IPv6 Intro

Refresher

For a quick crash course into IPv6 checkout my IPv6 Quick Explainer guide.

Why Did I Setup IPv6?

Beyond just being good to know because it'll be what we're all using sooner than later there are a few practical advantages of IPv6 over IPv4. Most important to me though is being able to have IP addresses that don't have to be masqueraded by the router. This has several knock-on effects I appreciate.

No Need for Hairpin NAT

I don't have to masquerade IP addresses which means that when I access a device from my LAN I can use the same IP address that is used when people access a device from the WAN. I don't have to setup a hacky Hairpin NAT or necessarily use Split-horizen DNS to just have everything work. The less janky configurations I have to create and maintain to paper over problems of IPv4 the better.

Fine-grained DNS Control

Because each device can have a publically routable address I can setup subdomains to actually point to different addresses. As an example I can have wireguard.swigg.net point to my router IP address for VPN access while *.swigg.net can point to my server IP address I am running in my DMZ. With IPv4 I had to have them both point to my router public IP address and then use some sort of proxy to forward based on hostname plus do something janky like above.