IPv6 is great, but it still hasn’t fully been implemented by ISPs and other services around the world. IPv6 offers a lot of benefits over IPV4, but the ubiquity of IPv4 still prevails. Most services work around IPv4, leaving IPv6 as somewhat of an afterthought, this can be dangerous when it comes to VPNs, so we take a look at how to prevent an IPv6 breakout.
Why IPv6 VPN breakout are missed
When it comes to many VPNs, whether for enterprises or consumers, they are configured to work just with IPv4. This means that any devices that connect via IPv6, will not have their data routed through the encrypted tunnel, but instead, will be routed outside of it. This is very bad, especially for enterprise networks where filtering of malicious websites is hugely important. It is a bit of a holdover to think that IPv6 support is somewhat limited on devices, but you are likely to find that most devices nowadays support and are configured for IPv6 out of the box.
Most enterprise VPNs make use of no split-tunnelling, this forces all IPv4 connections through the VPN, with no IPv4 queries making outside of the predetermined default IPv4 route. What many security teams fail to do, is to configure a default route for IPv6, leaving these queries to transmit separately of the VPN.
How to prevent IPv6 VPN breakout
The best way to prevent IPv6 breakout is to make sure that IPv6 is enabled on the VPN that is being used. Enterprise networks are full of devices that support IPv6, so it is best to be proactive and make sure that IPv6 connections are configured to make their way through the VPN. Modern software and firewalls should have no problems with this, so it is really on the team maintaining the VPN to make sure that IPv6 is configured.
A much less elegant solution is to completely kill all IPv6 connectivity once connected to the VPN. This isn’t a great solution because it could break services and websites that use IPv6 only, making for a bit of a headache, rather than just configuring it to work properly.
hide.me VPN supports IPv6!
If you are worried about an IPv6 breakout when you are using hide.me VPN, then you don’t have to worry. Our service is configured to work perfectly with both IPv4 and IPv6. We support Ipv6 on all servers across all of our locations. Meaning you don’t have to worry about any IPv6 breakouts, no matter which server you are connected to.
You will find that most VPN services, in fact, do not support IPv6, meaning any IPv6 data is being transmitted outside of your encrypted tunnel. Most VPN services will have you disable IPv6 manually on your device of choice. So, hide.me VPN is ahead of the curve on this one, as you don’t have to do anything. IPv6 works flawlessly with our service, with no user input needed.
With hide,me VPN you don’t need to worry about IPv6 leaks as our servers are oprimized to protect against any leaks.
We love bringing you this content and hope it helps keep you safe and secure online. Feel free to share it with your friends, too.
Here at hide.me we are all about internet freedom, and we are happy to be in a position to bring that to everyone. That is why we give you a 30-day money-back guarantee on our Premium plan. No questions asked and no logs recorded.
If you have any questions, please feel to contact our 24/7 support team either at support@hide.me or via live chat.
