IPv6. The automatic, just works, system is not automatic and does not work

[Rachel]

Thing is, I doubt it's idnet's fault. It's just that the whole IPv6 thing is clearly a long way from being ready.

So I became an idnet customer yesterday, and spent two very frustrating days trying to get the 'automatic' IPv6 working in any shape or form. I'd welcome any suggestions, but it's worth bearing in mind that anything suggested that isn't automatic or obvious, rather belies the 'automatic' claims for IPv6...

First thing to remember is that all the IPv4 stuff worked out of the box, on multiple configurations. No problem with anything IPv4.

Anyway, my first preference was to use my Airport Extreme Base Station as a router (via a Vigor 120 PPPoE->PPPoA bridge 'modem'). This is a 4th Generation AEBS running the latest firmware; 7.6.1. It shows the option to configure IPv6 as a router. However, when selected, nothing happens. It doesn't seem to get an IPv6 address and it doesn't seem to advertise any to clients either.

Googling around did produce results from people saying AEBS doesn't do IPv6 properly, but they were all older and I wasn't sure if they applied to the current firmware. It looks like maybe it doesn't support it when upstream is PPPoE.

Then I tried plugging the modem directly into a Mac (Mac Mini running OSX Lion Server 10.7.3 and created a PPPoE service for it. It picked up an IPv6 address that looked correct for IDNet, but didn't set up any routing, and it wasn't at all obvious how that should be done (clearly not automatic). But I thought, this does at least confirm it's not prevented by the Vigor 120 bridge in some way. Didn't get as far as trying to make it work as an IPv6 router.

So then I tried an Ubuntu Precise (still in beta) desktop box I have. Network Manager there managed the IPv4 DSL connection just fine, but had no capabilities for IPv6 over DSL (confirmed; there's a feature request out for it which seems to be being ignored).

So I tried a more old-skool type network configuration; using pppoeconf to set up the connection, and following a debian howto, (which said all I had to do was add +ipv6 to /etc/ppp/options) it was soon not only picking up the IPv6 address/prefix etc., but routing worked too: ping6, and browsers, on that machine could reach ipv6 destinations. Best result yet. With one wrinkle: It showed two IDNet IPv6 addresses on the ppp0 interface *in addition to* the link-local one. I didn't understand why.

Also, the PPP connection kept being dropped at random, and I couldn't set up dnsmasq because NetworkManager's instance was in the way...

At that point I left that machine, but I came back to it later...

Then I tried my previous router box, an old PPC mac mini running Debian Squeeze. The same Debian notes that worked on Ubuntu, completely failed to work on Debian. Once again, IPv4 worked fine, but I couldn't get it to pick up any IPv6 stuff at all. I tried to apply the Gentoo-oriented instructions in a sticky in this forum to no effect, and a bunch of other stuff, most of which I suspect were obsolete options. In the end I upgraded the entire box to Wheezy (for a kernel with the expected support for ipv6 advertisements, as it turned out after several hours of googling that the kernel in Squeezy doesn't support that). No joy at all. Again, didn't get as far as trying to make it work as a router - given it wouldn't configure for IPv6 just as a host to begin with.

Came back to the ubuntu box, having researched how to safely destroy NetworkManager, and once again got it to work; but then after a reboot (to check it would all come up on boot) and no config changes it too stopped working and now behaves like the Debian box. Can't get IPv6 addresses for any love or money. Or installing dibbler-client and configuring it as per the gentoo instructions (which wasn't even necessary before - and doesn't work anyway).

At this point I'm about ready to give up on IPv6 for another year or so while firmwares and kernels maybe inch closer to having useful support that fulfils the whole "works-automatically" propaganda for IPv6. I may become inclined to reinstall the debian box with gentoo so I can follow the gentoo instructions here directly (though tbh they seemed incomplete; but hopefully in ways that can be overcome by my previous knowledge of Gentoo). But that's getting to be a big effort for a small reward. Maybe I'll also try the m0n0wall instructions, though I'll have to install that in a virtual machine on the mac mini server; and I'm sure that's going to be fun; a host waiting on its virtual guest for a dhcp service... I don't have a spare router-spec PC to run it on natively. I got rid of all those, thinking I'd never need them again...

So I think for the meantime I'll just leave it set up with the AEBS even though it's working for IPv4 only - that's no worse than anything else.

I suspect that in each case the real issue is that IPv6 is reported to work fine on all these platforms with an ethernet upstream provider, but possibly not when the upstream link is over PPP.

