IPv6 is ready?

Tonight I did ran netstat (`netstat -plunt`) on my Debian server and saw that I had some ports listening via IPv6.  It’s a shame IPv6 hasn’t caught on as it’s better than IPv4 in virtually every way, and it should, especially since TCP/IPv4 was standardized in ARPANET RFC’s… in 1981!  Also, IPv6 provides network level security via IPSec, which enables authentication of sender and encryption of communication path, to secure communications, all fun stuff, but while some point to the fact that the Beijing Olympics used IPv6 exclusively as a point in how far it’s come, that’s hardly saying much when the protocol went Alpha… in 1996!  I mean I put things off and get distracted, sure, but come on!  So while its adoption can be argued to be a case of the chicken before the egg, since I’m not using anything IPv6, nor do I or my ISP even have the capability to use it, it’s silly and perhaps dangerous to leave it running with open ports.  So, if you’re not using it, disable it – it’s easy, just put on your pointy hat and follow along… First we need to edit:

/etc/modprobe.d/aliases

By default you will have a line like this:

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

Replace that line with:

alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off

(The second line may/may not be required with newer (2.26.+) kernels, but it won’t hurt anything)

Also, while we’re at it, on your desktop machines, help out Firefox by disabling IPv6 there too.  It’s simple, in the location bar enter:

about:config

Then search for:

network.dns.disableIPv6

and toggle its value to ‘true‘

Well, that’s it, you’re now surfing with 1980s technology (just like 99.098% of the internet!)