How to resolve IPv6 connection issues

How to debug IPv6 connection issues from rescue mode

In case you experience IPv6 connection issues, you can test the network connectivity from rescue mode.

To test IPv6 connectivity on your server in rescue mode, reboot the server into a “Ubuntu rescue” mode. The dhclient is preinstalled in these images.

1. Get the name of your Internet interface using the following command:

   ip address showCopy

2. Create a file which will contain your DUID. The DUID is a unique “key” allowing access to your IPv6 prefix. You can find your DUID in your console.

   sudo nano /etc/dhcp/dhclient6.confCopy

3. Paste the following code into the file and edit the interface name (here eno1) and the DUID (here DUID) before saving the file and exiting the editor:

   interface "eno1" {
   send dhcp6.client-id DUID;
   }Copy

4. Start the DHCPv6 client using the previously created configuration file. Remember to replace eno1 with the name of your Internet interface:

   dhclient -cf /etc/dhcp/dhclient6.conf -6 -P -v eno1 Copy

5. Add an IPv6 address to your network interface. Remember to replace eno1 with the name of your Internet interface and IPV6ADDRESS/PREFIXLENGTH with an IPv6 address from your prefix and the length of your prefix:

   /sbin/ifconfig eno1 inet6 add IPV6ADDRESS/PREFIXLENGTHCopy

6. Use ping6 to validate the IPv6 connectivity of your server:

   ping6 ipv6.google.comCopy

How to debug IPv6 connection issues in normal mode

In case you experience IPv6 connection issues, start by verifying the Internet interface name in your configuration. You can check the names of your interfaces using the following command:

ip address showCopy

In addition, your server needs to be configured to accept RA (Router Advertisement). By default, your server will not accept to forward packets from an interface to another if it is automatically configured (through DHCPv6).

If you need to forward IPv6 packets and use an automated configuration, you will need to set your net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_ra to 2 in /etc/sysctl.conf. This is useful for hypervisor hosts such as Proxmox.

This is useful for hypervisor hosts such as Proxmox.

How to avoid DHCPv6 floods

In certain cases, some DHCPv6 clients may unfortunately sends several requests per second (especially dchp6c).

This triggers blocking of your server’s network port by our automatic protection, as it will be seen as a source of an UDP flood.

To avoid this problem, we invite you to limit the traffic sent from your dhclient6 directly in your firewall configuration.

Following an example for IPTABLES:

ip6tables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 547 -m limit --limit 10/min --limit-burst 5 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 547 -j DROPCopy