1

I bought a 2nd router and I want both routers to have direct WAN access to the modem.

One of the 2 routers directs VOIP traffic to a telephone line port. This VOIP service is provided by the cable carrier which also leases the modem & the router. The cable company technician told me that this VOIP line uses IPv6 addressing and therefore I must employ an IPv6 capable/compliant Giga Hub/Switch or my telephone line won't work anymore.

  1. Pls advise me (brand/model) an IPv6 compliant, 2 port, switch to purchase.

  2. Pls educate me: By reading this forum I thought that hubs broadcast traffic to all ports, regardless of which input/output is being used and so, theoretically, they have nothing to do with IP. Correct? Same story for unmanaged switches, where the only difference is that these latter devices route traffic only to those ports which are detected to be in use. Correct? I also understood that unmanaged switches route traffic simply by detecting hardware use and not by selecting specific IP traffic. Correct? Finally, there are managed switches which DO select traffic based on IP and, therefore, only these managed switches are involved with IPv6...

Why would my cable company explicitly tell me, over and over, that I must use an IPv6 compliant switch? Why would they need a managed switch instead of an unmanaged one?

Thanks in advance for helping me understand!

Improve this question
1
  • I can't figure out what they're talking about, and you don't really have enough information here. So: What model equipment do you have and how is it connected? Who is the cable company?
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 0:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Based on what I think you describe: you don't need a managed switch. Switches work on layer-2 (ethernet) and don't care about layer-3 (where IPv4 and IPv6 are). Sometimes if you have expensive switches that try to be smart the switch does look at layer-3 things for i.e. security filtering. A simple small switch won't do that, so any switch will do.

Based on your description I can't promise that attaching two routers to your uplink will work though. You'll need the correct addressing and routing, and I have no idea about how your setup works.

But the switch won't be the problem :-)

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .