Deco BE65 Pro IPv6 weirdness
I've just setup my new deco mesh routers for IPv6 and noticed a couple of weird things, but mostly not fatal.
Firstly when I set the WAN port to DHCPv6, it wouldn't show the WAN IP or DNS server IPs in the app.
I manually set the DNS servers to LAN IPs and they showed, but not the WAN IPv6 IP.
It wasn't till I tried stateless for "Get IPv6 Address" that the WAN IP and DNS server IPs would show in the app.
The other thing, but I'm not sure what the problem was is that when the router was set to DCHPv6 on the WAN I was getting 20-50% packet loss at times, IPv4 was unaffected, but that went away when I switched to stateless for the WAN and I also reset my connection with the ISP via their portal. So I'm not sure what actually fixed things as I did multiple things at the same time to fix it.
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What log?
I type in any IP starting with fd00: and the app says it's invalid and won't let me save the setting.
I just sent feedback using the app, it didn't give me a ticket number directly or via email yet.
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When using the app there is an option to send your logs in
David might be able to find it without the ticket number but I'm not %100 sure on that
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I'm aware of that option, but would the app actually log something at that point since the app won't even attempt to save?
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That's a very good question to be honest and with all the problems I have pointed out with that damn app over the last year I wouldn't be shocked if they got a blank log but David will be able to let us know.
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I have no idea what any of this means but there is an AI bot that David just told me about tonight and here is it's response please keep this in mind I have no idea how accurate this bot is
Thanks for reaching out. I understand that you are trying to manually set an IPv6 DNS server address in the RFC4193 ULA (fd00::/8) range on your Deco Mesh system, but the Deco app is rejecting it as an invalid IP. You noted that similar private IPv4 addresses (like 192.168.x.x) are accepted for DHCPv4 DNS settings, so you are wondering about this limitation.
Currently, Deco allows you to manually specify DNS servers for both IPv4 and IPv6. For IPv6, you can set DNS addresses by going to MORE >> Internet Connection >> IPv6 >> DNS Address in the Deco app. However, it appears that the app does not accept ULA (fd00::/8) addresses as valid IPv6 DNS servers, even though these are functionally similar to private IPv4 addresses and are commonly used in internal networks.
This behavior is likely a limitation of the Deco app's validation rules for IPv6 DNS entries. While you can set private IPv4 addresses as DNS servers, the app currently expects IPv6 DNS addresses to be globally routable (such as 2001:4860:4860::8888 or 2606:4700:4700::1111), and does not allow ULA addresses.
If you would like to use a ULA IPv6 address as your DNS server, unfortunately, this is not supported at this time. We recommend using globally routable IPv6 DNS servers, or you can submit feedback through the Deco app or TP-Link support channels to request this feature for future updates.
For more details on changing DNS settings, please refer to this FAQ: https://www.tp-link.com/support/faq/1855/
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The bot came to the same conclusion as I posted.
That trying to add a DNS server IPv6 IP in the fd00::/8 (ULA) range is incorrectly being rejected, and as the bot pointed out fd00::/8 addresses can and are used on LANs just like 192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12 and 10.0.0.0/8 is and the app does allow IPs in those subnets to be used as DNS server IPs in the DHCPv4 section.
The bot pointed out the work around I already employ, that is manually setting a routable IPv6 IP on my resolver on top of the ULA address, but there are a number of downsides to doing this, firstly ISPs reserves the right to change the allocations assigned in PD (DHCPv6 prefix delegation) replies at any time for any reason.
This happens with my current ISP if you disable and re-enable IPv6 in their member portal, and I didn't know this when I was trying to diagnose and rectify IPv6 problems and others said it fixed issues for them, but failed to say the /48 PD would also change.
It will also happen when switching ISPs.
Whereas using a ULA IPv6 IP, just like it's IPv4 counter part on the LAN, won't ever change, it's just not globally routable like 192.168.0.0/16 addresses aren't.
So yes, the app needs to allow, not reject, fd00::/8 addresses to be used in IPv6 DNS server IPs.
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I would post your request for this option here otherwise it will get lost in these forums and it will give other users the ability to vote on your request.
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Seems this issue got lost in there too, as someone posted about ULA IPs being rejected in 2023...
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/604494
Since that's been closed off I opened a new thread:
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/843018
Also pointed out in the 2023 post is if the WAN is down, and the current PD lease expires, the router will drop the routable range.
So without using ULA addresses, IPv6 on the LAN would then fail since link local addresses aren't usually used for that...
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You have your first vote. I will also talk about this with some of the staff members to see if it can get added but since I do not work for tp-link I have no say in the matter of what gets added.
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Appreciate your help in getting ULA addresses to work for DNS IPv6 IPs, that's a great start...
Just FYI about DUIDs so the following paragraphs make sense. DUIDs are usually based on a MAC address of the DHCPv6 client, similar to how DHCPv4 works using the client's MAC address, but they extend the MAC address to also include additional bits of information for various things. There is no limitation that clients have to use the MAC address and it's possible for clients to generate a unique, but stable, hex value as it's DUID.
I live in hope to have full ULA support in the router itself and use client DUIDs for fixed IP assignment, but that would take a lot more work than modifying the IP validation so I don't actually expect to see that in consumer grade routers any time soon beyond things that run OpenWRT, or mini PCs running a full Linux distro of course.
Current router DHCPv6 assignments using DUIDs are kind of "sticky", but you can't set the client IP. Why I say sticky is that DHCPv6 assignments have changed without IPv6 internet changes, or even PD changes, and the client DUID didn't change. Why this matters is because the firewall rules don't update with the new client IP so constantly updating firewall rules. Unlike DHCPv4 assignments which I found don't change, and the IP can be set to something else in the pool range.
I assume DHCPv4 fixed assignments would be lost if the the LAN subnet were to change, and for good reason, but after setting the new router to the same IP and netmask as on the old router, I haven't needed to test this theory to find out.
The only DHCPv4 issue I have encountered so far is the app won't let me assign IPs outside the pool range. I was able to do this for servers and various IoT devices on the old router and it saved the need to configure them manually. I'm not sure why the app has this limitation, it should check if the IP is in the LAN subnet and not limit allocations to the pool range for administrative reasons if nothing else.
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