Cannot access internal device using ipv6 pinholes

[EE5HT]

I have EE full fibre broadband and IPv6 is enabled using the EE Smart Hub Plus router. When I perform IP address checks it reports both IPv4 and public IPv6 address, (not a ULA or link-local address).

I wish to remotely connect to a server on my local network using the servers IPv6 address. I can successfully connect to the server remotely using it's IPv4 address using port forwarding on the router. But after opening a port in the IPv6 Pinholes menu does not allow me to connect remotely, the port is closed. I can connect to the server via its IPv6 address from my local network, but not from outside of my home.

When contacting EE support over the phone, I was told they would not help me, they can only help when the connection is not working

Has anyone managed to access an internal device from the internet using IPV6 pinholes?

[TraderTravel]

@bobpullen Personally I think it is more than the pinholes. I suspect that the router does not like routing devices without a physical Mac address for IPv6 based traffic, even though I know what I have said just not really make sense.

Overall I think IPv6 is a bit broken on EE hubs right now. I say that as I have been connected to Orange France's network for the last few weeks, and their IPv6 implementation is pretty clean.

[TraderTravel]

@bobpullen 

Wireguard is a bit of a funny protocol. It's known to prefer IPv6 if it think it exists, but if something is broken, it won't move to IPv4 gracefully from my understanding and experience. That means things tend to fail if everything is not working as expected. I know from a quick search on a few other forums others have failed to get EE/BT routers to work well in this space, so I guess it was to be expected.

If I stick to IPv4, things tend to work. CGNAT tends to impact some services like VPNs at times and was a bit of a more general comment. CGNAT also introduces another potential point of failure as you probably already know. 🙂

I'm not an IPv6 expert at all, but as we are (slowly) moving to an IPv6 world, it is always good to have it. Orange France's network does not seem to exhibit the same issues, but I know they were an early adopter compared to most networks. Also IPv6 allows you to forget about NAT to begin with and some of the issues that NAT can cause. I'd personally never disable IPv6 if I can use it. 🙂

[bobpullen]

Thanks, not familiar with the nuances of Wireguard as  I've never tried to configure it to use IPv6.

Main reason I have for disabling IPv6 allocation on the LAN is to avoid stuff bypassing my Pihole. I know I could configure Pihole to do v6 but it's hassle I'm happy to live without for now 😉

[TraderTravel]

@bobpullen I have managed to get everything working, however it did involve doing a full reset of my router and extenders. I now have a full dual stack setup working with Wireguard. The IPv4 port forwarding and IPv6 pin holes work fine, but again I should stress that none of this worked until I did a full reset, so clearly moving between the firmware versions caused some issues when EE sent out that recent firmware update. I should add that yesterday I was getting some weird internal network packet loss issues. It was this that forced me to take the nuke approach to try and resolve things as I could not make sense of why some devices would work and others would seemingly fail. Also a reboot of the router did not resolve the issues, but a full reset of everything did appear to work.

I will try and document what I have done and provide a rundown here later so other people can follow what I did in order to get everything working. It might even be useful for myself if I need to try and re-configure everything.

[bobpullen]

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@TraderTravel wrote:

The IPv4 port forwarding and IPv6 pin holes work fine...

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Interesting. I might try to repeat my test here when I get the chance, post a factory reset.

[TraderTravel]

@bobpullen I've cheated a little and fed AI my scripts so it can create the documentation. You can find it here:

Setting up working dual stack (IPv4 and IPv6) wireguard home server on EE - The EE Community