IPv6 is no longer optional
IPv4 exhaustion has a price: a dedicated IPv4 address now trades at €40–50 to buy, and its rental cost climbs every year. Meanwhile, nearly half of global mobile traffic is native IPv6. Every GLOBALCLOUDHOSTING instance receives a /64 block — that's 18 quintillion addresses — at no extra cost. Here's how to configure it properly.
What you get
Your VPS has a primary IPv6 address and a prefix routed to it; the gateway is listed in your customer panel. Keep IPv4: the global transition isn't finished, and dual-stack remains the target configuration for years to come.
Clean configuration with Netplan (Ubuntu 24.04)
network:
version: 2
ethernets:
eth0:
dhcp4: true
addresses:
- 2001:db8:42:1::10/64
routes:
- to: default
via: 2001:db8:42:1::1Apply with netplan apply, then verify: ping6 -c 3 google.com and curl -6 ifconfig.co.
The firewall is not optional
This is mistake number one: a carefully configured IPv4 firewall... and a wide-open IPv6, because old habits only filter IPv4. Any machine with a public IPv6 address gets scanned within an hour of activation.
With UFW, check that IPV6=yes is set in /etc/default/ufw — your rules will then apply to both stacks. With nftables, the inet family handles both protocols in a single ruleset. Then test from the outside, not from the machine itself.
Classic pitfalls
- Docker ignores IPv6 by default: your containers publish ports over IPv4 only — or worse, expose them over IPv6 without filtering if you enable support without a firewall.
- Reverse DNS: configure your IPv6 PTR if you send mail — Gmail checks it.
- Privacy extensions: fine on a workstation, out of place on a server, which must keep a stable, documented address.
- Monitoring: a service listening on 0.0.0.0 doesn't answer over IPv6. Check with
ss -tlnpthat your services also listen on ::.
Why do it now
Beyond IPv4 scarcity, IPv6 simplifies things: no NAT between your servers, generous ranges for your containers, and often more direct mobile traffic. Test your setup at test-ipv6.com — a 10/10 score takes half an hour to achieve.