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When looking at my Observium monitoring, I just found strange results on this graphs "IPv6 Packet Statistics", this server is on a IPv4 network with IPv6 disabled on the server itself with :

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1

Here is the graph: IPv6

When looking on the routes , I still find IPv6 routes (look 6to4) :

ip -6 route show
unreachable ::/96 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable ::ffff:0.0.0.0/96 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:a00::/24 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:7f00::/24 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:a9fe::/32 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:ac10::/28 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:c0a8::/32 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 2002:e000::/19 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
unreachable 3ffe:ffff::/32 dev lo  metric 1024  error -101 mtu 16436 advmss 16376 hoplimit 4294967295
fe80::/64 dev eth0  proto kernel  metric 256  mtu 1500 advmss 1440 hoplimit 4294967295
fe80::/64 dev eth1  proto kernel  metric 256  mtu 1500 advmss 1440 hoplimit 4294967295
fe80::/64 dev eth2  proto kernel  metric 256  mtu 1500 advmss 1440 hoplimit 4294967295

Is this normal that I still have IPv6 routes and IPv6 traffic without any IPv6 interface or IPv6 network and IPv6 disabled at Kernel level ? (::1 don't ping)

2 Answers 2

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You are disabling IPv6 at the interface level, so the global IPv6 stuff like the routing table is still active. You shouldn't see any IPv6 traffic on the interfaces though, so that does surprise me.

If you really don't want any IPv6 on your system then you should block the ipv6 kernel module from loading, although I would recommend you to learn how to work with IPv6 because disabling it is not a long-term solution. IPv6 is coming :-)

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  • 3
    IPv6 is already here. At this point disabling it without an extremely good reason is just irresponsible. And I've never heard an extremely good reason for disabling it, just a bunch of bad reasons. Jun 6, 2013 at 19:28
  • Michael, I can only agree :-) Jun 6, 2013 at 23:04
  • I that was only depending of me we would already be fully in IPv6, but my boss don't want to hear of it...
    – Kedare
    Jun 7, 2013 at 6:11
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You have roughly one packet per second coming into your interface for the better part of a day. Best guess is that someone else on the same subnet as you was sending IPv6 multicast traffic of some sort (neighbor discovery, DHCPv6 requests, whatever). Someone on your subnet could also have been pinging you. You'll have to decide what that means, based on who and what else is on your subnet.

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  • Part of the IPv6 operation indicates that IPv6 routers could/should advertise some information periodically, so it's probable this packet is coming from their internet router. Most ISPs are transitioning to operate IPV6 only but keep the clientes with the capability of operating in both protocols and so their active equipment on premises.
    – Fjor
    May 1, 2022 at 21:03

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