Why don’t IPv6-only providers offer an IPv4 reverse proxy (e.g., via Nginx) for HTTP/HTTPS?
I’ve noticed that some providers now offer IPv6-only VPS plans, which is a good step forward. What I find curious, though, is that most of them only provide IPv4 port forwarding rather than an HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy.
Port forwarding certainly works in some cases, but it can feel limited when the goal is to host websites. With just forwarding, managing multiple domains or virtual hosts gets awkward. By contrast, an IPv4 reverse proxy (for example, using Nginx or HAProxy at the provider’s edge) could accept connections on IPv4 and pass them over IPv6 to the VPS. That would make it much simpler for end users to run websites on IPv6-only servers without extra layers of infrastructure on their own.
So I’m curious:
1. Since IPv4 port forwarding is already offered, why isn’t reverse proxying for HTTP/HTTPS more common?
2. Are there technical challenges or scaling issues that make it impractical?
3. Or is it simply that demand hasn’t been strong enough for providers to implement it?
I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows the reasoning behind this, or if providers themselves have considered it, I’d really like to hear from you on this. Because from my point of view, for website hosting, IPv4 reverse proxying would make IPv6-only offerings far more appealing to everyone, since IPv6 is still not offered by many ISPs.
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Meh just use cloudflare
/s
The all seeing eye sees everything...
That... is actually a very good recommendation. It’s something I’ve suggested to others in the past, but embarrassingly managed to forget about myself until I saw your post.
Cloudflare really does solve the problem neatly: you can take an IPv6-only VPS and instantly make it accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6 for HTTP/HTTPS, while also gaining the benefits of a global CDN, caching, and a decent layer of DDoS protection. It’s hard to argue with the convenience of that setup.
That said, it does shift the dependency onto a third-party service rather than keeping things fully within the provider’s own infrastructure. For many people that’s perfectly fine, maybe even preferable, but I still think it would be interesting if more providers explored the idea of offering their own lightweight IPv4 reverse proxy solution alongside port forwarding. It feels like it could strike a nice balance: IPv6-first hosting that’s still practical for websites without needing to lean on external services and the potential cost that may come from that.
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IPv6-only plans are offered to keep prices down. If a provider offers a proxy service, they will have to spend a lot of time handling abuse complaints, and time is money.
I assume it's mostly because the big panels (e.g., Virtualizor, VirtFusion, etc) haven't implemented that feature, so it'd be hard for a provider to offer it. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I've only used VirtFusion very briefly in the past)
It'd be cool to add but it'd be pretty complicated to implement for a feature that realistically a lot of users wouldn't use due to Cloudflare being able to proxy for free.
We are working on something similar for our new panel (implementing load balancers) and it's somewhat complex to have to deal with setting up SSL certificates, services, etc along with monitoring things like connections.
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Reverse proxy = forward "incoming" request from the main server to the IPv6 VM.
So the abuse is the same as if the user uses the VPS with IPv6 only.
Nginx Proxy Manager is readily available, and it has a API for creating reverse proxies. Granted, like you mentioned, this is a bit of extra work for the provider since most control panel does not support it. But on the other hand, this would make their IPv6 more competitive.
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it’s not technical - it’s liability and ops overhead
most vps providers wanna stay infrastructure-only
why build a complex proxy layer for 3% of customers? providers won’t touch this until ipv6 is unavoidable
The problem with forwarding through a reverse proxy - and we did check it as an idea - is that, in order to successfully reverse proxy, you either need to have it supported at the main panels, or need to have a domain (at least a subdomain) associated with each IP you're reverse proxying to through, for example, Nginx or something. Implementing it manually by request (creating or changing a domain) does not cut it, the sheer ticket volume it would create is not sustainable.
To make it reasonably feasible and possible to automate at a server level, you'd need to preallocate the subdomains (on your own purchased domain) to each IP at your registrar, prior to any server launch, which in turn is most optimized to do that way if the registrar has an API you can use to mass update this.
Several registrars have technical limits on the number of records you can allocate to them for a single domain or account. Several registrars do not even offer an API.
Since that is not supported at the main panels, that leaves a provider with 2 options:
a) implement it manually, losing lots of time, patience and generating additional tickets for something not directly controlled on the panel, implying loss of money;
b) not implement it at all and save all the hassle, and the customer, if it is wanted, can proxy the access through Cloudflare or something.
Naturally providers go through option 2.
Not really, people looking to host a website with cp, malware or whatever will probably want to have connectivity over IP4, not only IPv6.
I do it's called a load balancer
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Good point. But that is also what separates most providers from the large cloud providers.
AWS, OCI, Azure, GCP, they all provide both infrastructure and software solutions.
Some LowEnd providers here are already working on building their own custom control panels.
Maybe it’s only a matter of time before some of them decide to move up a level and differentiate themselves this way?
Ya, makes sense. Providers aren’t going to put in the extra work for a feature that won’t directly earn them more revenue. And as long as IPv6-only VPSes still sell at a decent rate, there isn’t much incentive to make them more attractive either. The lack of registrar APIs and panel support makes the idea even harder to justify.
I mean, the same providers ARE already offering dual-stack (IPv4 + IPv6) servers. So they’re already dealing with the exact same abuse scenarios. And like many have pointed out, using Cloudflare doesn’t magically remove that risk either. Cloudflare just forwards abuse complaints back to the provider anyway!
