Fix Pinging Own Machine Returning IPv6 Instead of IPv4

dhcpip addressipv6ping

When I ping my own machine I get an IPv6 address:

Reply from fe80::1004:p8f0:9e40:a42c%10: time<1ms
Reply from fe80::1004:p8f0:9e40:a42c%10: time<1ms

I used to get the IPv4 address (eg. 192.168.1.5) from the router.

Why has it changed?

This could be due to caching or the DNS. On a Windows Server 2008 issue on Server Fault they suggest:

If they are resolving to IPv6 they might be cached or have ipv6 addresses registered in DNS.

You can also add a -4 to the ping:

ping example.com -4

When you have IPv6 active, ping and a few other commands may default to IPv6. To force ping to use ipv4 add -4 as an argument:

ping localhost -4

Incidentally, you an also force IPv6 with -6

ping localhost -6

You can issue both commands and have them run concurrently in one line like:

(dhclient &); (dhclient -6 &)

You could then add it to a BASH script or alike, named how you'd like. :)

More info on combining commands in Linux: