Why don’t IPv6-only providers offer an IPv4 reverse proxy (e.g., via Nginx) for HTTP/HTTPS?

somik · September 2025

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.

terrorgen · September 2025

Meh just use cloudflare
/s

somik · September 2025

@terrorgen said:
Meh just use cloudflare
/s

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.

xvps · September 2025

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.

Advin · September 2025

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.

somik · September 2025

@xvps said:
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.

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.

@Advin said:
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 supporting that feature.

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.

DariaVPS · September 2025

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

cservers · September 2025

@somik said:
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.

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.

rcy026 · September 2025

@somik said:

@xvps said:
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.

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.

Not really, people looking to host a website with cp, malware or whatever will probably want to have connectivity over IP4, not only IPv6.

AuroraZero · September 2025

@somik said:
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.

I do it's called a load balancer

somik · September 2025

@DariaVPS said:
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

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?

@cservers said:

@somik said:
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.

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.

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.

@rcy026 said:

@somik said:

@xvps said:
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.

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.

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 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!

@AuroraZero said:

@somik said:
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.

I do it's called a load balancer

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.

AuroraZero · September 2025

@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.

somik · September 2025

@AuroraZero said:
@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.

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.

AuroraZero · September 2025

@somik said:

@AuroraZero said:
@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.

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.

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.

yucchun · September 2025

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.

somik · September 2025

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

yucchun · September 2025

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

somik · September 2025

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

Given my ISP charges $30 for 6gbps with free branded wifi router and ipv6, i feel like i shouldn't be complaining...

yucchun · September 2025

@somik said:

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

Given my ISP charges $30 for 6gbps with free branded wifi router and ipv6, i feel like i shouldn't be complaining...

Yikes! I pay $56/mo for 1.1 Gbps, bring-your-own-router and a lot of PPPoE pain.

mwt · September 2025

I think all the old LES plans offered this back when LES was a loss-leader offering from InceptionHosting and friends

@yucchun said:
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.

Almost all of them, right? Hetzner and Scaleway didn't last time I checked. The only time I've seen it was at v6node.

somik · September 2025

@mwt said:
I think all the old LES plans offered this back when LES was a loss-leader offering from InceptionHosting and friends

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...

@mwt said:

@yucchun said:
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.

Almost all of them, right? Hetzner and Scaleway didn't last time I checked. The only time I've seen it was at v6node.

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.

mwt · September 2025

@somik said:

@mwt said:

@yucchun said:
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.

Almost all of them, right? Hetzner and Scaleway didn't last time I checked. The only time I've seen it was at v6node.

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.

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.

skorous · September 2025

@mwt said:

@somik said:

@mwt said:

@yucchun said:
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.

Almost all of them, right? Hetzner and Scaleway didn't last time I checked. The only time I've seen it was at v6node.

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.

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 ?

somik · September 2025

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

terrorgen · September 2025

Ipv6onlyhosting.com

yucchun · September 2025

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

socat/ssh tunnel/playit/ngrok is sadly the way

somik · September 2025

@yucchun said:

@somik said:
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?

socat/ssh tunnel/playit/ngrok is sadly the way

Tor exit node it is

mwt · September 2025

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.

cservers · September 2025

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

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.

@mwt said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.

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...

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

... 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.

terrorgen · September 2025

@cservers said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

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.

@mwt said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.

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...

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

... 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.

mwt · September 2025

@cservers said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

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.

@mwt said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.

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...

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

... 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.

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.

skorous · September 2025

@mwt said:

@cservers said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

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.

@mwt said:

@somik said:

@skorous said:

@mwt said:

@somik said:
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.

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?

What I usually see is dedicated ipv6 with no access to ipv4 at all.

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...

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

... 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.

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.

To be clear, I was listing then as A provider that has NAT64 set up. I'm not actually a client and don't have any direct knowledge of them as a provider. I have been watching their discussions on the subject for a while though and enjoying them.

yucchun · September 2025

@yucchun said:

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
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.

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?

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.

** This topic got me calling my ISP in order to find out more about IPv6, as they also block 6to4 tunnels.

They offered me v6plus AND PPPoE on the same line for free -- BUT:

Con: Need to rent ISP-branded router that can handle both connections at the same time
Solution: Will buy a router that's OpenWRT-able, make that dual entry myself and return their rental router

I currently host my entire house on a TP-Link AX1800, not because it's good, but because it's simple.
We shall innovate

somik · September 2025

@yucchun said:
** This topic got me calling my ISP in order to find out more about IPv6, as they also block 6to4 tunnels.

