What is LAN IPv6 address for a router?

Question

My ISP offers IPv4 address. My router DIR 615 has IPv6 options. Under IPv6 settings there’s a text box to enter LAN IPv6 address.

What exactly is meant by the term LAN IPv6 address for a router? The routers inline help page is not much useful.

Is it something similar to internal private IP that we assign to router in IPv4 like 192.168.0.1 ? Who provides it, does the user assign one or is it provided by the ISP?

Solution

This setting controls the IPv6 address used on the LAN side of the router. You need an assigned IPv6 address space, which use can then use to use on your local LAN. For consumer connections this would have to be provided by your ISP (since you cannot request IPv6 address space from your RIR).

This is usually called "Routed /64, /52 or /48".

You are not supposed to use RFC1918 (192.168.x.x-like) addresses with IPv6. This is exactly what IPv6 solves, that every device on the internet can have a directly addressable IP. (technically you could, but the point is that you don't have to use NAT anymore)

Technically, the auto-assigned link-local FE80 address will work just as well. If you really want to use IPv6, but your ISP does not give you IPv6 space, use the link-local address.

Comments

[Thalys]

Typically you don't need tp set that unless your ISP does ipv6 or tunneling, In both cases, they would tell you what setting to use I think. Most users probably don't need an internal IPv6 network as well.

[rajeev]

Thanks for the answer mtak. Does it mean that each device that will connect to router will have its own IPv6 address assigned by the router from the IPv6 address space given by ISP? In that case will each device on LAN side be connected to externally from over IPv6 Internet without port forwarding?

[mtak]

Yes, indeed, welcome to IPv6 :) . You will need to make sure that your firewall is configured correctly, otherwise all hosts will be accessible from the internet on all ports.