Why has this forum stopped using IPv6 ?

[#1]

@James_B 

Why has the community forum stopped being reachable via IPv6 ?

Back in March 2021 it was first noticed that this forum was fully IPv6 capable, see topic -

        Since when did the Plusnet Forum become IPv6 enabled ? 

and has been working well on IPv6 for years.

But recently the IPv6 appears to have been disabled and now the addresses used are shown here -

Looking up how community.plus.net appears in the DNS records, it shows only IPv4 addresses -

community.plus.net.	21671	IN	CNAME	aptgm87544.lithium.com.
aptgm87544.lithium.com.	57	IN	CNAME	aptgm87544.lithium.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.
aptgm87544.lithium.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 299 IN A 104.21.21.18
aptgm87544.lithium.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 299 IN A 172.67.195.249

whereas until recently it had these IPv6 addresses -

community.plus.net. 21086 IN CNAME aptgm87544.lithium.com.
aptgm87544.lithium.com. 899 IN CNAME d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net.
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:1400:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:9a00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:1200:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:5a00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:6800:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:c000:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:fc00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net. 59 IN AAAA 2600:9000:2133:e600:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1

[#2]

Hi @ExForce9,

Let me check in with the vendor to see if this was an intentional change or a configuration issue.

James

[#3]

Hi @ExForce9,

Update from the vendor:

The loss of IPv6 support is linked to the community platform's CDN migration from CloudFront to Cloudflare.

Previously, the forum was served via a dual-stack setup that provided both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity. Following the migration, the current configuration only publishes IPv4 (A) records and no IPv6 (AAAA) records, so the forum is no longer reachable over IPv6.

This isn't a fault or something that's broken locally, it's an intentional part of the current platform configuration. For the vast majority of users there's no impact, as devices on dual-stack networks automatically fall back to IPv4.

James

[#4]

@James_B 

Thanks for getting an answer, and at least we now know that it isn't a fault,

however it seems like a backward step when the world is slowly moving over to IPv6.

It also doesn't make much sense as Cloudflare BY DEFAULT enables IPv6 on all the domains it hosts

see - https://developers.cloudflare.com/network/ipv6-compatibility/ 

so for it to not be working now, seems like the forum developers either chose or forgot to complete the IPv6 configuration.

[#5]

No problem @ExForce9 

We can explore getting it re-enabled.

James