They offered me v6plus AND PPPoE on the same line for free -- BUT:

Con: Need to rent ISP-branded router that can handle both connections at the same time
Solution: Will buy a router that's OpenWRT-able, make that dual entry myself and return their rental router

I currently host my entire house on a TP-Link AX1800, not because it's good, but because it's simple.
We shall innovate

It's time to upgrade to OpnSense! Get a old computer with at least 2 LAN ports (or install a network card in the slot if using old desktop) and get a forever router! You can use your existing TP Link for the wifi AP or for whatever you are using it now for. You can even copy the rental router's mac address if needed onto your opnsense box!

yucchun · September 2025

@somik said:

@yucchun said:
** This topic got me calling my ISP in order to find out more about IPv6, as they also block 6to4 tunnels.

They offered me v6plus AND PPPoE on the same line for free -- BUT:

Con: Need to rent ISP-branded router that can handle both connections at the same time
Solution: Will buy a router that's OpenWRT-able, make that dual entry myself and return their rental router

I currently host my entire house on a TP-Link AX1800, not because it's good, but because it's simple.
We shall innovate

It's time to upgrade to OpnSense! Get a old computer with at least 2 LAN ports (or install a network card in the slot if using old desktop) and get a forever router! You can use your existing TP Link for the wifi AP or for whatever you are using it now for. You can even copy the rental router's mac address if needed onto your opnsense box!

Just looks like v6plus+PPPoE fuckery

WSS · September 2025

OpenWRT is a decent, if buggy solution depending on the hardware. I ran it for my small from home services for the last decade- up until recently. Other than some hardware being finicky or flaky, it's decent for what you're paying for. Just make sure you get some well supported hardware and you won't have an issue. I was running dual stack on a 15-year-old Netgear and it was perfectly fine.

msatt · January 13

@somik pointed this thread out to me (thanks) and we continued our discussion in my thread announcing our use of NPM reverse proxy.

terrorgen · January 14

@WSS said:
OpenWRT is a decent, if buggy solution depending on the hardware. I ran it for my small from home services for the last decade- up until recently. Other than some hardware being finicky or flaky, it's decent for what you're paying for. Just make sure you get some well supported hardware and you won't have an issue. I was running dual stack on a 15-year-old Netgear and it was perfectly fine.

Get a used small form factor or micro form factor business PC, add usb3 giga nic or play with VLAN, run opnsense/openwrt and you'll have a router that would blow any consumer routers away.

kako1talk · January 14

It usually comes down to abuse handling and IP reputation. With simple port forwarding, it's easier to pinpoint the bad actor. With a shared HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy, one customer hosting a phishing page gets the whole IP blacklisted (or null-routed), killing connectivity for everyone else on that node. It's just not worth the headache for the provider.

somik · January 14

@terrorgen said:

@WSS said:
OpenWRT is a decent, if buggy solution depending on the hardware. I ran it for my small from home services for the last decade- up until recently. Other thæn some hardware being finicky or flaky, it's decent for what you're paying for. Just make sure you get some well supported hardware and you won't have an issue. I was running dual stack on a 15-year-old Netgear and it was perfectly fine.

Get a used small form factor or micro form factor business PC, add usb3 giga nic or play with VLAN, run opnsense/openwrt and you'll have a router that would blow any consumer routers away.

Currently, I am using this with OpnSense. Build in older well supported 4x2.5G NIC, fast intel CPU, paired with 16 gigs of DDR5 RAM + nVME SSD. Able to saturate full 2.5G and still run fanless for a while. I placed a external 120mm fan on top to keep it cooler.

@kako1talk said:
It usually comes down to abuse handling and IP reputation. With simple port forwarding, it's easier to pinpoint the bad actor. With a shared HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy, one customer hosting a phishing page gets the whole IP blacklisted (or null-routed), killing connectivity for everyone else on that node. It's just not worth the headache for the provider.

