I have configured a Debian 7 server for IPv6 (in addition to IPv4). I can ping6 www.google.com and other addresses, fine. BUT the server reproducibly looses IPv6 connectivity after roughly 20min, and I can't figure why this happens. Clues anyone?
My hoster (Hetzner) routes the 2a01:4f8:191:XXXX:/64 network to the server. Following their instructions, I assign a static address from that block and set the default route to fe80::1, either manually ip -6 addr add 2a01:4f8:191:XXXX::5/64 dev eth0 ip -6 route add default via fe80::1 dev eth0 or in /etc/network/interfaces like this iface eth0 inet6 static address 2a01:4f8:191:XXXX::5 netmask 64 gateway fe80::1 This works, I can ping6. But it reproducible stops working after 20min, confirmed using this command while true; do date; ping6 -c3 -w5 www.google.com; sleep 10; done I'm sure it's not Google rate-limiting my pings, I get the same results with various IPv6 addresses that I'm authorized to ping. To restore IPv4 connectivity (IPv4 still working), I can either reboot or re-add the default route with these commands (order is important): ip -6 route del default ip -6 route del fe80::1 dev eth0 ip -6 route add fe80::1 dev eth0 ip -6 route add default via fe80::1 dev eth0 Which will give another 20min of IPv6. 100% reproducible. And it's just the routing that needs to be fixed. I have exluded: - no router advertisements used by the hoster, no such packets seen with tcpdump, server is not configured to accept RAs - no ip6tables rules, and default ACCEPT everywhere - no cronjob or other periodical script that could be responsible - no "security software" or similar that would interfere Important data point: This server has 2 ethernet interfaces, so there are 2 link-local fe80::/64 routes to eth0 and eth1. I was suspicious that the problem might be related, so I disabled IPv6 on the second interface completely with with sysctl net.ipv6.conf.eth1.disable_ipv6 = 1. And that resulted in stable and flawless IPv6 connectivity! While this workaround is ok for this server, I have another one that shows the same symptoms. But for that server I need IPv6 on the other interfaces, so the workaround does not apply. I'd rather like to learn why this happens, or what config part I may be missing. Clues or further debugging hints very welcome. Thanks! Olaf
