IPV6 and DNS
-
I have watched your IPV6 Server 2013 course which covers IPV6 and IPV6-4 conversion. However, I am curious about how DNS should be set up when an ISP doesn't support IPV6. Naturally on a Microsoft network IPV4 and IPV6 is enabled and also in both DNS and DHCP. But given the ISP doesn't support IPV6 what about the IPV6 root hint servers? What is the normal configuration, no IPV6 gateway in DNS, remove all IPV6 root hint servers (wouldn't that cause a problem?). Certinaly the Best Practice Analyser doesn't like it when the root hint servers don't respond. I would be interested in your thoughts.
Kind regards
Ian -
Ian,
If your ISP does not support IPv6 you are not going to be able to use it for general purpose network access (like browsing the internet). You could build a 6to4 tunnel to another IPv6 network somewhere else and route your traffic through there, but otherwise the best you will be able to create is an isolated island of IPv6 trapped behind your IPv4 ISP. That is how my home network is since Cox Cable does not support IPv6 in my town yet (They say Cox residential customers will be IPv6 enabled starting in 2015). For IPv6 name resolution I could easily point to Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) as they will gladly return IPv6 addresses even if the request originates from an IPv4 host as long as you specify it in your query. However, once you get the public IPv6 address of the host you are trying to reach you would be unable to reach it as your ISP won't forward the traffic.
So, that leaves us with your solution which is exactly what you should do. You may need to keep your IPv6 default gateway if you are routing multiple IPv6 networks in your organization, but you definitely won't be doing the root hint lookups. However, don't delete the root hint servers. It doesn't hurt to leave them in place as their lookups will simply fail since the network is unreachable. That will also make it easier when your ISP does support IPv6 as you won't have to re-enter them. If you do delete them, there is a simple trick to re-create them. Create a forwad lookup zone called "." That will tell your server that it is a root hint server and it will delete the records. Then, delete the "." zone. The DNS tool will recognize that you are no longer root and will offer to recreate the root hint server entries for you.
Hope that helps,
Don Pezet
Host, ITProTV -
Thanks Don for the prompt response. It sounds like I should just leave my configuration as it is, with the IPV6 Root Hint servers configured and leave in the gateway address, so as soon as my ISP supports IPV6 it is much easier to get up and running. I will ignore the BPA on DNS for this aspect!
Kind regards
Ian -
I had the same issue where my ISP doesn't support IPv6 so I couldn't make use of it.