The same applies for shared hosting providers, or those providers who give out IPv4 addresses. They also do not want their IP address to be blocked.

terrorgen · January 15

@somik said:

@terrorgen said:
Get a used small form factor or micro form factor business PC, add usb3 giga nic or play with VLAN, run opnsense/openwrt and you'll have a router that would blow any consumer routers away.

Currently, I am using this with OpnSense. Build in older well supported 4x2.5G NIC, fast intel CPU, paired with 16 gigs of DDR5 RAM + nVME SSD. Able to saturate full 2.5G and still run fanless for a while. I placed a external 120mm fan on top to keep it cooler.

Dang mind share the model number for this and how much it costs you?

kako1talk · January 15

@somik said:

@terrorgen said:

@WSS said:
OpenWRT is a decent, if buggy solution depending on the hardware. I ran it for my small from home services for the last decade- up until recently. Other thæn some hardware being finicky or flaky, it's decent for what you're paying for. Just make sure you get some well supported hardware and you won't have an issue. I was running dual stack on a 15-year-old Netgear and it was perfectly fine.

Get a used small form factor or micro form factor business PC, add usb3 giga nic or play with VLAN, run opnsense/openwrt and you'll have a router that would blow any consumer routers away.

Currently, I am using this with OpnSense. Build in older well supported 4x2.5G NIC, fast intel CPU, paired with 16 gigs of DDR5 RAM + nVME SSD. Able to saturate full 2.5G and still run fanless for a while. I placed a external 120mm fan on top to keep it cooler.

@kako1talk said:
It usually comes down to abuse handling and IP reputation. With simple port forwarding, it's easier to pinpoint the bad actor. With a shared HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy, one customer hosting a phishing page gets the whole IP blacklisted (or null-routed), killing connectivity for everyone else on that node. It's just not worth the headache for the provider.

The same applies for shared hosting providers, or those providers who give out IPv4 addresses. They also do not want their IP address to be blocked.

That is true, especially for Shared Hosting.

Though I'd argue there's a slight difference in 'visibility'. With Shared Hosting (like cPanel), the provider has file-level access and can scan for malware or phishing scripts.

With a NAT VPS behind a reverse proxy, the VM is a 'black box' to the provider. They can't easily see what's being hosted inside without inspecting the traffic or mounting the disk, which makes proactive abuse handling much harder compared to standard shared hosting.

msatt · January 15

@kako1talk said: With a NAT VPS behind a reverse proxy, the VM is a 'black box' to the provider. They can't easily see what's being hosted inside without inspecting the traffic or mounting the disk, which makes proactive abuse handling much harder compared to standard shared hosting.

If there was abuse, we should be given a domain name (IP is of no benefit) and in NPM it is very clear who the domain belongs to and their VPS. Not necessary to 'explore' VPS which we / I would NEVER allow.

kako1talk · January 15

@msatt said:

@kako1talk said: With a NAT VPS behind a reverse proxy, the VM is a 'black box' to the provider. They can't easily see what's being hosted inside without inspecting the traffic or mounting the disk, which makes proactive abuse handling much harder compared to standard shared hosting.

If there was abuse, we should be given a domain name (IP is of no benefit) and in NPM it is very clear who the domain belongs to and their VPS. Not necessary to 'explore' VPS which we / I would NEVER allow.

Fair point regarding domain-based abuse (like phishing). If you manage the edge proxy (NPM), mapping the domain to the specific user is indeed straightforward.

I was thinking more about outgoing abuse (like port scanning or spamming) where the complaint often just cites the shared IP and a timestamp, with no domain attached. In those cases, it can be trickier to pinpoint the culprit behind a shared NAT without strict connection logging.

But it's great to hear you have a strict policy against inspecting the VPS content itself. Respect for that.

yoursunny · January 15

@kako1talk said:
I was thinking more about outgoing abuse (like port scanning or spamming) where the complaint often just cites the shared IP and a timestamp, with no domain attached. In those cases, it can be trickier to pinpoint the culprit behind a shared NAT without strict connection logging.

Ask the complaint sender for the source port number.
Map each internal IP to a disjoint port range.

rarecloud · January 30

@somik said:
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.

