IPv6 discussions

[xiaofan]

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure​

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/31/ipv6_at_30/

...

While IPv6 didn't take off as expected, it's not fair to say it failed.

"IPv6 wasn't about turning IPv4 off, but about ensuring the internet could continue to grow without breaking," said John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

"In fact, IPv4's continued viability is largely because IPv6 absorbed that growth pressure elsewhere – particularly in mobile, broadband, and cloud environments," he added. "In that sense, IPv6 succeeded where it was needed most, and must be regarded as a success."

RIPE NCC's Alvaro Vives agrees. "What IPv6 got right was its long-term design," he told The Register. "It provides a vast address space that allows networks to be planned more simply and consistently. This has enabled innovation, from large mobile networks to the Internet of Things and advanced routing techniques such as Segment Routing over IPv6."

..

 

[xiaofan]

From the above article.
******
APNIC's Huston, however, thinks that IPv6 has become less relevant to the wider internet.

"I would argue that we actually found a far better outcome along the way," he told The Register. "NATS forced us to think about network architectures in an entirely different way."

That new way is encapsulated in a new technology called Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), that doesn't require client devices to always have access to a public IP address.

"We are proving to ourselves that clients don't need permanent assignment of IP address, which makes the client side of network far cheaper, more flexible, and scalable," he said.

Huston thinks IPv6 has also become less relevant to servers.

"These days the Domain Name Service (DNS) is the service selector, not the IP address," Huston told The Register. "The entire security framework of today's Internet is name based and the world of authentication and channel encryption is based on service names, not IP addresses."

"So folk use IPv6 these days based on cost: If the cost of obtaining more IPv4 addresses to fuel bigger NATs is too high, then they deploy IPv6. Not because it's better, but if they are confident that they can work around IPv6's weaknesses then in a largely name based world there is no real issue in using one addressing protocol or another as the transport underlay."

...

 

[xiaofan]

It is now 2026. IPv6 connection issues between Singtel and M1 still exist.

IPv4 connection has no issues.

root@openwrt18:~/ookla# ./speedtest -s 7311

   Speedtest by Ookla

      Server: M1 Limited - Singapore (id: 7311)
         ISP: Singtel Fibre
Idle Latency:    95.20 ms   (jitter: 75.22ms, low: 92.25ms, high: 388.46ms)
    Download:     3.31 Mbps (data used: 6.2 MB)
                142.42 ms   (jitter: 49.70ms, low: 64.07ms, high: 616.58ms)
      Upload:  1085.11 Mbps (data used: 1.2 GB)
                138.33 ms   (jitter: 46.93ms, low: 61.22ms, high: 563.98ms)
 Packet Loss: Not available.
  Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d3b31c05-d5cc-4169-b7b9-fca68cebd6d9

root@openwrt18:~/ookla# ping -6 -c 4 m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg
PING m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg (2401:7400:8888:13::2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2401:7400:8888:13::2: seq=0 ttl=51 time=109.924 ms
64 bytes from 2401:7400:8888:13::2: seq=1 ttl=51 time=119.155 ms
64 bytes from 2401:7400:8888:13::2: seq=2 ttl=51 time=110.157 ms
64 bytes from 2401:7400:8888:13::2: seq=3 ttl=51 time=103.515 ms

--- m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 103.515/110.687/119.155 ms
root@openwrt18:~/ookla# ping -4 -c 4 m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg
PING m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg (103.1.138.214): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 103.1.138.214: seq=0 ttl=53 time=3.572 ms
64 bytes from 103.1.138.214: seq=1 ttl=53 time=3.853 ms
64 bytes from 103.1.138.214: seq=2 ttl=53 time=3.607 ms
64 bytes from 103.1.138.214: seq=3 ttl=53 time=3.887 ms

--- m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3.572/3.729/3.887 ms

mtr seems to say the IPv6 connection goes through Starhub and Arelion (formerly Telia Carrier).

                                                 My traceroute  [v0.95]
openwrt18 (2400:d802:d18:xxxx::xx) -> m1speedtest1.m1net.com.sg (2401:7400:8888:13::2)         2026-01-01T17:36:31+0800
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                                                               Packets               Pings
 Host                                                                        Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. 2400:d801:4001:611::                                                      0.0%    37    1.2   1.6   1.1   4.1   0.5
 2. 2001:c20:3c00::6                                                          0.0%    37    2.7   3.9   2.3  17.9   3.1
 3. 2001:c20:3c00::7                                                          0.0%    37    2.0   2.5   1.7  13.0   1.9
 4. 2001:c20:0:3::37                                                          0.0%    37    2.2   4.5   1.4  34.1   7.9
 5. 2001:c20:0:3::8                                                           0.0%    37    1.6   1.7   1.4   2.0   0.1
 6. 2001:c10:80:2::a21                                                        0.0%    36    2.0   5.7   1.6 117.8  19.4
 7. 2001:c10:80:2::915                                                        0.0%    36    2.2   5.2   1.9  46.2   9.7
 8. 2001:c10:80:1::a75                                                        0.0%    36    2.0   3.5   2.0  28.8   4.7
 9. sng-b7-link.ip.twelve99.net                                               8.3%    36  198.6 187.2 174.9 208.2   5.9
10. sng-b5-v6.ip.twelve99.net                                                68.6%    36  192.1 189.9 177.3 192.2   4.9
11. starhub-ic-359575.ip.twelve99-cust.net                                    2.8%    36   67.8  68.5  57.5 102.2   7.7
12. 2406:3000::203:118:5:42                                                  13.9%    36   51.6  51.9  51.6  52.5   0.2
13. 2406:3000:2:50::2                                                        13.9%    36   90.9  86.1  74.3  97.9   4.6
14. 2401:7400:0:2::                                                           2.9%    36   72.2  70.7  59.9 130.5  11.5
15. 0.0.4.7.1.0.4.2.ip6.arpa                                                  8.3%    36   89.5  99.8  77.1 110.3   6.8

