IPv6 Trial Update

[#1]

When you’re ready to take more on the trial, I’d love to take part please! I work in IT, came from an ISP running a dual stack. I have a static IPv4 with you now and have a Unifi gateway.

[#2]

I have mostly got this working on my Windows 11 PC, but only get 9/10 on the test-ipv6.com site.

"Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have no access to the IPv6 Internet, or is not configured to use it. This may in the future restrict your ability to reach IPv6-only sites."

My TP-Link Archer VR400 router reports the DNS as "2001:470:20::2 ::" - is this correct?

The other IPv6 sites test come back with one failure, the rest are OK.

When I first enabled IPv6 on my router it appeared that everything was working properly, but I've had a few different settings over the last couple of days, as initially my speed dropped to only around 7Mb/sec, where I normally get around 45Mb/sec downstream, also graphics were slow to load on many web sites, with some not loading at all, hence playing around with the settings.

Here are screenshots of the settings in my router - I'd be grateful if anyone else with the same or similar router could cast an eye over these and compare, please.

I'm particularly unsure about the IPv6 Tunnel settings showing "No available interface" on the WAN side.

This was a fairly cheap router, and I'm quite happy to try another. I bought it when my Hub 2 got fried in a lightning storm last year.

Any suggestions for a replacement device that's easy to set up for IPv6, say around £100-£150? I don't want another Hub 2 as I prefer to have the two wireless channels available separately.

[#3]

Hi Jaggies,

I don't see anything in the VR400 manual about prefix delegation support.

https://www.manuals.co.uk/tp-link/archer-vr400/manual?p=18

You definitely don't need the IP6 tunnel option enabled.  The plusnet trial is providing native IP6 via prefix delegation.

Not directly helpful but here's a TP Link page for some of their routers that do support prefix delegation - https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/852/

I'll leave specific hardware recommendations to others though - it is a great trade off of speed vs cost vs capability vs support.  I rolled my own with a small form factor x86 PC, but I had been eyeing up pfSense or Unifi before that.

Cheers,

Mark

[#4]

Thanks for the pointer to the fine manual...

[#5]

You are probably only getting 9/10 if using Plusnet DNS, as I don't believe they have IPv6 DNS setup fully yet. You would need to use different DNS, i.e. Cloudflare to get 10/10.

I would recommend looking at Unifi kit, lots of options and you can configure everything you should need to. You could look at a UDR7 or UX7, just avoid the 1st gen UX as it is a bit under specced. You can also look at a non-WiFi cloud gateway and use separate APs. I have the Plusnet in bridge mode and Unfi doing a PPPoE connection. Then I use a Cloudflare Zero trust instance and use encrypted DNS on Unifi to point to Cloudflare Zero trust.

[#6]

A fews days on and all is running nice and stable dual-stacked.

@dave A follow up question - reverse DNS support.

Way back a helpful member of the team setup an IP4 cname for me on my static IP.

Is there a plan to offer something similar in the IP6 space?

Allowing the customer's PD blocks to be delegated to a 3rd party DNS host so that reverse DNS entries could be self-configured, or offering an ad-hoc request service would be great.  I'd worry about the possible volume if it was adhoc requests though.

( I have personal mail, web and VPN up at home, and just having forward DNS records is mostly fine, but reverse, particularly for the mail service is very helpful for reputation metrics )

Cheers,

Mark

[#7]

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@Jaggies wrote:

"Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have no access to the IPv6 Internet, or is not configured to use it. This may in the future restrict your ability to reach IPv6-only sites."

My TP-Link Archer VR400 router reports the DNS as "2001:470:20::2 ::" - is this correct?

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It may be worth visiting a site like this one that can detect what DNS server you are using. It may well be that your client is locally configured and hence ignoring the DNS server being offered up by the router.

[#8]

Your link returns the following:

Country	ISP	DNS Server
GB	BT-UK-AS BTnet UK Regional network	81.134.101.162
GB	BT-UK-AS BTnet UK Regional network	81.134.101.161
US	HURRICANE - Hurricane Electric LLC	2001:470:0:320::2

I'm guessing that the IPv6 one matches the one I see in the router interface.

I can access IPv6 only sites, like https://ipv6.google.com/ so looks to be working OK.