Hey, fair questions!
1 & 2. Port forwarding just works for everything – HTTP, SSH, game servers, whatever. A reverse proxy only solves HTTP/HTTPS, so we'd still need port forwarding anyway for the rest. Plus, L7 proxying means we'd have to deal with TLS termination (privacy/legal headaches) or manage SSL certs for thousands of customer domains. Port forwarding is simple and stays out of your way.
3. Honestly? Most people just use Cloudflare for this – free tier does exactly what you're describing, connects to your origin over IPv6, and you get caching + DDoS protection as a bonus. So there's not much demand for providers to reinvent that wheel.

AnthonySmith · January 30

When I first launched lowendsprit, when it was a NAT VPS service, not this forum, haproxy was standard, then @mikho launched mrvm haproxy was standard, Ryan (insert complex dutch name here) also did the same, I like to think between the 3 of us we were catalysis in making NAT VPS service mainstream, at least in this community, we spent a lot of time and effort making sure of that. also hat tip to Phill from VirtFusion (solusvm at the time) for helping integrate that into solusvm at the time, Ryan did nginx iirc but same effect.

To be honest it started causing issues because it was sold via inception so people assumed all inception plans were nat sometimes, probably shot myself in the foot a bit there.

Having a reverse proxy was an absolute first principle for TierHive, in fact, all current and future plans are built around the reverse proxy.

If you are going to do a NAT service, why not add value to the service beyond price? This is why I felt comfortable doing the alpha launch without even having IPv6, the load balancing and CDN infrastructure now already exists and will support the IPv6 rollout also so you get every advantage, regardless of if you use cloudflare or not.

When we go full release, or late beta we would like to offer full IPv4 as an optional extra while proving why in most cases you dont need it but you can pay for it if you want, i see a value in being able to use your own NAT endpoint/edge IP to be fair and manage your own full port raneg allocation so thats for sure something we will do/offer if we get that far.

Honestly I see this more like shared hosting with root access and isolated resources, you share the IP you have http/s and SSL termination, the NAT side of the VPS for access is just a bonus, this is why we also have email and database offloading for your domains and databases and 1 click wordpress etc installers.

In the future, there will be an easy mode for none geeky/tech people, buy/add a domain, tick the services you want (email, plan in plain English, backups, redundancy, load balancing), etc., etc., and it's all done for you, and although transparent to you, isolated VPS backed.

Anyway, I remember seeing this thread ages ago on my phone and being excited to contribute to it then I forgot, until now. Thanks for the bump.

slowservers · February 21

I am not sure why reverse proxy support isn't more common. I think it may be a combination of available technologies and timelines. SNI makes proxying a lot easier. IPv6 has been around for a long time but adoption was too slow for anyone to jump ship properly. And SNI wasn't a thing when IPv6 first started to get moving.

For Slow Servers I have SNIProxy running which will take care of HTTP (without SNI, of course), HTTPS, other TLS traffic, and even XMPP (non-TLS direct, so XML.)

At the end of the day though, IPv4 doesn't cost the provider a ton, nor the user a ton, and so many users have grown dependent on it.

One thing I like about running IPv6 native is that my VPS infrastructure is fully routed. While this is less efficient, in some ways, it makes for prettier mtr/traceroute and easier/safer network isolaton between VPSs.

boletus# mtr -w -c 10 -r slowservers.net
Start: 2026-02-21T23:27:25+0000
HOST: boletus                    Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 2607:f2f8:a480::1           0.0%    10    0.8   0.9   0.8   1.1   0.1
  2.|-- 2607:f108:d01:8::2          0.0%    10    0.5   3.6   0.5  15.6   5.9
  3.|-- 2607:f108:d00:1::1          0.0%    10    0.5   0.7   0.5   1.3   0.2
  4.|-- 2001:504:13::210:122        0.0%    10    3.4   3.9   3.1   4.8   0.6
  5.|-- ???                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  6.|-- ???                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  7.|-- ???                        100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  8.|-- e0-36.core1.ska1.he.net     0.0%    10   33.9  34.0  33.6  34.4   0.2
  9.|-- 2001:470:2b6::3             0.0%    10   33.0  32.9  32.8  33.0   0.1
 10.|-- freya.spknwalb.ssvr.net     0.0%    10   33.0  33.1  33.0  33.3   0.1
 11.|-- prometheus.slowservers.net  0.0%    10   33.3  33.5  33.2  34.8   0.5
 12.|-- slowservers.net             0.0%    10   38.7  34.7  33.9  38.7   1.4

