IPv6 home netwoek

Hi folks,

I hope you are all safe and well in these difficult times?

I currently have FTTC 80/20 with Zen. As they offer IPv6 I thought I’d investigate a bit more.

Is it worth it?

If I ask Zen to switch me to IPv6, will I need to change anything?

Will all my devices (Tablets, phones, laptops etc) just automatically start using the new protocols? I also have a desktop Mac and a Hp Deskjet printer/scanner directly connected to the Fritzbox router with Ethernet, will they still work ok?

Many thanks

Most of your devices would probably start using it automatically assuming the Zen auto configures the router. But, you won't really see much difference to be honest. There are very few sites only available on IPv6 and chances are you don't visit them - IPv6 becomes useful to the world when most companies/providers start using it by default - but that just hasn't happened yet and there is no concerted effort to make it happen that I can see.

Around a third of total traffic goes over IPv6 - Twitter, Office 365, Facebook, YouTube, Google Workspace, Zoom is all offered on IPv6, and your device will prefer to use IPv6 where it exists.

But it all works perfectly well with IPv4.

For now. The longer term choice won't be between IPv4 and IPv6, it will be between IPv4 CGNAT and IPv6, at which point I would expect to see things start to break.

As I said, at the moment people wouldn't even know which is being used. I don't ever check to see whether I am going to a site with ipv4 or ipv6 because I just don't care. One day it will make a difference but it isn't today or likely not in the next 5 years given how many business have done little or nothing to enable ipv6.

Most people shouldn't have to care which is being used. It should be possible to completely turn off ipv4 and for nobody to notice.

One problem with IPv6 is that it is quite complicated.

IPv6 is of benefit to IISPs and the like who want to connect large numbers of customers preferably without resorting to CGNAT. It is of little interest to sites such as the BBC who have enough IP sddresses for their own needs and just need others to be able to access them which they can do with IPv4.

At the moment you can just turn off ipv6 and be unlikely to notice. It will be a while before you can turn off ipv4 without having issues - all of the noise about running out of ip address space and much of the industry still finds it easier to muddle through than to switch to ipv6.

A lot of business/government etc would look to spend their money on other things as ipv4 just isn't a big enough issue to force a change and until it gets really painful or hits profits or someone forces it then it just won't happen.

This is why I said should. You shouldn't have to care whether or not you're using ipv4 or ipv6 but you do have to care because of the amount of broken applications, websites and old hardware that will never be updated. At least on smartphones things should work sanely because the stores mandate that applications have to work in an ipv6 only network with NAT64 enabled to access ipv4-only services. On the PC applications like Steam to this day still don't work with NAT64 because they hardcode ipv4 addresses.