Is anybody using only IPv6 in their home lab? I keep running into weird problems where some services use only IPv6 and are “invisible” to everyone (I’m looking at you, Java!) I end up disabling IPv6 to force everything to the same protocol, but I started wondering, “why not disable IPv4 instead?” I’d have half as many firewall rules, routes and configurations. What are the risks?
I avoid ipv6 as much as possible.
Why?
It fucking sucks. I’ve been hearing about it for twenty plus years and it’s caused me more problems than it’s solved. Comcast DNS routinely breaks connecting to niche sites like Microsoft 365 😑. Its overly complicated and easier to screw up. If turning off IPv6 would stop solving more problems maybe I’d give it a better go, but as it stands it’s like the USB-c standard of a clusterfuck of poor design and implementation in practice.
I’m sorry you’ve had a poor experience, but I’ve had nothing but smooth sailing since my ISP gave me a /64. I had to re-learn most of what I knew and unlearn a few bad v4 habits, but v6 has solved issues that I was tired of dealing with. I can’t imagine what you’re doing to think it’s more complicated and easier to screw up than v4.
And that is the biggest problem it is different then ipv4 and you have to learn new stuff. My worst was up keeps changing the prefix so I had to find out how to write an allow rule that ignored the prefix and only allowed the end but since they always stayed the same.
What do you mean up keeps changing the prefix?
If DNS wouldn’t constantly break I’d be more open to learning. Right now what’s the point?
Lets say you have a bunch of self hosted servers. How are you tracking their ips on ipv6? Are you able to type the ip off the top of your head? I feel like its very simple with ipv4.
Use the names. I connect to my self hosted services all the time over ipv6 using DNS. Still use ipv4 to ssh though as my prefix changes alot,sometimes multiple times a day.
I write them down, just as I do v4. I don’t type v4 off the top of my head any more than I do v6- but even if I did, I’d only have to really memorize the prefix because that’s all universal across my whole network. For example, look at this that I ripped from my documentation:
== PROXMOX CONTAINERS & VIRTUAL MACHINES ====================== C:TorRelay - 192.168.78.160 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::12ad C:Gonic - 192.168.78.161 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1255 C:Wireguard - 192.168.78.162 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1666 V:ADS-B - 192.168.78.163 / NA C:Apache - 192.168.78.164 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1337 C:Backups - 192.168.78.165 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::0107 C:PiHole - 192.168.78.166 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1811 C:NetworkFun - 192.168.78.167 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1192 C:MovieSync - 192.168.78.168 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::2356 C:Owncast - 192.168.78.170 / 2a05:f6c7:8039::1368Do you see the pattern? I could have made it even simpler. I could’ve made the last quartet of the v6 address the same as the last octet of the v4 address, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I’ve memorized more credit cards than I have IP addresses in total, which you will surely agree are more complex, so I’m not worried about when the time comes to drop v4 and its time to memorize v6. It will come naturally with use, as the credit cards have
In practice, I’ve found, that it is simply not a problem. If I don’t know the last quartet off the top of my head, I won’t know the last octet either so I have to look it up anyway. All my network documentation is available with a simple curl command. If I do know the last quartet but not the prefix, I could type ‘ip a’ and find the prefix right there.
Having used Azure for a few years now I feel like that might not be entirely on Comcast.
Maybe, but I have yet to see another home ISP with the same problem.