Apologies in advance if my question is lacking pertinent data or appears discombobulated. I'll try to make it as complete and coherent as possible. I was looking into the possibility of enabling IPv6 on my Windows 7 machine because it's an option in a game I play. I know my computer has it and it is enabled and my router has it available to use.
My ISP states, "We provide DNS resolvers in configuration information automatically provided via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP and DHCPv6). At this time, we are only providing the IPv4 addresses of our DNS resolvers. We expect to add IPv6 resolvers in the coming months.
As long as IPv4 is working, your dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously) configuration will still allow you to use IPv4-enabled DNS resolvers to look up IPv6 addresses."
This was as of June of 2018.
So, while looking up all this info I found an article stating why IPv6 is important and it led me to testmyipv6.com.
My browser reported "server not found" when attempting to connect to a page via the IPv6-only Test which testmyipv6.com explains, "If your browser returns an error that the host cannot be found then the DNS servers you are using don't know how to look up the address of the server based on the hostname (they are unable to resolve the AAAA DNS record)."
They go on to state, "If you are using DNS server addresses provided by your ISP then please ring them up and ask them to fix ASAP. If you are using your local gateway/router for DNS then either your router isn't capable and/or the forwarders used by your router (likely your ISP's servers) aren't capable."
I then attempted the Dual-Stack (IPv6 & IPv4) Test which resulted in my being told that I was connecting to the server via IPv4. The website explains, "The Dual-Stack Test is meant to test whether your client is choosing IPv6 over IPv4 when making a connection to the server since it is known on the Internet with both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. The proper behavior of your client, assuming that the IPv6-only test works for you, is that the Dual-Stack Test would have an identical result to the IPv6-only test and confirming that you are preferring IPv6 over IPv4 when connecting to a dual-stack destination. If the result is a page with a red box stating that you are using IPv4, then your browser and/or IP stack are preferring IPv4 over IPv6, which is undesired/broken behavior."
It also suggests checking into using a "tunnel broker". Is this advisable? I did have a red box advising me that I am using IPv4.. There appears to be a free service named Hurricane Electric with a data center in Tampa..
This is from ipconfig /all:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix: tampabay.rr.com Link-local IPv6 Adress: fe80::4dbd:2b02:9114:b808%15(Preferred} IPv4 Address: 192.168.0.11(Preferred) Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS Servers: 209.18.47.61, 209.18.47.62
I'm not familiar with tampabay.rr.com, (my ISP is Spectrum), but I do know that my closest server to connect with when I do speed tests is in Tampa.
So, finally, my questions.. Should I contact my ISP and ask them to fix this ASAP as per testmyipv6.com? Or wait (for who knows how long) for my ISP to provide IPv6 resolvers? Since I did, in fact, connect to an IPv6 address (albeit via IPv4) would my dual-stack config work if I were to enable the option in the game "Enable IPv6 when available"? The game does indicate that the option requires IPv6 connectivity and that without it I may be unable to play the game. Would a tunnel broker help at all in this case? Should I just drop the whole thing since IPv6 isn't really necessary for a PC gamer? Changing my ISP is not an option at this time.