(((spends weeks trying to find a router that supports it. Spends longer finding an ISP that supports it. Finds an ISP, multiple stacks poorly support it. Web browsers barely support it. major large websites still aren't running it. tools break with it enabled. Any ipv6 code needs a cluster-fuck of bind hacks to work cross-platform)))
Are you ready for the future, lads! Get ready! its coming!
Yes, and there are different definitions of 'support.' Since IPv6 has many deployment options 'support' might be the most basic, regular definition where the router tries to manage everything and won't work with the network your ISP uses.
Normally IPv6 is added as an afterthought. So it won't support many of the advanced features that the V4 interface does. E.g. its very basic to want to set static IPs -> MAC entries when running DHCP. Of the many routers I've tried that 'support' IPv6 they don't offer these features. V4 will also have features for UPnP and even though most routers are probably using miniupnpd (which has support for IPv6) the chances of it having been setup for the router are slim.
It's quite useful because UPnP can dynamically let traffic reach IPv6 global scope addresses in your network (with pin holing.) So without this feature networked software can't run services easily (arguably what was meant to be a key benefit for v6.) You know -- the funny thing is -- V6 was meant to give everyone 'public', 'routable' addresses. But the reality is because its firewalled (both at the router and the OS) coupled with the availability of services to automatically let traffic through -- I'd say its less reachable than IPv4. Those who hope that V6 is going to be the future of P2P are in for a bad surprise.
I ran pfSense at home, and while I'm sure their IPv6 support was fine enough in a business setting, it was useless in a residential setting. Seems they made some progress[1] in 2021, but that doesn't cover aliases so one could say it's still not fully supporting residential IPv6.
I switched to OpenWRT which has worked well enough.
The older Ubiquiti Edge Routers by default don't support IPv6 very well unless you go in by the CLI; you have to set everything up from scratch.
Trying to get it to run from scratch on an OpenWRT x86 image is also a royal PITA, but that might be just a quirk of how the x86 image is configured by default; I haven't had a chance to try it on hardware they support properly.
Related, I just recently got IPv6 in my home connection and tried to set it up with my EdgeRouter X. It was impossible even though I followed all the online instructions to the letter. I then installed OpenWrt on it and it worked like a charm, with IPv6 out of the box (I did customise my configuration later). I wrote a post about the process for anyone interested [0].
Yeah trying to get it to work via config tree is basically begging for pain and suffering. You need to create all the configurations from scratch via the CLI to have a chance for it to work in a semi sane way.
I was able to finally get it work on one of my subnets, but then everything sort of just fell apart because I have a segregated network aside from my main home network and for the life of me I couldn't get it to work on two different subnets. Then throw in the whole issue of firewall rules, since since the prefix my ISP assigns is dynamic; it changes every time the router reboots. I figured I'd have to write a little service to watch the prefixes and adjust the rules as needed but just seems too like too much grief to deal with.
Left it until now when I found that android does some weird shenanigans with DNS so it's back on my radar but it's not something I'm particularly looking forward to struggling with again.
I actually had the same deal with firewalls and prefixes, since I want to direct traffic to my server and its address obviously depends on the prefix. Turns out OpenWrt has a feature for this too [0], meaning you can use a destination address like "::1234/-56" in your firewall rules.
You'd be surprised how many cheap tenda wifi "access points" sold right now for 15€ still don't support v6, even though access points shouldn't mess with anything above L2.
Well, you still need a way to manage them. Having an administrative web interface accessible over IPv4 but not IPv6 was probably considered Good Enough by whoever wrote the firmware.
Same reason cable modems don't mess with anything above L2 but are still reachable at http://192.168.100.1/ (no IPv6 equivalent).
That's a link-local address range (like 169.254/16 in IPv4). You'd need to specify which local link to use in order to connect to it (e.g. http://[fe80::aa:bb:cc:dd%eth0]/) and it wouldn't traverse past a router so wouldn't work if you have your own router between you and your modem.
The closest analog would be something in fc00::/8 (which belongs to fc00::/7 which is the IPv6 analog to 10/8, 172.16/12, 192.168/16), but good luck getting cable modem firmware vendors to all agree on which random address to use within that and then actually implement web administration and diagnostics on it. That's what I was getting at by saying there's no IPv6 equivalent; they haven't done that.
> ? You managed to buy a router in 2024 that doesn't support IPv6?
I have a netgear Orbi at home that works just fine, but when I turn on IPv6 it loses internet connectivity after a few hours and takes minutes to reset. Not wanting to be bothered with it, and not having a need for IPv6 I just turned it off. That setup is about a year old.
What web browser would "barely" support it? I use Firefox on Linux and have not noted any problems. Well, I don't check every connection and whether the server would have supported it. But whenever I checked for curiosity IPv6 was used when supported.
I used that when IPv6 was new for me. It looks nice. Many Web pages contact several servers (even with ad blocking) So not sure a single icon can be more than entertaining.
It can be simple. I use an ISP that's been providing IPv6 for years, and they were kind enough to document what users need to do to get it working (https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?topicid=240157). However, if you use their routers (Fritz!Box), it works out of the box.
I use a third-party router (Synology) and only had to check the IPv6 box to get it running—even with multiple VLANs in my network.
There are plenty of IPv6 services around. If a service is behind Cloudflare, it's likely IPv6 will be enabled by default. It is the same with other services, including some cloud providers now giving IPv6 addresses but charging for IPv4.
My iinet connection doesn't support it; My aussie broadband one did; My starlink connection didn't; My telstra one didnt (the routers they provided didnt even support v6); Maybe starlink supports v6 now but I know people were complaining about this early on (router UI had no mention of v6 but maybe possible?)
It seems to be that you have to choose the ISPs that support it if you want it here (im based in Australia.)
Got to say, Fritz!Box really makes the setup and maintenance easy.
You will hit a wall if you want subnets and stuff but before that everything really works and they support their boxes for 6 to 10 years with updates.
Not cheap thought.
Also, router supporting IPv6 technically doesn't mean it supports all features you'd need for home network. Most routers support RA and that's it... it's very common to find ones that don't even support firewall rules for v6.
(((spends weeks trying to find a router that supports it. Spends longer finding an ISP that supports it. Finds an ISP, multiple stacks poorly support it. Web browsers barely support it. major large websites still aren't running it. tools break with it enabled. Any ipv6 code needs a cluster-fuck of bind hacks to work cross-platform)))
Are you ready for the future, lads! Get ready! its coming!