Tag Archives: IPv4 Thinking

FortiGate Enables NAT for IPv6 by Default 🤦

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Fortinet has a misstep in its IPv6 settings: NAT66 is enabled by default for every policy. Not only does this make no technical sense and go against established best practices, but in my view, there’s an even bigger issue at play here:

Given the widespread use of FortiGate devices and the still limited level of IPv6 expertise among many administrators, this default setting risks creating false knowledge. Many admins may come away believing that NAT for IPv6 is just as normal as it is for IPv4 – after all, it’s enabled out of the box. And as with any default, people will quickly get used to it.

In this blog post, I’ll therefore look at a few practical workarounds to move away from this approach as quickly as possible.

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Bad IPv6 Approaches

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I just got a few emails from an administrator of a medium-sized company, asking some IPv6 questions. They want to use IPv6 to reach the Internet, using two ISPs, while remaining IPv4-only on their internal networks. For whatever reason, they came across three different ideas that were almost completely wrong, speaking of a sound IPv6 design. But why? Maybe because IPv4 thinking is a bigger problem than we ever thought? Or because admins rely on firewall vendors (like Fortinet) that suggest completely wrong network approaches?

Let’s dig into some misconceptions concerning IPv6:

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Why counting IPv6 Addresses is nonsense

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From time to time I stumble upon Tweets about counting the number of IPv6 addresses (1 2 3). While I think it is ok to do it that way when you’re new to IPv6 and you want to get an idea of it, it does not make sense at all because the mere number of IPv6 addresses is ridiculously high and only theoretically, but has no relevance for the real-world at all. Let me state why:

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