Now from slowservers.net to this forum:

slowservers# mtr -c 10 -r -w lowendspirit.com
Start: 2026-02-21T23:28:32+0000
HOST: slowservers.net                                                  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- tap2.prometheus.slowservers.net                                   0.0%    10    0.9   0.9   0.8   0.9   0.0
  2.|-- freya.spknwalb.ssvr.net                                           0.0%    10    1.4   1.2   1.1   1.4   0.1
  3.|-- cust-slowservers.eth54-2-1103.edge01.spknwaob.ardentnetworks.net  0.0%    10    1.4   2.1   1.3   8.8   2.3
  4.|-- e0-1.core1.ska1.he.net                                            0.0%    10    2.4   2.3   2.1   2.4   0.1
  5.|-- ???                                                              100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  6.|-- ???                                                              100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  7.|-- v6-six1.as13335.com                                              10.0%    10    9.4  13.4   9.3  24.4   5.4
  8.|-- 2400:cb00:543:3::                                                 0.0%    10   19.3  19.4   9.3  64.6  16.9
  9.|-- 2606:4700:3036::ac43:9b4f                                         0.0%    10    8.9   9.9   8.6  20.0   3.5

You can see in that direction there's even the tap interface the server is listening on. (Prometheus is the host that slowservers.net runs on.)

SNIProxy is really nice software. There's others that do the same concept. Some that even respond back using a particular IP so you can decode what IPv4 is talking to you. While often it doesn't matter, sometimes it's good to know.

(I could technically do fully routed with IPv4, but it's tricky and would be wasteful. I think a /30, or similar, would be required.)

I could also put a /28 or /29 on each host, but what if someone launches large servers? Then I have extra unused IPv4s.

I am actually planning to offer IPv4 on Slow Servers. I messed with gif tunnels, but Linux doesn't seem to support them (my hosts and router run OpenBSD.) gre didn't play nicely. The only thing that works well is Wireguard. It is heavy, but it does the job and speed isn't a huge concern. Obviously with a name like Slow Servers, I'm trying to get the point across that they are a little slow. I don't like that it's inefficient, though. Just another methodology to have a pure IPv6 topology and land "real" IPv4s onto VPSs as they are needed. The efficiency reduction of Wireguard is annoying, though, and not quite what I was going for.

NAT64 was mentioned here. I think it's a good idea if you can map your connections back to whichever VPS made them. I don't think it's responsible, as a host, to be unclear of what traffic came from where. If someone is behaving abusively over NATed or proxied IPv4, I need to be able to figure out exactly what it was so I can deal with it. I do offer SOCKS proxying, but it's logged, so it wouldn't be hard to correlate abuse with which server was doing it. I imagine you can do the same with NAT64, but I also assume it might be trickier to log?

Ok, back on topic, you can see the SNIProxy in action:

boletus# mtr -4 -w -c 10 -r slowservers.net
Start: 2026-02-21T23:41:23+0000
HOST: boletus                                       Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 174.136.98.129                                 0.0%    10    0.8   2.4   0.7   8.9   3.4
  2.|-- ae1-327.cr1.lax3.atlanticmetro.net             0.0%    10    0.6   0.8   0.6   1.4   0.3
  3.|-- ae0-4.cr2.lax3.atlanticmetro.net               0.0%    10    8.2   1.4   0.5   8.2   2.4
  4.|-- hurricane-electric.as6939.any2ix.coresite.com  0.0%    10    4.2   3.1   2.5   4.2   0.6
  5.|-- ???                                           100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  6.|-- ???                                           100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  7.|-- ???                                           100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  8.|-- 100ge0-36.core1.ska1.he.net                    0.0%    10   33.2  33.4  33.2  33.6   0.1
  9.|-- edge01.spknwaob.ardentnetworks.net             0.0%    10   32.4  32.4  32.3  32.5   0.1
 10.|-- sniproxy.ssvr.net                              0.0%    10   32.4  34.2  32.3  44.0   3.7

It knows which server to talk to from the AAAA record. So the A record points legacy clients at the SNI proxy, which resolves the AAAA record, and forwards the request accordingly.

Why don’t IPv6-only providers offer an IPv4 reverse proxy (e.g., via Nginx) for HTTP/HTTPS?

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