First things first: you get one address, not a territory
The “native IPv6” on a VPS product page means one address — something like 2001:db8:1234::10. Think of it as one door plate in a building: you can live there and receive mail, but the building is not yours.
The building is the prefix — 2001:db8:1234::/48, say: enough for 65,536 /64 subnets, hundreds of projects each with a subnet of their own. Holding a block like that comes from resource authorisation — who may use it, written down in allocations and service agreements — never from buying a machine.
One footnote: everything beginning 2001:db8 is RFC 3849's documentation range. Every tutorial on Earth uses it; none of it may go live. What a real block allows depends on the paperwork, not on how the address looks.
The session is up. Why won't the site load?
You installed BIRD or FRRouting, brought up the BGP session with the upstream, and watched the state flip to Established. Congratulations — halfway. Established means two routers can talk. That is all it means.
Between “routers talking” and “users loading your site” sits a long chain: the prefix exported and accepted, traffic actually reaching the VPS, the address configured, the application listening on it, the firewall and return path cooperating. Any broken link shows the user the same thing: a spinner, then a timeout.
Who tells the world about your routes: three models
Your addresses are reachable because someone announces “this block lives here” to the Internet. Three ways that happens: you use the addresses that came with the VPS, and the provider's network announces them as a matter of course; the provider announces a prefix on your behalf, still under its own ASN; or you announce under your own ASN — the last one being what people mean by “running your own BGP”.
The easily missed part: the public origin ASN identifies the network originating a route; the same prefix can have more than one authorised origin. The ASN used in a session can differ from the public origin, and a public ASN can also appear in the AS_PATH. Confirm the delivery model and intended origin with your provider before preparing a ROA, then make the authorisation match.
| Model | Who announces publicly | Your job |
|---|---|---|
| Use the addresses that come with the VPS | The provider's network | Configure the machine and the application |
| The provider announces a prefix for you | The provider's public ASN | Use the block within its authorisation |
| You announce under your own ASN | Your ASN | Authorisation, routing software, upstream policy — all yours |
ROA and IRR: how the Internet spots a forged sender
BGP has no central police force; the ecosystem relies on two signals. A ROA — an authorisation record in RPKI — says: this prefix may be announced by this ASN, up to this maximum length. Receivers compare routes against it and stamp Valid on a match. Valid means the claimed origin ASN and prefix length match a validated authorisation; it does not authenticate the sender. Not the path, not the firewall, not whether the application is alive. “RPKI says Valid” and “my service answers” are different sentences.
IRR route and route6 objects are the second signal: which prefix belongs to which origin, used by upstreams to build filters. Mind the gap — publish an object today, and an upstream may refresh its filters next week. A missing route deserves a look at both ends before anything else.
Back to SKNK Cloud: the options, mapped
Theory done; our configuration page. Standard (the ordinary VPS): one native IPv6 address, optional public IPv4, no BGP session. BGP VPS: all of that, plus one BGP session extendable to two, plus the “additional IPv6 /48” — listed only here.
That /48, in two sentences: under the published plan, our AS219361 announces it publicly and routes it to your VPS, so you need no ASN of your own. It is not PI space you can take with you, and the ROA does not transfer to you. It is a different road from announcing your own prefix under your own ASN: the first saves the work, the second keeps the keys.
About two sessions, one honest sentence: a count of two is not two independent lines and not redundancy insurance — both sessions can ride the same router. Decide with that in mind.
And the current state: Cloud is not open for orders or payment, and prices are not shown. Browse, compare, save a configuration — saving reserves nothing and orders nothing.