How do I disable IPv6?
You cannot disable a Droplet’s IPv6 interface using the DigitalOcean Control Panel after the Droplet has been activated. However, you can disable it by making changes to its network interface configuration.
Alternatively, you can also block all IPv6 traffic to the Droplet using a cloud firewall rule.
Prerequisites
Altering network configurations can cause you to lose access to your Droplet or other problems. We recommend taking a snapshot of the Droplet before making any changes to its network configuration. You can use the snapshot to rebuild the Droplet to the state it was in at the time when you took the snapshot.
Update Network Interface
Select your Droplet’s OS from the tabs below and follow the instructions to disable its IPv6 address.
To disable the IPv6 address for your Ubuntu or Debian Droplet, open the /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml file using nano or your preferred text editor:
nano /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml
The 50-cloud-init.yaml file contains all of the configuration information for the Droplet’s network interfaces. Comment out the Droplet’s IPv6 address in the addresses field of the eth0 interface:
network:
version: 2
ethernets:
eth0:
accept-ra: false
addresses:
# - 2001:DB8:1:1::7/64
- 203.0.113.7/24
- 198.51.100.12/24
Next, run the following command to apply the updated configuration.
netplan apply
To disable the IPv6 address for your Fedora Droplet, open the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/cloud-init-eth0.nmconnection file using vi or your preferred text editor:
vi /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/cloud-init-eth0.nmconnection
Note
vi opens files in a read-only mode by default. To edit a file in vi, switch to insert mode by pressing the i key.
Once you are done editing the file, press the Esc key to exit insert mode. Then type :wq and press Enter to save and quit the file.
The cloud-init-eth0.nmconnection file contains all of the configuration information for the Droplet’s eth0 network interface. Under the [ipv6] section, comment out the address1 and route1 fields in the file, as shown below:
[ipv6]
method=auto
may-fail=true
# address1=2001:DB8:1:1::7/64
# route1=::/0,2001:DB8:1:1::1
To disable the IPv6 address for your CentOS Droplet, open the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file using vi or your preferred text editor:
vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
vi opens files in a read-only mode by default. To edit a file in vi, switch to insert mode by pressing the i key.
Once you are done editing the file, press the Esc key to exit insert mode. Then type :wq and press Enter to save and quit the file.
The /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file contains all of the configuration information for the Droplet’s eth0 network interface. Comment out the IPV6ADDR field containing the Droplet’s IPv6 address, as shown below:
AUTOCONNECT_PRIORITY=120
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
DEVICE=eth0
GATEWAY=203.0.113.1
HWADDR=6a:b0:bc:ae:73:1c
IPADDR=203.0.113.7
IPADDR1=198.51.100.11
# IPV6ADDR=2001:DB8:1:1::7/64
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFAULTGW=2001:DB8:1:1::1
IPV6_FORCE_ACCEPT_RA=no
MTU=1500
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETMASK1=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=no
After disabling IPv6, save the file and close it. To implement the changes, reboot the Droplet:
reboot
Log back into your Droplet to ensure the Droplet has restarted successfully and is accessible.
Then, run the following command from another machine, such as your local machine’s terminal, to confirm that IPv6 address is not responding.
ping6 <your-droplet-ipv6-address>
