Best option for IPv6 support?

[paul_gear_1ignv]

I've got a small business network using an R500 running as an Unleashed manager (on version 200.7.10.202.118).  One of the WLANs on the Unleashed config is an experimental IPv6-only network which uses NAT64/DNS64 to get to external IPv4-only sites, and the other WLANs are IPv4/v6 dual-stacked.

I recently added an R510 to provide a little extra coverage, and found that the IPv6-only network stopped working whenever I was connected to the R510.  I thought this was strange until I tested IPv6 connectivity on the dual-stack WLANs and found that IPv6 was broken there, too.  As soon as I walk back into range of the R500, everything starts working again.  I started taking packet captures on the upstream router, and sure enough: no IPv6 traffic even makes it to the router interface.  The APs are on the same switch with identical port configurations, and obviously the Unleashed manager pushes the same WLAN configuration to both APs, so my conclusion is that the R510 is actively blocking IPv6 traffic, whereas the R500 passes it successfully.

So I'm hoping for some guidance:

• Is this a bug in that Unleashed version which might be fixed if I upgrade the R510 to 200.8.*?  Can this even be done while there's another Unleashed instance on the same subnet?  I know the R500 can't be upgraded to 200.8, so it'll have to remain on 200.7 or switch to standalone firmware.
  
• If I switch the R510 to standalone firmware, is there reason to believe the problem will remain, or is it potentially a chipset/hardware limitation on the R510?
• Are there any other configuration tricks to try which might let the R510 work with IPv6 on Unleashed 200.7?  I know that IPv6 is unsupported on Unleashed, but the documentation is very vague about what this means, and having had it actually passing IPv6 traffic correctly on the R500, I was very disappointed to find out that it didn't work at all on the R510.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[tony_heung]

Is this a bug in that Unleashed version which might be fixed if I upgrade the R510 to 200.8.*?  Can this even be done while there's another Unleashed instance on the same subnet?  I know the R500 can't be upgraded to 200.8, so it'll have to remain on 200.7 or switch to standalone firmware. 

ipv6 is not supported in Unleashed so even if this bug is valid, it won't be classified as Unleashed bug.  Unleashed shares the AP library with SmartZone so new Unleashed release would use the newer AP library from SmartZone, and thus if this ipv6 bug does exists, there is a good chance it would be fixed in SmartZone and thus Unleashed benefits from it as well.  Unleashed does not support multi-tenant so if you upgrade to 200.8 or 200.9 (newly released yesterday), you would have to do the whole network.  In your case, the R500 cannot be upgraded to 200.8 onward and thus you are right either stay on 200.7 or standalone, or you can consider Ruckus Cloud which is far better than run it just standalone.

If I switch the R510 to standalone firmware, is there reason to believe the problem will remain, or is it potentially a chipset/hardware limitation on the R510?

ipv6 is fully supported on SmartZone with R510 so no reason to believe hardware limitation.  Worth try the latest standalone firmware to rule this out.

Are there any other configuration tricks to try which might let the R510 work with IPv6 on Unleashed 200.7?  I know that IPv6 is unsupported on Unleashed, but the documentation is very vague about what this means, and having had it actually passing IPv6 traffic correctly on the R500, I was very disappointed to find out that it didn't work at all on the R510.

ipv6 is not supported in Unleashed.  Rather than try standalone, you can isolate your R510 and flash with the latest 200.9 Unleashed to it, then try the ipv6 test.  But do mix your other APs on the network otherwise they will be updated to 200.9 as well, which obviously those older APs (eg: R500) will not be supported.  You can get R510 200.9 here:

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/software/2617-ruckus-unleashed-ap-200-9-10-4-202-ga-release-softw...

[paul_gear_1ignv]

Hi Tony,

Thanks very much for the reply.  When you (and the docs) say "IPv6 is not supported" on Unleashed, what does that mean, precisely?  I know management via IPv6 is not available, but are IPv6 clients also not expected to work?  Is this likely to change in future - for better or worse?

I have reports from a colleague that Unleashed 200.7 with all R510s works fine, so I might try moving the R510 to the master and see if that works.

I'd really prefer my APs to be on a firmware on which IPv6 is officially supported and will continue to be supported in the future.

Thanks in advance,
Paul

[tony_heung]

Hi Paul,

R510 as an AP supports both ipv4 and ipv6, eg: ipv6 client could connect and all the AP CLI supports ipv6 too.

Unleashed as a management / controller platform does not support ipv6, ie: from the management console, you can only see the ipv4 address of the client but won't show both ipv4/v6 in mixed mode.  Another example like setting up the L3 ACL via Unleashed console you could only set ipv4 address and subnet but not ipv6.

Unleashed, SmartZone, RUCKUS Cloud as the controller function would work on the same R510 running the R510 AP firmware supporting ipv6.

I am running 200.9 Unleashed firmware on R510, client to client ipv6 connectivity is fine.

PING6(56=40+8+8 bytes) fe80::1401:54d7:ba32:14b5%en0 --> fe80::14c6:97c1:7a3e:b28f
16 bytes from fe80::14c6:97c1:7a3e:b28f%en0, icmp_seq=0 hlim=64 time=218.095 ms
16 bytes from fe80::14c6:97c1:7a3e:b28f%en0, icmp_seq=1 hlim=64 time=51.307 ms
16 bytes from fe80::14c6:97c1:7a3e:b28f%en0, icmp_seq=2 hlim=64 time=66.994 ms
^C
--- fe80::14c6:97c1:7a3e:b28f ping6 statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 51.307/112.132/218.095/75.200 ms

[paul_gear_1ignv]

Thanks very much Tony.  Good to have another data point.  I'll do some more digging into why the traffic is getting blocked.  It might be some IPv6 security mechanism on the switch.