IPV6 DNS problems

[drysofar]

For a few days now I have had issues on my Home assistant virtual machine with integratons unable to connect to services or very slow.  After much testing I found I could not ping servers that returned an IPV6 address, but on windows I could because I have the Google dns servers set manually. On my Nas, and my Home assistant VM I had to either set a prference for IPV4 adresses or dissable IPV6 entirely to get them working properly. If I do any IPV6 tests on various sites they all say IPV6 is not available.

Have there been recent changes to the dns system that sky uses?

[Chrisee]

@drysofar no changes as far we have been told. When Sky DNS misbehaves powering down the hub for an hour should force a change in connection which can byoass a nodecwhich is not working correctly.

[-rpnz-]

Hi @drysofar 

There are currently no known issues with resolving IPv6 DNS records specifically, Sky's recursive DNS platform in general, nor IPv6 in general.

Are you able to provide examples of the hosts you're trying to ping please, what IPs they're resolving to,  and if the results are different between Sky's recursive DNS and Google's, please include what Google's DNS resolve the examples to also?

[drysofar]

The site I discovered it on was for the Home assistant HACS integration, the site it uses is get.hacs.xyz if I pinged it on my PC which is set to the google dns 8.8.4.4 then it resolved to 104.26.6.112, however if I tried on my Nas, my Home assistant VM or another Ubuntu VM which use the router dns settings it would resolve to an IPV6 address but not return any pings. The HACS integration would hang but seemed to eventually connect after many minutes, but as soon as I dissabled IPV6 on the VM it worked instantly, and returned a ping from the ipv4 address. This seems to have happened after I had to reset the router last week when everything stopped working one evening.

[-rpnz-]

If you can provide the IPv6 address that get.hacs.xyz resolves to on the hosts that are having issues, we should be able to rule out DNS.   Then it is most likely a more general issue with IPv6 within your home network, with hosts thinking that they have working IPv6 connectivity, but something is dropping the packets.  

What router are you using, and do you have any other routers/devices in the middle that could be impacting routing?  Is the VM baremetal/hypervisor routing or bridging the network interfaces?

Does your PC have working IPv6 connectivity? (try browsing to https://test-ipv6.com/ )

[Brommers1]

Hi, just had a visit from a sky tech centre guy regarding orange VOIP light issues causing wifi to drop until rebooted. He immediately said that it was not a hardware or wifi issue with my equipment but and ongoing server issue with Sky involving IPV6 issues following changeover to full fibre.  Apparently they are working to find the solution but none found yet. Great to have someone with actual knowledge and prepared to talk about issues openly. 

[-rpnz-]

Hi @Brommers1 ,

Sadly there are only so many ways to communicate issues using the status LEDs on the Sky Hub. Some engineers have learnt that our voice services are delivered over IPv6, and perhaps incorrectly presume that all voice issues are IPv6-related.  If the voice LED is amber but https://test-ipv6.com/ shows OK results, then it's probably not IPv6-related, but rather something more specific to the voice service itself.

If https://test-ipv6.com/  shows broken IPv6 connectivity, the voice LED is amber, but all other services and websites are working, then it could indeed be an IPv6-related issue, but it's rare to have an issue only impacting IPv6 and not the complete broadband service.

If the Internet LED is green, voice LED is amber, and aboslutely nothing is working, then that may indicate a DNS issue, as the Internet LED doesn't currently check that.  You can validate this by pinging an IP address directly, such as `ping 8.8.8.8`; if even that doesn't work, then something more fundamental is broken, and perhaps the Internet LED just hasn't caught it yet.

[Brommers1]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated. It would be great to get this level of information to the support advisors whose script seems very limited and designed to push back on the user and not admitting that there are any server issues that might be responsible. If/when it goes the next time I will try the tests you suggest. Cheers, Martin

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@drysofar wrote:

For a few days now I have had issues on my Home assistant virtual machine with integratons unable to connect to services or very slow.  After much testing I found I could not ping servers that returned an IPV6 address, but on windows I could because I have the Google dns servers set manually. On my Nas, and my Home assistant VM I had to either set a prference for IPV4 adresses or dissable IPV6 entirely to get them working properly. If I do any IPV6 tests on various sites they all say IPV6 is not available.

Have there been recent changes to the dns system that sky uses?

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[Brommers1]

Hi, just ran the IPv6 test you mentioned, even though my system has no orange light at the moment. It passed except for the DNS server run by your ISP appears to have no access to teh IPv6 Internet. The note says that the DNS resolver is using IPv4 to reach the internet instead??

[-rpnz-]

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@Brommers1 wrote:

 It passed except for the DNS server run by your ISP appears to have no access to teh IPv6 Internet. The note says that the DNS resolver is using IPv4 to reach the internet instead??

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Yes that's perfectly fine, IPv6 DNS (AAAA) records can be resolved over IPv4 transport, and the majority of customers are using our IPv4-only recursive DNS servers for the moment.

Those with the newer Sky Max Hub, however, use our new IPv6 recursive DNS platform, which is dual-stacked north-bound, so this warning message from the test-ipv6.com website, should no longer show up for them.

[Brommers1]

Thanks again. Getting a bit too technical for me. All I really want is a permanent solution the the orange voip and losing WiFi as a result. Not a problem when at home, but we travel a lot and losing our security cameras then is a big deal for us. This has happened to us twice now.

[Jsz1]

Hi, glass glass customer here. 
coincidentally we've been having issues since July which got to a point last month where we couldn't watch any live programs on Sky glass. All other streaming services and apps in and outside glass worked fine.

A very long call with Sky didn't take us any closer to identifying the issue.

Luckily we had a call with a tech guy from EE who put us on the right track. After a couple of troubleshooting attempts my partner disabled IPV6 on our router and Sky glass is working again.

Shame we had to go through the process of replacing a Sky glass, trialling different broadbands when the solution is relatively simple.

I am just appalled a company like Sky is unable to connect the dots and help their customers while EE already figured most things out. They seem to just ignore loads of dissatisfied Sky customers out there damaging the company's and Sky glass's reputation.

[-rpnz-]

Hi @Jsz1 

Is this on EE broadband?