So if you didn’t know already IPv6 is - it’s the new old standard to replace IPv4.

My ISP doesn’t yet provide me with IPv6 in the UK, but a bunch are slowly rolling it out, especially with mobile carriers. So it is a nice thing to understand now - before it is required.

Before being able to work with IPv6 I need to ensure I can connect with it.

Mobile Data

Hey! This is easy - my phone plan gives me IPv6 access - this one has been done for me.

And, it works invisibly - perfect!

VPS

I have a VPS that runs some services for me in the cloud - it would be nice to have access for

Ok, just had to configure my DNS to include an AAAA record for the severs IP and not just an A record. And now it works! 🎉

Home

Ah - there’s no support. So what I did to get around this was go to Hurricane Electric’s Tunnel Broker Service, and sign up for an account. I then configured this on my home’s pfSense router.

And then to test it was working fully working before transitioning the whole network - and mainly to avoid my house mates getting annoyed - I limited the connectivity down to its own VLAN so I could test it safely.

So what I did was create the network without any IPv4 to test it on a per-device basis… The first device I tested was my Nintendo Switch. It didn’t support IPv6.

This is not surprising, but is still upsetting; and a comment posted to Reddit 6 years ago said something on the lines of “I’d be surprised if they know how to traverse a firewall”… oh, we know now.

They actually ask in their documentation to open all the ports from 1024 to 65535 😳

So after doing this, only half of the internet works… Mastodon, Google and this site and my connection to my VPS work, so it’s perfect and it is everyone else’s fault. 😅

I asked this on Twitter (and Mastodon) and was replied to by David, and they suggested that I should configure NAT64.

And also, when I’m going via HE.net’s Tunnel Broker, there are a few problems; but it’s IPv6!

The two biggest ones are the connection speed is slow, and my IP location is in the States (even though I’m popping out in London?)

I was suggested to try Route48 - that will be a next step.

But for now, I have a /48 which is broken up for all my smaller networks, and I can just turn the v6 WAN interface on and off depending on if I/we want to use dual stack (v6 and v4).

Sadly, it is unlikely that my home’s internet will get IPv6 for a while, and it may never get it.

This is because it requires extra thought to provide v6 service, compared to v4 - which has been standard and expected for too long but still works, and there’s been enough bodges over the years with things such as CGNAT that for most people - there’s no difference.

Certification

Another service that Hurricane Electric do is provide IPv6 Certification - it’s probably nothing super special, but I managed to complete the way up to Explorer without spinning up a temporary server, so that will be the next step!

Next Steps

So, my next steps are:

• To, complete my HE IPv6 Certification
• configure NAT64 routing for my v6 only network.
• Migrate to Route48 ?