Deploying IPv6-First EKS on AWS: What Still Doesn't Work, and What It Saves

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4 pointsspidee-spiro3 comments

Amazon should not have started charging for IPv4 addresses before all of its services were capable of running exclusively on IPv6. It makes it look less like a stick to encourage IPv6 adoption and more like a money-grab.

The charge started 1 Feb 2024. IPv6 for the RDS service API endpoints landed 30 Jan 2026. So for two years you could pay the IPv4 bill without having the option to stop.

We run IPv6-first EKS and still can't get to zero. There's no such thing as an IPv6-only EKS cluster, every subnet you give EKS still needs an IPv4 CIDR, and one RDS instance for an internal tool pins IPv4 onto its subnets regardless.

Though ECR, CloudFront origins, public RDS and the RDS service APIs all got IPv6 between April 2025 and January 2026, all after the charge. Wrong order, but it might be what moved them.

Wholeheartedly agree. I really thought they'd have gotten there before the charge date hit. Pity; I expected better of them.

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