IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
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Anyone who cannot use an IPv6-4 tunnel will not be needing to access an IPv6 host in the first place.What about loopsofzen.co.uk? What about my Minecraft server?
What about the other servers I run for friends and family? Those aren't people that can set v6 tunnels up, but they sure can load pages from a webserver, use webmail or play games. They all use VM; I could leave the servers on v6-only without having to mess about with v4 NAT or a tunnel to somebody who will give me a v4 allocation... if only VM would actually roll out v6.
BTW What does the site http://www.loopsofzen.co.uk/ look likeHere, and then here after a bit of clicking. (Not being able to reach this particular website is probably a good thing for some people...)
Hopefully we should have ipv6 soon, ive recently noticed myself that they now have ipv6 peers which is good.It took them almost two years to do that. Here's hoping the next two years will have somewhat more activity than the last two did.
Would someone care to enlighten me as to whether tunnelling is an option to get to the IPv6 part of the Internet - how does it work, and can it be explained to readers here?With a tunnel, your computer or router takes the v6 packet, shoves it inside a v4 packet and sends that over the v4 internet to the tunnel server, which then unshoves the v6 packet and sends it on its way. It's an option, in the sense that it can be done and it works. It's not really viable to expect everybody to set up tunnels though.
Tunnels remove a lot of the benefits of IPv6, connectivity is there, but one should think of it like using a fast VPN, or a fast Proxy.
any news yet on deployment of ipv6
- No plans yet
- okay thanks
I do have a small amount of additional information though -- according to Daryl Tanner at RIPE66 (see the "IPv6 at CiscoLive 2013" talk from the archives), the network security people won't allow it on the production network.
Looks like they have ipv6 in their network though
http://bgp.he.net/AS5089#_prefixes6
i wonder if the superhub actually supports V6
I just asked them today and this is what I got:
- me: Does virgin media support IPv6?
- support: unfortunately Virgin Media doesn't support IPv6 only IPv4
- me: as you know IPv4 addresses are running out. when can I expect to have IPv6 connection?
- support: Not too sure sorry, there has been no word on whether IPv6 connections will be in operation any time soon
- support: We have support articles online at www.virginmedia.com/help that may display information when it becomes available
- me: is there any pilot or test program I can enter to have IPv6 sooner?
- support: There isn't sorry no, there is no support for this at all
Good that my 1 year contract expires in a month, I'll look for another ISP which actually improves it's network.
They'll include Andrews & Arnold, apparently rated as best ISP in the UK. (IDnet and Aquiss, both also on the top list on that page, do v6 as well.)
I for one am hugely looking forward to having native IPv6 support from Virgin. It's been far too long coming; this isn't just a matter of Virgin "having enough IPv4 addresses". Without proper dual stack IPv6 support, there's no way to use IPv6 to talk to the systems I run on the open Internet, short of using tunnelling software and that's just crazy. It's 2016; many other ISPs have IPv6 today. Some, even in the UK, have had it for literally years.
(If there's any kind of experimental deployment prior to going live, I'd be happy to be a part of it.)
@al45tair:
Unfortunately VM Community admins have never interceded on our behalf to bring this topic to the attention of VM management and to start a dialogue. I offered many moons ago exactly what you are offering now, to let those of us with many years of IPv6 expertise under our belts to help them test their IPv6 rollout. Complete and total silence.It's hard to know what to make of this, but whatever the reason, it is not working in VM's best interests. They're coming in last, in a race in which there is no technical reason why they shouldn't have come in first. If Comcast managed to do it years ago in the US, so can VM, since their systems are broadly similar.
Although it may be company policy not to involve customers in trials, that is no excuse for Community admins not to be liaising on the subject. This total silence is working out very badly for VM, because instead of their customers keeping the VM name alive in technical circles, the total lack of information has done the opposite and relegated them to also-runs.
This is a hugely connected world. Being silent even to your customers is suicide.
- I echo this, more than happy to be an IPv6 guinea pig. Already running tunnels and services available over either dual stack or purely IPv6.
A- Me too. I'm a network architect with years of IPv6 experience. I'd happily trial it.
Here to also request that VM finally adds IPv6 support. Alternative providers already support it (such as BT) and providers such as Unitymedia only support IPv4 via DS-LITE tunnels!
- @Optimist1:
No flash here, so I can't see that video. What's the gist of it?
Hopefully it's an update over their past IPv6 Council presentations, such as:
2014 - http://www.ipv6.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/VM-IPv6-council-presentation.pdf
2015 - http://www.ipv6.org.uk/2015/10/06/ipv6-council-meeting-september-2015/
Perhaps the new video will get posted to Youtube.
My spy at the meeting tells me:
The person in charge of IPv6 at Virgin has left. Their replacement was previously at Sky but has been at Virgin less than a week, hence the reason there was no presentation.
I'm told that it's likely to be another year, and probably dual-stack lite.
For Sky it's enabled for essentially everyone, but some of their traffic is IPv4 only due to eg the video streaming app, and maybe some business customers aren't fully enabled.
BT is enabled, but firmware for some of the older Home Hubs doesn't support it. They expect to roll that out in the coming months.
