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I've mostly stuck with IPv4 in my LAN, but ive been wanting more and more to more to move to IPv6, if only for the learning experience. Since my ISP only uses 6rd and so I can't get a static IP much less a GUA subnet to use, I'm trying to decide strategy for setting up the network, NAT, etc. And I know it's probably not worth the effort, but again at this point it's more a learning exercise.

I have an OpnSense router and use Unbound on it for DNS, Kea for DHCP, and Caddy for reverse proxy, so I am pretty flexible. What strategies have others employed? I use static addresses assigned at the router's Kea DHCP service for IPv4 for all known devices. I have 4 VLANS for guest, mostly trusted devices like my phone and laptop, private stuff like my NAS, Home Assistant server, and Kubernetes cluster, and IoT for stuff that is private but I don't have as much control over like light switches, cameras, and the TV. I use a pihole on the VLAN my personal devices are on to allow for ad, tracking, and malicious site blocking. And I use Pangolin for external access to some private services. And I have a domain dedicated to LAN devices and another for externally hosted VPS servers. Though I dont host much externally now that I finally got access to fiber and no more asymmetric, slow up speeds from Cable service.

I use static IPv4 addresses in Kea DHCP, mostly to assign devices to VLANs and give devices domain names. I'm guessing that will still be necessary. I rarely use the IP addresses in service setup or browsing to services if I can help it, just domain names. What other concerns should I consider?

Any experiences or advice for similar IPv4 to IPv6 LAN conversions would be greatly appreciated, so I can plan ahead.

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[-] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

The only thing I can tell is that it is totally worthless.

Because you can not have an uga ipv6, then obviously you will have an ula served via dhcpv6 with ipv4 local address (double stack).

And in this point you will realize that most computers implementation select which ip address to use following prio: ipv6 uga -> ipv4 -> ipv6 ula

So even if you do all the things right, your clients will not use it because ipv4 is there and you cannot deselect it because I assume you still want connectivity

Funny, right? :)

[-] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network
IP Internet Protocol
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NAT Network Address Translation
VPN Virtual Private Network

[Thread #243 for this comm, first seen 17th Apr 2026, 21:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[-] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've never used 6rd, but I did use 6to4 for a while (A long time ago) and I got a GUA from that. 6rd closely related to 6to4 so I naïvely expect them to work similarly?

Now I did it all with OpenWRT, but the gist was you set the tunnel information on the WAN side in the webui, and it produced the configuration for the LAN side. Since it's a tunnel you never actually set any of the v6 details on the actual WAN adapter, outside of routing (i.e. what v4 endpoint do you send stuff to).

[-] irmadlad@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

move to IPv6, if only for the learning experience.

I'm about the learning aspect. It is possible to have local IPV6 connectivity between devices, but only IPV4 for ingress and egress (IPv6-only LAN with IPv4-only WAN). Your router or access point will assign the IPv6 addresses to your devices usually via SLAAC or DHCPv6 and manages local IPv6 routing. Since there is no IPv6 route to the internet, it falls back to IPv4 if the application supports dual-stack or simply uses IPv4 if the OS is configured to prefer it. The router then translates or routes this traffic out via its IPv4 interface.

This is how I have configured my network. Not because my ISP doesn't give me an IPV6 address, but because my commercial VPN does not support IPV6. In that scenario, there is a possibility of IPV6 'leaks' outside of the VPN tunnel. I'm not sure about OpnSense, but pFsense has an option to enable IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling.

ETA: Did a little checking on OpnSense and it seems you can do IPV6 to IPV4 via a plugin called os-6in4.

[-] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

What do you get out of IPv6 for lan routing vs just sticking to IPv4 for everything?

[-] irmadlad@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Off the top of my head you would gain some things like superior P2P between devices like NAS because IPV6 doesn't need NAT traversal. Better plug 'n play for devices, no ip conflicts as the probability of two devices generating the same IPv6 address is statistically zero. I guess you could throw in 'future proofing' your network so that when the rest of the world catches up, you'll already be set up for it.

[-] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I mean, I don’t have NAT traversal between my NAS and devices on my lan now, they are routed because they are different VLANs but that would happen anyway.

Do people have problem with ip conflicts? I guess if I wasn’t running DHCP that would be possible.

Right now NAT is my main firewall between most devices and the wider internet, but I do still run pfsense and have firewall rules in place.

Switching over to IPv6 seems like it would be extra work for very little actual benefit.

this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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