Airport Extreme and Cox Internet IPv6 Problem

I was having the problem and went out a got a new Arris SB6190 along with new cabling. Cox also came out and put in all new connectors on the street and the ones coming into the house.

Is the fix still just the link-local-only ? I was hoping the latest airport firmware update would have solved this. I just updated to 7.6.7 firmware a week ago. My IPv6 score is 0/10. Are there settings to add with the link-local-only?

thanks.

sunjon, since this is primarily a user-to-user forum you'll rarely get help directly from Apple staff. If you have specific questions that you don't think you can get the answers for online in these forums, from the online documentation or from the built-in help you can try calling Apple's phone support. But, to be honest, the collective knowledge in these forums is much higher than you will get from calling someone at Apple's phone support. I think you will find that there are some very knowledgeable people in these forums who have been helping people for many years and have a lot of trail-and-error experience with various Apple products and software.

As for how to extend a wi-fi network, that is very straight forward. In fact there is only one setting to do that in AirPort Utility.

The beauty of Apple's AirPort routers is that, like most things Apple, they are very straight forward when it comes to settings. For people who like to tinker with endless amounts of settings, they find AirPort routers frustrating because they claim they don't have enough control. Thankfully, there are many other routers on the market to satisfy there tinkering needs.

Tron3030, Link-local was a temporary setting to alleviate the problems people were having using IPv6 with Cox. It essentially restricted IPv6 to the local network.

Now that you have updated the firmware of your AirPort router try setting it to use IPv6 using the settings as shown in the screenshots below. Once you have changed the settings re-test your IPv6 using the various IPv6 test web sites. Let use know how you score.

Test here:

Test your IPv6.

IPv6 test - IPv6/4 connectivity and speed test

Last week I upgraded my Airport Extreme to the latest firmware, 7.7.7, and did a factory reset returning to standard connections from the Google IP settings listed much eariler in this discussion. I tested the iPv6 conncetion and received a 19/20. The system has been running all week with no failures. I tested again this morning and got essentially the same numbers as I did last week (see below). So far, so good.

thank you. I have 10/10 for the test and 17/20 for the speed. Under Linux mint the browser shows 0/10, firefox. On OSX, firefox the test comes back ok. I will check into that later. I have to head out. thanks again.

TRON3030, since you scored 10/10 it appears your IPv6 settings on the AirPort router are correct and IPv6 is working for you with Cox.

The Linux Mint score means that you have not setup IPv6 correctly in that environment. You may need to do a web search for the proper linux Mint IPv6 settings.

I got it working now. It was a firefox setting in mint. In firefox I had to go to about.config in the browser and set the dns.network.ipv6 disable value to false and everything fine after that.

my speed test went up to 19/20.

thanks for the help.

CromeYellow, I was just looking at your wireless setup and noticed something. According to Apple's support documentation regarding setting up an extended wireless network the last router, the one I marked number 3 in the screenshot below, will not allow client devices to connect to it.

Here is the link to the support document I am referring to.

Wi-Fi base stations: Extending the range of your wireless network by adding additional Wi-Fi base stations - Apple Suppo…

correction. it was about:config and the value updated was network.dns.disableipv6 change it to false by double clicking it.

Thanks Gino. I have searched everywhere for the best way to configure Airports in this situation. For whatever reason, that #3 airport extreme definitely does allow client devices to link to it. In fact, when that #3 is turned off, the devices in its proximity then connect to one of the two farther away airports, and the signal strength weakens. I examined each one of the devices, the TC and the three airports, and all three have devices connected to them it seems at all times, different devices connected to each one. For the most part, my devices connect to whatever TC or AP Extr is closest. Oddly, for example right now I noticed that my iPhone 6 plus was showing as connected to both the Time Capsule and to one of the AP Extremes. And there is a camera device on the front door that shows connected to the TC which isn't necessarily the closest device to it - one of the Airports is closer.

By the way, we are going on 40 hours now with no disconnects with the devices set as noted above in my post, for auto ipv6 configuration. However, while the http://www.test-ipv6.com/ test is 10/10 at all times for all devices, the http://ipv6-test.com/ is 19/20 at all times only on the iOS devices.

However, as you pointed out before, this Fallback failure that brings the results to 16/20 on the second test may be more browser than device specific - because now I am noticing that on the latest versions of Safari and Firefox, the results are 19/20 on the iMacs too (both the ethernet one and the WiFi ones), while only 16/20 with Fallback failure on the iMacs with Chrome and Opera browsers.

Since iOS devices use Safari, that may be why they are all coming in 19/20.