Fair point... Load balancers are essentially doing the same thing. The difference, though, is that most load balancers are priced and marketed as premium add-ons, while a lightweight HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy for IPv6-only plans could potentially be positioned as a simple accessibility layer. But yeah, functionally it’s not far off from what a managed load balancer already provides.
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@somik I feel as James felt if you want to host a site cheaply and it falls into the category if Micronode you should be able to do it in house and pretty easily.
Right now it does not support sockets but, after the lxc upgrade I will be working on it. The lxc upgrade will be rolled out before January 26.
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Doesn't both nginx and apache have build in support for load balancers? Apache with it's module "mod_proxy_balancer", nginx with it's "upstream" method.
Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones to make.
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Well yes and no honestly, Apache and Nginx both support load balancing but use different methods.
Apache uses the mod_proxy and mod_proxy_balancer modules. Administrators define backend servers in Proxy balancer blocks and choose algorithms such as round robin or least connections. Session stickiness and health checks can also be configured.
Nginx uses upstream blocks in its configuration. Server pools, load-balancing methods like round robin, IP hash, or least connections, and health checks are specified there.
Apache treats load balancing as a module. Nginx treats it as a core function. Both work just using different approaches is all.
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You'd be surprised to find out there's some providers out there that don't even offer NAT64/v4/6to4 peering.
I was shocked when I had just freshly installed Debian 13 onto a storage v6-only VPS I got, and when I went to rclone data to it from a v4-only host, I found out it couldn't establish IPv4 connections in general.
Had to serve using a third server as a relay.
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I've been around since ipv4 NAT vps were without IPv6 at all, so not really surprised. Heck, my ISP didn't offer IPv6 till just a few years ago!
Btw, which host was it? Is it still around or was just a summer host?
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Still around, here in LES with us..! Won't spit the name publicly though.
L**....
My ISP (Softbank) provides IPv6 at an additional cost, roughly $10/mo extra on top of my already high Internet bill.
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Given my ISP charges $30 for 6gbps with free branded wifi router and ipv6, i feel like i shouldn't be complaining...
Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones to make.
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Yikes! I pay $56/mo for 1.1 Gbps, bring-your-own-router and a lot of PPPoE pain.
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I think all the old LES plans offered this back when LES was a loss-leader offering from InceptionHosting and friends
Almost all of them, right? Hetzner and Scaleway didn't last time I checked. The only time I've seen it was at v6node.
Yea, that's what I remember as well... But they stopped offering at some point and clearly that didn't affect their bottom line, meaning it's not a popular feature...
So it's the other way around. He means IPv6 only VPS cant connect to any IPv4 servers. Meaning they are basically useless since many servers online are IPv4 only.
Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones to make.
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right.
I know. The IPv6-only VPS from these providers cannot connect to any IPv4 servers as far as I can tell. I used wireguard from a dual stack host as a workaround. Maybe there's a better way.
I'd be interested to hear if you know about other IPv6-only vps with NAT64. I have only seen it at v6node.
@cservers ?
You are joking... So not even dedicated IPv6, nor IPv4? It's just a RDP (without RDP) at this point! Can use as storage servers maybe?
Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones to make.
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right.
Ipv6onlyhosting.com
The all seeing eye sees everything...
socat/ssh tunnel/playit/ngrok is sadly the way
datalix's aff #1 fan
Tor exit node it is
Never make the same mistake twice. There are so many new ones to make.
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right.
What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.
It doesn't even make technical sense, how would a VPS we'd sell have internet with that......
Ok, clarifying what we do: we have an IPv6 /64 dedicated, and we have NAT64/DNS64 also included there by default, which does allow you to communicate to IPv4 hosts and recieve their responses. It's usually most usable to access IPv4-only websites, for example. We also have, at fixed port ranges per IP, NAT IPv4 connectivity, which goes through the dedicated server's IPv4 in TCP and UDP (and naturally TCP works best), outbound and inbound. The Knowledge Base was also recently improved in regards to this system.
No other host at SolusVM 2 offers all of these, as far as we know, and it's really the only way of doing it because of the way OpenVSwitch handles and integrates with the system. There are some hosts that have NAT64/DNS64, there are hosts with NAT, but both realities usually never coexist.
And we have storage servers as well now, on the US. Up to 2TB.
RDP, on the other hand, is something that always needs to have an IP available and precommunicate at 3389, and they usually even are IPv4 private. And sometimes even faking locations, which we don't do, for example... it's very, very different.
Hope this clarifies it for you and any further questions we are here.
And this is precisely what we attempt to address. Because no IPv4 at all, not even NAT ports or NAT64, just doesn't cut it when around 50% of the Internet is still on IPv4 only. Maybe in 3-4 years we'll get to a point where it will be more comfortable, but for now it is what it is...
... and then there's this nonsense some ISPs do. Hoping at least it's a decent /64, not even a /128. That amount per month pays a /40 or a /36 on IPv6 at this moment.
PI even.
I have a /40 PA for doing business with my current LIR.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
That makes sense. @skorous was listing you as a good provider like v6node that has NAT64. I think it's pretty rare. I'm glad to get confirmation that this is correct though.