How to Turn Off IPv6

Contrary to anything else you have heard in the media, IPv6 has not really gone anywhere. You still use IPv4 addresses to browse the Internet. What this actually means for your devices is that they have a heavy overhead to translate any IPv6 traffic you initiate, receive or transfer through them into IPv4 (and vice versa). This is called the 6-to-4 network. At the moment, if IPv6 is enabled on a device, its network performance actually goes down.

If you run your own network at home, it is less than likely that you have a pure IPv6 network at home, since quite a few of our devices simply cannot talk IPv6.

Here’s how you would turn it off on various devices.

Windows PC, Laptop or Tablet

1. Press the START Key on your keyboard along with “R” (START+R) to bring up the little “Run” dialog. Type in “Control Panel” (with space, without quotes) and press ENTER.
2. Find the “Network and Sharing Center” (name may differ based on the Windows version, but will start with “Network”). And open it.
3. On the left hand side, find and click on “Change adapter settings”.
4. Right-click in an empty area on that window and select View > Details. This will switch the window to a tabular display. Find the item that says “Internet access” under “Connectivity” column.
5. Right-click this item and select Properties. You may be prompted to confirm and enter your password. Do so.
6. Scroll through the list of items with check boxes against them and find the one that says “Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)”. Remove the check mark against it. Don’t click OK yet!
7. Now click on the “Configure…” button on top.
8. You will get another small window. If it does not have a tabbed page that says “Advanced”, you may close this window.
9. Go to the Advanced tabbed page. Scroll down the list of items on the left hand side. When you find anything with “IPv6” against it, click on the item and select “Disabled” from the values that appear on the right hand side. Once you have finished, click OK.
10. Click OK on the properties dialog.

Your network connection will be reset as the network card and other things are disabled and brought back online. This will take a few seconds. You do not need to reboot.

Internet Router

The steps and text mentioned here may vary based on the make and model of your Router. These should be fairly the same if you have a Linksys or a Cisco home router with Wifi and Internet options.

Remember to click Save Settings after making each change. The router will take a couple of seconds to save and reload with your settings on each save.

1. Logon to the Router’s web interface. Typically this is http://192.168.1.1. Yours may differ.
2. If you have a page or menu option called “Setup”, try to find an “IPv6 Setup” under that. Under this, set the option to Disabled. If you also see an option for “6rd Tunnel”, set it to Disabled as well.
3. If you have a page for Applications/Gaming (where you set up port forwarding, etc.), check for an “IPv6 Firewall”. Ensure everything is blank or disabled on this screen.
4. Reboot your Router.