IPv6 support for IP geolocation supplements the existing IPv4 geolocation support for country-based Security, Decryption, and DoS Protection policies by providing visibility and control in dual-stack and IPv6-only environments using your current security policy rules with a single global switch. This unified approach simplifies policy management and ensures consistent security enforcement across both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. This addresses the growing adoption of IPv6 by ISPs and other large enterprise organizations as well as customers who are required to phase out IPv4 and implement IPv6 as part of a larger migration process.

To ensure up-to-date geolocation data, Palo Alto Networks provides a regularly updated global content file which includes an IPv4/IPv6 to country mapping database to determine the ownership of a given IP space. The IP to geolocation mapping for IPv6 addresses is supported with the same level of granularity and coverage as for IPv4 addresses, ensuring consistent policy enforcement across both address types. Alternatively, you can create your own custom mappings by providing a range of IPv6 addresses to a specified region; these have precedence over the default mapping and can be used to fine-tune your security policies.

Additionally, IPv6 support for IP Geolocation integrates seamlessly with existing Palo Alto Networks logging and monitoring tools. Source and destination countries are displayed in logs for IPv6 traffic, and you can filter logs by source or destination country to include IPv6 traffic. All ACC widgets that display source or destination country information now count IPv6 traffic as well.