This topic

IPv6 address reported by the BT smart hub 2

fibre-hobo — Fri, 28 May 2021 18:43:06 GMT

Hi all,

I've noticed that all of the ipv6 addresses that are shown in the BT smart hub 2 http://192.168.1.254/IPv6.htm page differs from the ipv6 address that is consistently reported by internet services that are able to report/detect my current ipv6 address.

i.e. Google, icanhazip.com, whatismyipaddress.com all agree on what my ipv6 address is but the BT smart hub doesn't show this same address.

Does anyone know why this is?

Thanks!

Re: IPv6 address reported by the BT smart hub 2

licquorice — Fri, 28 May 2021 19:20:20 GMT

The IPv6 addresses reported in the hub manager aren't the IPv6 address of your device, they are they addresses of the hub WAN. If you look at the address reported by your network adapter, it will be the same as that reported by What's my IP etc.

IPv6 is very different to IPv4, each device has a public IPv6 address rather than a private address translated from a common public address in IPv4.

Re: IPv6 address reported by the BT smart hub 2

fibre-hobo — Fri, 28 May 2021 19:31:12 GMT

i.e. this is what is being presented by the smart hub 2 here as my IPv6 WAN global unicast address:

where a global unicast address is supposed to represent the unique IPv6 address assigned.

The problem with this as far as I can see is that 2a00:23c7:4603:2100::1/64 is not really an IPv6 unicast address, it is a range of addresses where my real IPv6 address is in the IPv6 address range that is described by the2a00:23c7:4603:2100 IPv6 prefix part before :: and the prefix length part after :: 1/64.

Am I wrong? Is this a bug?

Re: IPv6 address reported by the BT smart hub 2

licquorice — Fri, 28 May 2021 19:47:26 GMT

No its not a bug. As I said, the hub isn't reporting your device IPv6 address, it is reporting the prefix. What's my IP etc is reporting your device address derived from the prefix.

If you check your address from more than one device with What's my IP you will see that they are different.

Re: IPv6 address reported by the BT smart hub 2

fibre-hobo — Fri, 28 May 2021 19:54:34 GMT

Thanks, I understand what you've said and I agree that what whatismyipaddress.com manages to report as the IPv6 address is not the IPv6 address of the smart hub and that it is the IPv6 address of the requesting device. This has cleared up some confusion and I appreciate your input.

However I still feel that there is some sort of terminology issue here in so far as the smart hub describes 2a00:23c7:4603:2100::1/64 as a unicast address when that's not really what it is. If this was an IPv6 unicast address then surely this would be showing the single unique IPv6 address that is assigned to the smart hub .. for whatever that's worth.

This is not really an issue, it's just a point of discussion I guess.