Are you able to get 19/20 using Chrome browser on an iMac? How about with Opera? I am not, only 16/20 no matter when/how I try with those two browsers on the iMacs.

For what it's worth, our internet connection and airport network have been stable since we applied 7.7.7 and 7.6.7 almost two weeks ago, except when I've been experimenting with our network configuration and settings. We have 2 Airport Extremes ( a recent ac model and an older n model), connected via ethernet cable in a Roaming network. Our speed has been above spec for our service level within range of the primary router, and still as good as ever in range of the remote router. Our IPv6 test scores have typically been 10/10 and 19/20 on the two tests, with occasional lapses that generate the comment that our browsers prefers IPv4 (both Chrome and Safari). The 10 point test provides commentary on that, in a separate tab, and outlines strategies different browsers have taken to get the first or fastest connection (IPv4 or IPv6) that is available at that time. Yesterday I was online more than usual, and had time to do the tests more frequently. I found that, at least yesterday, our scores varied more through the day than I had previously noticed. Once it was 0/10 (all IPv4), yet we still had a strong, fast connection. I never had to reset anything to maintain a strong connection, though I did reset the primary router when we had the 0/10 score to experiment with settings. The 10 point test provided a tab with fairly detailed commentary saying that firewall settings on a browser or router were interfering with IPv6n when we had the 0/10 score. When I turned off "block incoming IPv6 connections" on primary base station, the score immediately went to 10/10 and 19/20. That could have been a coincidence, or the result of resettling the router to apply the change, as when I returned the router setting to "block incoming" the scores stayed at 10/10 and 19/20. It seems possible that our IPv6 connection is just not as stable/ fast as the IPv4 connection, and our browsers prefer/ fall back to IPv4 often without our knowing about it.

Also, as noted on other threads, the online apple documentation on extending AE networks is not current in terms of the UI of the current version Airport Utility (6.3.6), though the options may still be the same (Roaming, Wirelessly Extended, or WDS), and does not fully explain all the setting options.

This MAY be a case in which the Apple documentation is not current. There are comments to that effect by a level 10 contributor on a another thread, and the UI and possibly some configuration options are different than shown in the online documentation on the latest version of Airport Utility. According to the online documentation, Crome would need to set up a WDS network to get the third AE working this way. That may not be true with newest versions of Airport Utility, AE routers and firmware.

CromeYellow, maybe it is a function of the 802.11ac AirPorts with their multiple antennas that allows that third router to still accept client connections. Apple hasn't really updated their documentation regarding extended networks since they released the 802.11n routers. Good to know that it is not hanging out there doing nothing.

As for those IPv6 scores with Chrome and Opera. It sounds like they haven't been updated to fallback to IPv4 as quickly as the the current standard dictates. It's not a big deal, everything still works. For me, I have no desire to install multiple browsers, Safari just works and it scores 19/20 99.9% of the time on that test web site.

Ah well you see then, I've been concerned about trying to get a 19/20 on Chrome (which is my primary browser) and no one on here has achieved it.

On my iMacs, I have a need for at least three browsers. Chrome has all my latest bookmarks on it, but besides, it runs well with a certain browser specific free VPN that I use occasionally.

Safari works best with certain sites such as tinypic and TDAmeritrade and for a while certain applets loaded on TDA worked only on Safari and not Chrome. (And for a while tinypic would not even work on Chrome.)

Firefox is one of the most important browsers to me because it allows easy setting to delete cookies and other tracking objects on each restart, and is the only OSX browser that accepts a certain add on that deletes all flash objects (LSOs) on each quit/restart.

I do a lot of very specific work on the internet related to my occupation and I need at least these three browsers sometimes running at the same time.

OKAY so we just passed the 48 hour mark with everything set for ipv6 and no connectivity issues.

By the way I am writing this on the iMac that is farthest from the TC, and it is showing as connected only to that farthest away AP Extr that is marked #3 in your chart, the bottom one. Also at the moment my iPhone 6 plus shows as connected only to that #3 AP Extr.

Crome, FYI, I usually get 19/20 on both Chrome and Safari since applying 7.7.7. My earlier comment was simply that when I had time and interest to check more frequently than usual yesterday, I saw some lower scores. Some research showed that different browsers have used different strategies to optimize speed and fallback, and that they have changed them over time. The primary reason I often use Chrome is that I do a lot of google searches, and surprise, complex google searches sometimes/often run faster on google's Chrome. When you get a lower score on the 10 point test, there is a separate tab that provides commentary on reasons, including some of the strategies different browsers have used.