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Anesti33's avatar
Anesti33
Contributor
5 months ago
Solved

IPv6 dual-stack devices on Home Internet connections

Greetings,

A colleague at a Canadian University writes a blog about his systems administration work, and has often posted stories about IPv6 implementation on their network.

In particular, he and I are both cynical about transitions from IPv4-only to IPv4+IPv6 dual-stack networks.

Now as it stands, all of my devices at home were manufactured after 2020 and all have native IPv6 capability and in fact, IPv6 is enabled alongside IPv4 by default, with no particular option to disable it, unless a Developer's Option is unearthed.

Now I recently surrendered to my own incompetence and returned my rented Panoramic WiFi modem, because I couldn't achieve a reliable connection after I factory-reset several devices.

If there is no malware in the router/computers, and if this user did not make a configuration error, then a third hypothesis is that IPv6 is creating strange anomalies in connectivity, and my devices are being confused by the presence of both stacks, and connectivity may be adversely affected by such things as: individual third-party websites and services which don't support IPv6, temporary protocol outages on the network, problems with address assignment and routing, NAT-related issues in home router, protocol tunnelling or whatever Cox Communications implementation of IP routing beyond the leaf nodes.

So what's a workaround? There is no solution, if Chris Siebenmann's assessment is accurate. A workaround could be Cox Communications disables IPv6 for a customer, and their servers stop issuing SLAAC/DHCP6 prefix assignments, and customer equipment goes back to IPv4-only. Or, customer router may have capability to disable and block IPv6 from entry/egress on customer network.

And customer hopes that IPv4-only is a reliable solution in 2025.

  • Anflexboi's avatar
    Anflexboi
    4 months ago

    Sighs, no offense to the last poster above, but your response is why I despise looking for help here.  

    every “genius” on the community sites wants to have the best answer and gets totally lost in a difference of opinion.  I’m not here to start a cat fights but let me break it down in the most simple of terms.

    The request basically landed with a request for directions on how to disable the ipv6 setting.   You said it’s possible, but didn’t offer the goods.  Rather you want to lecture about old devices and silliness. 

    I am also interested in disabling ipv6 too because my iPhone 16promax is being hacked as well as pcs.  This is a developer level hacked, from all intensive purposes it seems like China but might be a decoy.  I’m not special and have no idea when this states but upwards of 3 months to years..,its make my life a living hell.  I switched to pano modem today for first time.   So far the pano modem router appears to be holding them at bay but I don’t need ipv6 and less familiar with it so prefer it to be off.   If you know how to disable on iPhone or pano . Please share 

  • Darkatt's avatar
    Darkatt
    Honored Contributor
    5 months ago

    First of all, ALL internet devices are configurable and you can disable IPv4 and;/or IPv6. Whether it's windows/mac/android, etc etc. 

    If you have a router, it can be configured on the router to provide, or NOT to provide IPv4 or IPv6. 

    What router are you using, and I can provide information on how to disable Ipv6 if that's what you are interested in. 

    • Anesti33's avatar
      Anesti33
      Contributor
      5 months ago

      Sure bro,

      My devices are Android 11, Android 15, and ChromeOS Stable. 

      I'm not interested in a verbal description of steps, but vendor documentation would be great. I had a CGM4141 panoramic router, and it surprised me that it even had LAN-accessible management. The mobile app from Cox panoramic Wi-Fi was interfering with it, causing my own denial of services, in unpredictable ways.  I was also surprised that it came with default well-known credentials to manage it and these were not reset by the factory reset, so it was confusing how much of the router that Cox is managing themselves. I wanted less work to do when I rented that modem. Less security risk. I was deluded.

      What I'm going to do is subscribe to Cox Complete Care. Perhaps they support their mobile apps? I've already emailed the Cox at home help email address for support and this forum post is simply thinking out loud. Thank you

       

       

      • Darkatt's avatar
        Darkatt
        Honored Contributor
        5 months ago

        The 4141 is a MUCH older device, Upgrade to the newer device then use the Cox Complete Care and have them walk you through what you are trying to do. The 4141 is old and slow. 

        You have a PW3 or 4, cannot remember, the latest is a PW8 - Technicolor CGM4981

  • Anesti33's avatar
    Anesti33
    Contributor
    4 months ago

    Fast-forward to 2025 and I've reconnected my Cox Home Internet service. I chose Go Fast, and added Cox Complete Care for a more comprehensive tech-support experience.

    The local Cox Store again issued me a PW6 4141 style router. It seems newer than the one I had before, albeit exactly the same design and model, with only the two Ethernet ports. It works great.

    I'm currently having no issues in connecting to the router or the Internet, via wired 1GbE to ChromeOS, as well as WiFi 5GHz from all 3 devices. Furthermore, having no issues connecting to Cox Metro WiFi Hotspots, especially the one right underneath my residence.

    I've no idea what was disrupting my service before I disconnected in December. I hope the symptoms don't recur. I really don't want to mess with the Panoramic WiFi app. I've avoided installing it entirely. I've also avoided accessing or modifying the router's WWW management interface. I expressed at the Store that I wish to interfere as little as possible, and I also hope that Cox manages the firmware updates well enough to avoid any compromises from external threat actors.

    According to my understanding, Cox Home customers really can't specify what sort of modem is issued to us when we're renting equipment. They told me "the algorithm decides this" so I couldn't choose, for example, a more powerful processor or more than 2 Ethernet ports. And yes, the rental agreement does make us eligible for bona fide hardware upgrades every 3 years or so. For whatever that's worth, because Gigablast and Fiber Optic service are imminent, especially in the City of Tempe where they're licensing providers and working on some sort of municipal common-access solution. No Google Fiber on the horizon for my neighborhood.

    While 1280GB and 100Mbps is way more Internet than I'll ever need, I'm grateful for Cox's expert support and reliability over these >10 years. My parents also enjoy Cox service since I had it installed in 1993. Who else would we turn to???