(Apologies to anyone I've misrepresented, Chinese-whispered, etc)
- Interesting… the person who previously reported on it is still at Virgin according to LinkedIn, but maybe it hasn't been updated. Meanwhile SixXS is trying to shoot itself in the foot. Might have to head back to Sky at this rate. :-/
- Oh, I've been misspelling his name since forever. Sorry Daryl. :-)
Well its now November 2016 and still Virgin Media have still not got IPV6 addressing whilst BT and SKY clearly have -- i thought Virgin Media were at the forefront of broadband clearly they are falling behind when it is now an expected standard of most people
How about a Virgin Media Representative commenting in this community forum on this subject and NOT just push it aside and pretend its not happening
- It isn't just the BBC, most of the UK media sites are IPv4 only.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177
RFC 3177 [RFC3177] called for a default end site IPv6 assignment size of /48. Subsequently, the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) developed and adopted IPv6 address assignment and allocation policies consistent with the recommendations of RFC 3177 [RIR-IPV6]. In 2005, the RIRs began discussing IPv6 address assignment policy again. Since then, APNIC [APNIC-ENDSITE], ARIN [ARIN-ENDSITE], and RIPE [RIPE-ENDSITE] have revised the end site assignment policy to encourage the assignment of smaller (i.e., /56) blocks to end sites.
Indeed, nallar. RFC 6177 obsoleted RFC 3177 and recommended a more "nuanced" approach than a simple /48 for all.
It's worth pointing out though that although blocks smaller than /48 are now encouraged where it makes sense, this "where it makes sense" carries a very strong proviso. It does NOT mean that ISPs should feel free to dish out single IPv6 addresses to subscribers nor even single /64 blocks, as RFC 6177 makes clear:
• "An important goal in IPv6 is to significantly change the default and minimal end site assignment, from "a single address" to "multiple networks" and to ensure that end sites can easily obtain address space."
This is codified also in the IETF Home Networking WG's advice as best current practice in support of "smart homes", namely that multiple /64 blocks must be made available to support domestic diversity. Bullet points I've seen on their presentation slides typically state "/56 preferred to /60".
It's good to see that all of the UK's Big Three ISPs have adopted /56 in compliance with this. Of course it's only alleged in the case of Virgin, but it seems likely nevertheless.Congratulations BT !!! -- Happy 1 million IPv6 users today, as counted by APNIC. :-)
Latest figures published at UK AS-numbers IPv6 usage, top 3 by number of users:
AS-Company Users IPv6-Users %-UK-IPv6 Sky UK Ltd 13,520,096 11,342,935 86.93 BT-UK-PLC 13,152,552 1,002,430 7.68 Virgin-Media 12,174,284 579 0
It's been nice to watch the BT figure increase steadily from around 400k at the time of BT's announcement at the UK IPv6 Council meeting on 31st October 2016. It reflects the rising population of their relatively new Home Hub 6 / Smart Hub (the only CPE that BT has IPv6-enabled so far), plus a few 3rd party routers thrown in. The far more numerous HH5 is scheduled for IPv6-enabling in early 2017, which should increase APNIC's BT count by several million.
Well done!
The next IPv6 hurdle for BT, alongside enabling of their HH5 --- get the BT servers onto IPv6. :-)
In the Grand IPv6 Steeplechase contested by the UK's Big Three residential ISPs, Sky rocketed into 1st place totally uncontested, BT was many laps behind and reached the finish at a slow walk (its tail still hasn't crossed the line), while Virgin overslept in the stables and the jockey is still having breakfast. At least the snoring has stopped. :P
Do we know anything about the kind of v6 deployment that Virgin plans to do? It seems like most of their parent organisation (Liberty Global) is doing DS-Lite deployments, which is completely terrible!
@cmsj: Judging by the IPv6-related information displayed in Hub 3.0's Modem Mode under the Admin->Info menu, there's not really any doubt about what they have planned. [I starred out a couple of numeric fields, although they were probably just placeholders anyway, not real.] -->
IPv6 address : Not Available
IPv6 default gateway : ::1999:9999:*:*
IPv6 lease time : 0 days 0h:0m:0s
IPv6 lease expire : 0-00-00 00:00:00.00
IPv6 DNS servers : ::
-
IPv6 DS-Lite status : Disable
DS-Lite-FQDN :
DS-Lite-address : ::VM is of course silent as usual on the matter. Communicating with their community is not what they do, even less listening to their customers, otherwise Virgin would have had IPv6 dual stack 5+ years ago and we'd be happily chatting with their staff. (One can dream ...)
Just in case anyone was using a Tunnel Broker {and a heads up to others} and had gone with SixXS and had managed to keep it going for the last year or more since Virgin tried to kill such tunnels by crippling the EMail authentication that the SixXS IPv6 POPs demand in order to allow a tunnel to be initiated:
Sunsetting SixXS
Author: Pim van Pelt, Jeroen Massar
Contact: Date: March 2017
Status: Published
Summary
SixXS will be sunset in H1 2017. All services will be turned down on 2017-06-06, after which the SixXS project will be retired. Users will no longer be able to use their IPv6 tunnels or subnets after this date, and are required to obtain IPv6 connectivity elsewhere, primarily with their Internet service provider.
Introduction
SixXS (Six Access) is a free, non-profit, non-cost service for Local Internet Registries (LIR's) and endusers. The main goal is to create a common portal to help company engineers find their way with IPv6 networks deploying IPv6 to their customers in a rapid and controllable fashion. To reach our goals, SixXS provides the following services:- IPv6 Tunnel Broker: a versatile and high performance IPv6 tunneling router
- Ghost Route Hunter: an IPv6 route monitoring tool and various other services to help out where needed
- IPv6Gate HTTP Proxy: IPv6-IPv4 and IPv4-IPv6 Website Gateway
...Remainder at: https://www.sixxs.net/sunset/
Everything I recall reading on their forums {their site is a useful source of information all about IPv6 BTW} that DS-Lite is pretty much the worse way to continue to provide IPv4 connectivity...
So what size of subnet will those lucky enough to move to IPv6 get and just how bad will DS-Lite be for connecting to those parts of the 'Interweb that remain on IPv4?
