Hi everyone, first post, hope this is the right place for some good advice!
I have an odd problem with one device on my network. Here’s a summary:
The router (a Zyxel NR5103Ev2 with a 5G sim in) is set to have all IPv6 functions disabled as far as I can tell. This is because it seems my ISP isn’t great at IPv6, it’s unreliable and over complicated for me.
All the Windows PCs on the network also have IPv6 disabled in network settings, and their connection is stable.
However, my wife’s desktop computer, supplied and managed by her work, has started dropping its network connection. It’s a managed machine with admin rights password protected. We had admin access, and I had disabled IPv6 on this machine and all was good. The machine recently went back to the IT admins for a hardware update, and while it was there IPv6 was enabled and the admin password was changed. We don’t have the new password and IT won’t give it to us.
The symptoms are this:
Does anyone have any ideas I could try to keep this PC from dropping its connection?
I have an odd problem with one device on my network. Here’s a summary:
The router (a Zyxel NR5103Ev2 with a 5G sim in) is set to have all IPv6 functions disabled as far as I can tell. This is because it seems my ISP isn’t great at IPv6, it’s unreliable and over complicated for me.
All the Windows PCs on the network also have IPv6 disabled in network settings, and their connection is stable.
However, my wife’s desktop computer, supplied and managed by her work, has started dropping its network connection. It’s a managed machine with admin rights password protected. We had admin access, and I had disabled IPv6 on this machine and all was good. The machine recently went back to the IT admins for a hardware update, and while it was there IPv6 was enabled and the admin password was changed. We don’t have the new password and IT won’t give it to us.
The symptoms are this:
- On boot, the computer connects and finds an IPv4 address.
- After a few minutes of browsing, the system tray indicates that internet access has been lost. However, some sites still load, just very slowly, while others don’t work at all. What does and doesn’t connect seems random.
- While the connection is out, a ping test to 1.1.1.1 completes with no issue. A ping to www.google.com also completes, but oddly it uses the IPv6 address not IPv4.
- Windows network troubleshooter tells me I need sign-in info from my ISP - this is nonsense, I don’t, and I'm sure the troubleshooter is rubbish anyway.
- Physically unplugging the network cable then reconnecting it can cause the internet to reconnect as normal, but it drops again pretty soon afterwards.
- Why would this PC continue to try to use IPv6 when it is on a network with no IPv6 functionality?
- How, if IPv6 is off on the router, is this PC able to resolve and ping an IPv6 address? I’ve set LAN-side IPv6 to off, cellular APN to IPv4 only, and the active Cellular WAN IPv6 option to ‘No’. Is IPv6 actually still on somewhere, and is there anything else I can do to fully disable it?
- Is there any way I can disable IPv6 locally on this machine without admin access?
- Is there anything I can do on the router side to try to stop this single machine trying to fall back to IPv6 and failing? I wondered about setting a static route in the router settings for this one computer - any use?
Does anyone have any ideas I could try to keep this PC from dropping its connection?