default Route: Enable
Release prefix on exit: Disabled
Auto Configuration Setting: Stateless
Connect to DNS Server automatically
Enable Router Advertisement: Enable

In reply to a post by MartinDee23:

I have BT FTTP & AX88U This is my set up

Connection type: Native
Interface: PPP
DHCP-PD Yes
Accept Default Route: Enable
Release prefix on exit: Disabled
Auto Configuration Setting: Stateless
Connect to DNS Server automatically
Enable Router Advertisement: Enable

Hi Martin, unless I am mistaken those are the default settings when applying "NATIVE" at least that's what I am seeing.

You on the latest firmware, I presume so.

If it works, it is better not to touch it , you will be better off!

Edited by DanswordMaia (Wed 16-Dec-20 15:56:12)