In particular the AEBS has reports of working well with a 6to4 tunnel eg: via Hurricane Electric. However, this does seem counterproductive having chosen an ISP with native IPv6 support... Also, I'm not too enthusiastic about, as I understand, all my IPv6 traffic having to go through HE's routers. That can't be optimal.

So maybe one workaround for this that IDnet could do is to set up their own IPv6 tunnel service for their own customers, for use as an alternative way to get their IPv6 subnet if it doesn't work natively over ppp; then at least the traffic isn't going off via some third party. I'm still obviously new to IPv6 (a condition I'm *trying* to remedy!); but is that a silly idea?

After posting this I'm switching the network back to the AEBS and am going to try setting up the Hurricane Electric tunnel with that to test feasibility.

[Rachel]

Selecting Tunnel mode in the AEBS and allowing it to configure it automatically works instantly. The clients all immediately got their own IPv6 addresses too. (Two of them for some reason; I don't understand that yet; I think the second one's "temporary" or something...) Obviously they're not my proper IDNet IPv6 addresses but never mind, eh? :-)

So AEBS tunnelling support works out of the box; but native IPv6 router doesn't. I also couldn't figure out the values to give it for a native router *manual* configuration.

[Steve]

Sorry I can't help you any further as I don't have the knowledge, I couldn't get the AEBS to work, nor the Draytek 120 for native IPv6. I can only confirm that the Billion 7800N does support native IPv6 via IDNet out of the box.

[Rachel]

I think the Draytek thing isn't the problem, given my partial success in getting native IPv6 working on OSX and Ubuntu.

In fact I even think I know why OSX routing didn't work (later discovered I still had internet sharing on when I was still using it to share my mifi connection, so routing was a mess). But as I didn't really want to run the mac as a router, I'm not greatly motivated to try it again. But it did pick up the IPv6 addresses from its PPPoE connection, and they were correct for IDnet. So I don't think Draytek's getting in the way.

I prefer to run my own router, and I already have a wifi base station. That's why I'm trying to resist spending another £120 on another adsl modem/router right now. :-)

Suggestion: I bought the draytek while I was waiting for my ADSL connection. The IDNet support pages only mention Netgear DG834 models. I know I don't like Netgears; I've had enough problems with them in the past. If Billion are so good, put those on that page; I might have looked at it in time then. :-) Because until I started pouring through this forum for a fix, I'd never even *heard* of them. :-)

[Steve]

This forum is run by volunteers who are IDNet customers,we've had little or no support from IDNet regarding IPv6. Bill started out with an AEBS and failed and then moved to a Billion 7800N with success. It was and still is a costly router and whilst I agree if IDNet should choose to use IPv6 as a major selling point than compatible router should be mentioned. Certainly 6-12 months ago IPv6 was of novelty value for the home user with little focus and subsequent support placed upon it.

I may be incorrect but I'm not aware of a Netgear firmware that's compatible. I think? the Fritz!box has been successful with native IPv6 perhaps someone will confirm.

[Simon]

I can't help either, sorry, but

[Ardua]

Native IPv6 works fine with my Fritz!Box: I had though to contact Support to get them to activate the /48 addresses. As I am sure you know, MacOSX devices do not default to IPv6. The OS selects the 'fastest' webpage on the basis 'why should the user care whether it is IPv4 or 6'? Clearly, if it is an IPv6 webpage (e.g.: Thinkbroadband has both) then IPv6 will be used. Welcome.

[Rachel]

Native IPv6 works fine with my Fritz!Box: I had though to contact Support to get them to activate the /48 addresses. As I am sure you know, MacOSX devices do not default to IPv6. The OS selects the 'fastest' webpage on the basis 'why should the user care whether it is IPv4 or 6'? Clearly, if it is an IPv6 webpage (e.g.: Thinkbroadband has both) then IPv6 will be used. Welcome.

Yes, I think I read that topic; IIRC later posts seemed to indicate that that was fixed and the IPv6 addresses should be enabled by default now, without poking support. Though it's possible I interpreted it wrong...

[Rachel]

Hmph. I see the Billion 7800N, for all its three antennas doesn't use the 5GHz range; so if I got that I couldn't even retire the AEBS... One of the attractions of that is to rise above, as it were, the rather crowded 2.4GHz range in this area.

[Steve]

You are absolutely correct, I still use my AEBS in bridge mode to provide a 5GHz network, does nothing for the electric bill, a vain hope perhaps that Apple will provide me with working firmware eventually. 

[Rachel]

You are absolutely correct, I still use my AEBS in bridge mode to provide a 5GHz network, does nothing for the electric bill, a vain hope perhaps that Apple will provide me with working firmware eventually. 

