Docker containers with IPv6 behind NAT

WARNING

In production IPv6 should always be used without NAT. Only use IPv6 and NAT for testing purposes. There is no valid reason to use IPv6 with NAT in any production environment.

IPv6 and NAT

IPv6 is designed to remove the need for NAT and that is a very, very good thing. NAT breaks Peer-to-Peer connections and that is exactly what is one of the great things of IPv6. Every device on the internet gets it’s own public IP-Address again.

Docker and IPv6

Support for IPv6 in Docker has been there for a while now. It is disabled by default however. The documentation describes on how to enable it.

I wanted to enable IPv6 on my Docker setup on my laptop running Ubuntu, but as my laptop is a mobile device the IPv6 prefix I have changes when I move to a different location. IPv6 Prefix Delegation isn’t available at every IPv6-enabled location either, so I wanted to figure out if I could enable IPv6 in my Docker setup locally and use NAT to have my containers reach the internet over IPv6.

At home I have IPv6 via ZeelandNet and at the office we have a VDSL connection from XS4All. When I’m on a remote location I enable our OpenVPN tunnel which has IPv6 enabled. This way I always have IPv6 available.

The Docker documentation shows that enabling IPv6 is very easy. I modified the systemd service file of docker and added a fixed IPv6 CIDR:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd --ipv6 --fixed-cidr-v6="fd00::/64" -H fd://

fd00::/64 is a Site-Local IPv6 subnet (deprecated) which can be safely used.

I then added a NAT rule into ip6tables so that it would NAT for me:

sudo ip6tables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s fd00::/64 -j MASQUERADE

Result

My Docker containers now get a IPv6 Address as can be seen below:

root@da80cf3d8532:~# ip -6 a
1: lo:  mtu 65536 state UNKNOWN qlen 1
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
15: eth0@if16:  mtu 1500 state UP 
    inet6 fd00::242:ac11:2/64 scope global nodad 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::42:acff:fe11:2/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
root@da80cf3d8532:~#

In this case the address is fd00::242:ac11:2 which as assigned by Docker.

Since my laptop has IPv6 I can now ping pcextreme.nl from my Docker container.

root@da80cf3d8532:~# ping6 -c 3 pcextreme.nl -n
PING pcextreme.nl (2a00:f10:101:0:46e:c2ff:fe00:93): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a00:f10:101:0:46e:c2ff:fe00:93: icmp_seq=0 ttl=61 time=14.368 ms
64 bytes from 2a00:f10:101:0:46e:c2ff:fe00:93: icmp_seq=1 ttl=61 time=16.132 ms
64 bytes from 2a00:f10:101:0:46e:c2ff:fe00:93: icmp_seq=2 ttl=61 time=15.790 ms
--- pcextreme.nl ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 14.368/15.430/16.132/0.764 ms
root@da80cf3d8532:~#

Again, this should ONLY be used for testing purposes. For production IPv6 Prefix Delegation is the route to go down.

Using the Link-Local Address of IPv6

Link Local

One of the things not know to people is the functionality a Link-Local Address with IPv6 provides.

You might have seen them on your Linux (or any other) system. For example, on my Linux system:

wido@desktop:~$ ip addr show dev eth1
3: eth1:  mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:8f:9f:af:62 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.0.199.15/16 brd 10.0.255.255 scope global eth1
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::5054:8fff:fe9f:af62/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
wido@desktop:~$

As you can see, my Link-Local Address in this case is fe80::5054:8fff:fe9f:af62. What can I do with it?

What is it used for?

With IPv6 the Link-Local Address is used for multiple purposes:

  • Finding Routers using a Router Solicitation
  • Performing Duplicate Address Detection
  • Finding Neighbors

The Link-Local is however a fully functional address which you can use for multiple things.

Using Link-Local

Here at the office my colleague has a desktop and his Link-Local Address is fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08.

So can I ping the address?

wido@wido-desktop:~$ ping6 fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08
connect: Invalid argument
wido@wido-desktop:~$

No, that doesn’t seem to work. Or does it?

wido@wido-desktop:~$ ping6 -I eth0 -c 2 fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08
PING fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08(fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08) from fe80::c23f:d5ff:fe68:2808 eth0: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.566 ms
64 bytes from fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.612 ms

--- fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.566/0.589/0.612/0.023 ms
wido@wido-desktop:~$

So when I specify the interface I can ping his desktop!

You can also specify the interface this way: fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0

wido@wido-desktop:~$ ping6 -c 2 fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0
PING fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0(fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.539 ms
64 bytes from fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.481 ms

--- fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.481/0.510/0.539/0.029 ms
wido@wido-desktop:~$

So can I SSH to it or do anything else with it?

wido@wido-desktop:~$ ssh fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0
The authenticity of host 'fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0 (fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is d8:d7:d0:bd:3c:6a:18:31:e5:26:b1:13:96:a8:e1:89.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
wido@fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0's password: 

wido@wido-desktop:~$

Indeed, I can! I can also telnet to the address:

wido@wido-desktop:~$ telnet fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0 22
Trying fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0...
Connected to fe80::821f:2ff:fed6:5f08%eth0.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.9
^]quit

telnet> quit
Connection closed.
wido@wido-desktop:~$

It is a functional address which you can use on your local network.

Security

Even if you think IPv6 is disabled on your system because you haven’t configured it, it isn’t.

Should you disable IPv6 then? No! Learn to work with it. IPv4 space is running out very quickly, so disabling it is not a wise thing to do.

Just make sure your firewall policies for both IPv4 and IPv6 are up to date. I’ve seen many systems where IPv6 isn’t firewalled at all, which makes them open to anybody on the local network.

Link-Local Addresses are not routed over the internet, so somebody has to gain access to the local Layer 2 LAN before it can connect via Link-Local, but still, keep it in mind.