I did a Google search on this but getting a variety of ideas so reaching out to the trusted community here. Is there any real advantage of turning on IPv6 on my Orbi router?
The question is more, do you need to?
We have a lot of ISPs, here in Germany, that have run out of IPv4 addresses and having been putting out pure IPv6 connections for about half a decade now.
There are some IPv6 only servers out there, but most PCs support a mixed mode of IPv4 and IPv6 over IPv4. You only really need it for a home connection if many/most of the sites you visit no longer support IPv4, or you are hosting a lot of servers/devices that you need to be able to reach from outside your network.
IPv6 brings a lot of complexities, there is no NAT (Network Address Translation) between you and the outside world any more - this is how the traditional home firewall works, it has a single incoming IP address and everything behind it is on a different network and it lets only the traffic in and out that you want.
IPv6, on the other hand gives you externally reachable addresses for everything on your network, so you need to lock it down very differently, there is no “default” of the router capturing all traffic and only letting certain ports be accessed from outside, those being forwarded to certain devices or servers, you need to set up rules for each device on the router/firewall about what should get through and what shouldn’t. It is a lot more complex, so if you don’t really need it and don’t want to invest the time in learning and configuring IPv6 routing and firewalls, I’d leave it turned off.
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At this point in history, I doubt there are any or very many sites that are unreachable by IPv4 because they only support IPv6. Based on the idea that having unused abilities available means more attack surface, and based on the fact there is probably no site you are unable to reach, I suggest turning off IPv6 is not only a wise idea, it’s the concerned Internet Citizen’s moral responsibility.
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Just wondering…for a video server I’m using, in have to forward a port. With IPv6, does that mean port forwarding would no longer be necessary since your connecting directly?
In theory it would mean that for the select few visitors to your site that would be using IPv6. There are a few such devices, as a lot of mobile carriers, for example, use IPv6 because there just aren’t enough IPv4 addresses left. But, you’ve no doubt used a mobile device, and never found that you were unable to reach a site. The reason for this, is that all such carriers will also operate a network translation device inside their network that will allow for IPv6 devices to connect to IPv4 addresses. (Basically carrier grade NAT combined with IPv6 ↔ IPv4 mapping.) It would also mean you would need to be able to advertise your IPv6 address to potential devices that would connect to your PC, which means you’d probably need a network service that would allow you to advertise your home IP and translate it to a IPv6 name. (For IPv4 this is known as Dynamic DNS Dynamic DNS - Wikipedia . I presume something similar may exist for IPv6, but I have never checked into it.)
The short answer is probably no one would be able to connect to your server on IPv6 anyway, so no worry about the effort or bother.
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