Disabling IPV6 on WAN

[TyShawn]

Quick question did Meraki devs ever give a reason why we don't have the ability to disable IPv6 on the WAN interface? I know it's a minor gripe, but in the early release days this rollout caused an issue with our branches.

[RaphaelL]

Great question and I wished we could do it... 

Not everybody cares or supports ipv6.

[TyShawn]

I agree and this is the only solution that I don't have control over this function.

[SeanW]

@AmyReyes - Sorry to tag you but do you know who in Meraki could could hop on and speak to this question for us?

[AmyReyes]

Hi @SeanW, no need to apologize! That's what I'm here for 😊. Let me ask around and see if we have someone who could answer. 

[yaypingworks]

I need to do that as well for one site, but I was planning on just assigning a bogus IP address basically disabling it

[RaulR]

Amy reached out out of band, so I am hoping to help answer the question.

There are several reasons why disabling IPv6 on WAN interfaces is not supported, but I'll focus on the main ones.  Firstly, our cloud-connected products are designed to provide management flexibility using IPv4, IPv6, or both, ensuring they are future-proof.  Secondly, similar to IPv4, we maintain this approach for Dual Stack to avoid unnecessary complexity, as disabling IPv6 is not a widely requested feature.

Additionally, when IPv6 is enabled on the MX WAN uplink, it is limited to MX communications and does not impact client traffic or behavior. This is particularly true if the LAN/VLANs are not configured for IPv6, as no IPv6 prefix is available or expected to be delegated in this setup.  If IPv6 is not desired at all, it can often be disabled on the upstream device itself too.

[TyShawn]

@RaulR 

Much respect on the Team's thoughts and feelings on having the ability to enable or disable IPV6 on the WAN, but I can share the fact my personal issues with this choice was met with a lot of pushback from the sales team to get this data to the right people. Also the fact that we the admins like to have the ability to even see any aspect of IPv6 on our network should be due our choice. I have multiple vendors from free open source to top 3 vendors including Cisco popper that gives me this choice.

I will say my initial problem I ran into when you guys first released the firmware that enabled IPv6 on the WAN has been resolved, but like my self and others have stated "We just want the option". 

[RaulR]

Hi @TyShawn 

I'm glad to hear that the initial issues you encountered with our firmware update that introduced IPv6 have been resolved.  I appreciate your feedback and understand the importance of having control over network configurations.  We strive to align our products with the needs of our users, balancing simplicity with providing necessary options.

I apologize for any difficulty you experienced when communicating your concerns initially, and I assure you that your input is valued.  We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work towards implementing more functionality and give this request further consideration in the future.

Thank you for your continued support.

[TyShawn]

Thanks for your time in responding to this post. Sorry for the typos I was working on a small fire when I saw you replied and I wanted to respond quickly :). I don't want to turn this into the me show, so if any of the other forum members would want to share their thoughts please do :).