 

[xiaofan]

Singtel hi! 4G PostPaid plans (along with Singtel heya it replaces) will obviously not have native IPv6 support, as SingTel does not support IPv6 for its 4G network.

Test your IPv6 connectivity.
For the Help Desk
Summary
Tests Run

test-ipv6.com will stay online! see status.test-ipv6.com

Your IPv4 address on the public Internet appears to be 119.234.67.135

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) appears to be SINGTELMOBILE-AS-AP SINGTEL MOBILE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER Singapore

No IPv6 address detected [more info]

You appear to be able to browse the IPv4 Internet only. You will not be able to reach IPv6-only sites.

To ensure the best Internet performance and connectivity, ask your ISP about native IPv6. [more info]

Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have IPv6 Internet access.
Your readiness score
0/10 for your IPv6 stability and readiness, when publishers are forced to go IPv6 only
Click to see Test Data

(Updated server side IPv6 readiness stats)

This instance (singapore.test-ipv6.com) is hosted at Linode.

 

[ryanisnothuman]

Singtel hi! 4G PostPaid plans (along with Singtel heya it replaces) will obviously not have native IPv6 support, as SingTel does not support IPv6 for its 4G network.

Test your IPv6 connectivity.
For the Help Desk
Summary
Tests Run

test-ipv6.com will stay online! see status.test-ipv6.com

Your IPv4 address on the public Internet appears to be 119.234.67.135

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) appears to be SINGTELMOBILE-AS-AP SINGTEL MOBILE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER Singapore

No IPv6 address detected [more info]

You appear to be able to browse the IPv4 Internet only. You will not be able to reach IPv6-only sites.

To ensure the best Internet performance and connectivity, ask your ISP about native IPv6. [more info]

Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have IPv6 Internet access.
Your readiness score
0/10 for your IPv6 stability and readiness, when publishers are forced to go IPv6 only
Click to see Test Data

(Updated server side IPv6 readiness stats)

This instance (singapore.test-ipv6.com) is hosted at Linode.

Based on my recent mobile IPv6 tests:

Eight 5G ($18 plan): No IPv6 (seems StarHub didn’t treat it equally?)
StarHub 5G ($5 data-only plan): Yes, /64 prefix, inbound blocked
Simba: Yes, /64 prefix, inbound blocked
M1 5G: Yes, /64 prefix, inbound blocked (except ICMP)
M1 4G: Yes, /64 prefix, inbound allowed

It looked a bit weird that M1 imposed different firewall policies on 5G and 4G. So if you’d like to use a mobile network for remote access (e.g. Remote Desktop, SSH, NAS server), IPv6 on M1 4G seemed to be the only viable choice at this moment (not sure about Singtel, as I didn't have one to test)

You may also forcibly set your phone/router to operate on 4G mode to get a publicly accessible IPv6, even with an M1 5G plan. The same situation applied to Circles.Life plans and MyRepublic 4G plans

 

[xiaofan]

pfSense CE 2.8.0 Singtel Native IPv6 settings for reference -- I am not 100% sure if this is totally correct or not.

1. WAN

2. LAN

3. DHCPv6 server for LAN

4. Router Advertisement service for LAN (not so sure if this is correct).

Some updates after testing with pfSense CE 2.8.1.

1. To use DUID Type of DUID-LL and not the default DUID Type of DUID-LLT.

Reference:
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/threads/ipv6-on-pfsense-wan-interface-starhub.6975288/

Try changing your DUID type under advanced/networking.
The default is DUID-LLT, it was necessary to change it to DUID-LL for M1 so starhub may be similar.

Also seems you are getting router advertisements from 4 different upstream devices, would be interesting to see the contents of those packets (run tcpdump with -A -vvv -s 0"

2. Changing the Router Advertisement setting from "Managed" to "Assisted" to have both DHCPv6 and SLAAC working on the LAN side.

The above settings will probably also work for Starhub/M1 (change to /64 on the WAN side) and SIMBA (change to /60 on the WAN side).