IP addresses let machines communicate across a network. DigitalOcean Droplets are assigned IPv4 addresses by default. Enabling IPv6 on a Droplet gives you access to its 16 additional IPv6 addresses.
IPv6 support is currently a Droplet-exclusive feature. Load balancers, Reserved IPs, and other DigitalOcean products do not currently support IPv6.
To use IPv6, it must be enabled and configured at both ends of a connection: where you’re connecting from (like your home or work network) and where you’re connecting to (like a Droplet). Not all ISPs offer IPv6 addresses for customers, so you may not be able to connect to an IPv6 address directly from your local machine.
We support a maximum of 16 addresses (a subnet mask of /124) per Droplet. Additional addresses are not available.
If the name of an IPv6-enabled Droplet is an FQDN, a PTR record is automatically generated only for the first IPv6 address assigned to the Droplet, not to all 16 addresses available.
You cannot enable IPv6 on Droplets created from custom images.
SMTP traffic over IPv6 is blocked at the network level.
We do not support IPv6 for VPC networking.
IPv6 addresses assigned to a Droplet remain static for the life of the Droplet. Once the Droplet is destroyed, the address is released back into a pool of available addresses in its respective datacenter. Once back in the pool, the chances of obtaining the same address again are unlikely.