[v6ops] When IPv6 breaks IPv4

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

There was a presentation at an IETF meeting in v6ops, about when people 
recommend to rather turn off IPv6 on some consumer electronics (Netgear 
was that?). The GUI was telling in red characters to rather turn off 
IPv6, instead of risking IPv4 not working either.

Today I had a similar experience.

The hardened Android tablet Aaeon by ASUS (described in 
AAEON_RTC-700B.PDF) has an Ethernet port which is great.  The Android 
GUI allows to set an IPv6 address in a field.  I put there "1::1" 
because it is very fast to type on a virtual keyboard.  After that, the 
Ethernet stopped working in IPv4 altogether.  Long press reboot button 
does not solve it.  There is no means to revert back, not possible to 
remove that IPv6 address.

Now I can throw out a window this tablet, for two reasons: neither IPv6 
is working, nor IPv4 is working.  There is no reset button, no 
documentation about 'cold reset' and there are are two batteries: one 
main and one backup.  The backup can be removed but the main is 
hardened.  I suspect that even if the main battery dies out the GUI 
config file containing that "1::1" will still be there for many years a 
writeable RAM lasts.

Worse, I did this in front of partner, in my good intentions to 
illustrate proof how IPv6 is so present everywhere already.

Next time I will be more moderate about my trust in IPv6 availability.

Alex