Well, put it this way, despite my last post, I'm still reading reviews about the Billion. :-) Also - occuring just as I hit reply to write this reply, my AEBS's 5GHz network just died on me, and won't reliably reconnect. Slightly, and paranoically, wondering if it's another obscure PPPoE-related bug.

It's always been pretty reliable for me, but like you, I've tended to only use it in bridge mode. Now I'm using it as a router; maybe I'm about to find it comes up short anyway...

[Rachel]

Got the Billion 7800N. Still not getting any IPv6 joy. Enabled IPv6, to obtain address automatically. No IPv6 beyond the link-local.

Code Select Expand

celestia:~ rachel$ ifconfig
...
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
options=2b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4>
ether 3c:07:54:52:4b:5a
inet6 fe80::3e07:54ff:fe52:4b5a%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x7
inet 192.168.1.101 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>)
status: active


Code Select Expand

rachel@twilight:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 48:5b:39:7e:00:7c 
          inet addr:192.168.1.102  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::4a5b:39ff:fe7e:7c/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:320597351 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:85045447 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:448678056681 (448.6 GB)  TX bytes:101186548671 (101.1 GB)
          Interrupt:18

...


[Simon]

Hi Rachel,

You might want to mask your IP address from those screenshots, given that this part of the forum is open to all.

[Rachel]

Do I need to pester IDNet to 'turn ipv6 on' for me? I'd got the impression from another thread that that wasn't actually required any more, and I believed it from the partial success I'd had obtaining the correct IPv6 addresses on linux and osx before.

But I'd also got the impression that just turning on IPv6 in the Billion router would - that phrase again - "just work"...

[Glenn]

On my FritzBox, it reports the following

Internet, IPv6
   
connected since 23.03.2012, 05:29 , IPv6 prefix: 2a02:xxx:xxxx::/48

Not sure about connected devices though.

[Ardua]

Do I need to pester IDNet to 'turn ipv6 on' for me? I'd got the impression from another thread that that wasn't actually required any more, and I believed it from the partial success I'd had obtaining the correct IPv6 addresses on linux and osx before.

But I'd also got the impression that just turning on IPv6 in the Billion router would - that phrase again - "just work"...

Rachel - my FB picked up the IPv6 connection OK;i.e., I got a ':11ef' connection but no matter what I did I couldn't get the Ipv6 prefix ':/48' until I e-mailed Support.

[Rachel]

Got it to work entering manual settings. Specifically, in Configuration->Lan->IPv6 Autoconfig, setting the interface address/prefix len to (identifying part obscured, obtained from support previously) 2a02:390:feed:XXXX::1/64

Left the DHCPv6 to stateless, so my machines get (as i now understand) both fixed and temporary IPs, and can resolve and reach IPv6 destinations properly. A firewall rule later and I can ssh into each of my machines from the outside - as long as the 'outside' is on ipv6 as well of course, but my hosted box at hetzner is, so as long as I can get into there I can get into my network, which currently can't be done with IPv4.

I'm sure I'm not supposed to have to put the address in there, but it only worked when I did. :-)

BTW, trying to set the WAN IPv6 address (Configuration->WAN->WAN Profile) seemed not so much ineffective as actually impossible. I couldn't figure out a way to make the web interface actually accept and store the setting.

Luckily that turned out not to be necessary anyway. The main status page does now show a WAN IPv6 address (I don't know whether temporary or permanent) for the router, but it seemed only to start doing that after I'd set the LAN address as above. Unless it was coincidental timing that picking up the dhcp/advertisements stuff from idnet started working at about the same time...

[stroke]

I'm sure I'm not supposed to have to put the address in there, but it only worked when I did. :-)

I've also been through the IPv6 setup on a Billion (7402 in my case), and got it working although I had a slightly different experience to you:

First off I requested my IPv6 allocation from IDNet.

Then, enabled IPv6 in the 'WAN profile' - my router automatically picked up an address out of the 2A02:390:FEED:ffff::/64 prefix.

Finally, enabled router advertisements on the 'LAN Profile' - this automagically started using addresses from the 2A02:390:ffff:0:/64 subnet (a subnet in my /48 delegation). My laptops then also picked up an IPv6 address from within this subnet.

It all went a bit strange when I tried configuring the 'LAN profile > interface address/prefix' address, using another subnet within my /48 delegation (i.e. 2A02:390:ffff:1:/64) - clients then got multiple IPv6 addresses from each subnet. So I left the address/prefix box blank in the end.

The configuration screenshots look a little different on your 7800, so maybe the differences are also down to firmware.