IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?

[GreenReaper]

Teredo is a largely discredited mechanism for IPv6 tunneling. It is enabled by default on some platforms, but doesn't work as general IPv6 support.

Likewise, a link-local address will work on your local network segment - i.e. whatever your Ethernet adapter is connected to, assuming something on the other end is listening - but is meaningless beyond that and cannot be used for traffic elsewhere. When your Ethernet adapter reports a non-local IPv6 address, you might have more luck.

[ravenstar68]

If you're using Windows then IPv6 is enabled by default.

Teredo is also half enabled but it has a number of disadvantages.  Amongst them

1. It enables an attacker to bypass your firewall rules.
2. PC's will resolve IPv4 rather than IPv6 when resolving domains.

I turned off Teredo on my PC once I started using my Tunnelbroker Tunnel.

With regards to the Teredo Tunnel and the Link local address not having been there.  Unless you disabled IPv6 on Windows then they would both have been present.  The Link Local IPv6 address is analagous to the 169.254.x.x seen when an IPv4 adapter does not have an address by other means.  But Link local IPv6 connections are used for things like Windows Homegroups to work properly.

Ravenstar68

[antxxxx]

Is there any update from Virgin Media when IPv6 will be available to customers? BSkyB have announced that all new subscribers are getting IPv6 so it would be good to see Virgin Media start providing access to the full internet rather than just the IPv4

[TonyJr]

6/6/16? 😛

[MUD_Wizard]

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@antxxxx wrote:

Is there any update from Virgin Media when IPv6 will be available to customers? BSkyB have announced that all new subscribers are getting IPv6 so it would be good to see Virgin Media start providing access to the full internet rather than just the IPv4

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No news yet. The UK IPv6 Council meeting was a couple of days ago but I haven't seen any update from it yet.

[impromptu]

Some progress on IPv6 would be good: I have servers that are v6 only that I can't reach from my Virgin connection.  I really need to get at individual containers and there's no chance of getting an IPv4 address per container.

I found something worrying though.  Virgin Media Ireland was formerly called UPC but has recently rebranded.  It's part of the Liberty Global group, but I'm unclear how much relation it has to VM UK.  VMI have been rolling out IPv6 for about 2 years.  The trouble is, they're rolling out Dual-Stack Lite: in other words, you get an globally routed IPv6 prefix but IPv4 is behind a carrier grade NAT.  Arguably this is worse than the public v4 we currently have.

This post on Virgin Media Ireland's forum has an interesting comment:

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@Packet wrote:

A member of Telenet's networking staff in Belgium told me that they are the only ISP in the Liberty Global group that has so far deployed Dual-Stack on the WAN link where both IPv4 & IPv6 are native.

With DS-Lite, only the IPv6 is native on the WAN link, the IPv4 is centrally NATed. The central NAT is what prevents the customer doing IPv4 port forwarding. 

Telenet's technical staff were interested in it and wanted to do it dual-stack with a public IPv4 address. If the address is private then the solution would be NAT444, which is more broken than DS-Lite as the double NAT introduces more problems beyond port forwarding not working.

Providing service with a public IPv4 may require the ISP to to buy more addresses, but the prices are still cheap enough to make that a better option for both ISP and customer than installing centralised NAT. Some have an ideological objection to buying IPv4 as they think using that market might hinder the deployment of IPv6.

Belgium has a very effective IPv6 Task Force with many ISPs deploying it. It will be interesting to see what Virgin Media do in the UK. Sky Broadband in the UK are doing it dual-stack and BT say they're also going to do it dual-stack whenever they finally get on with it. Sky have recently bought more IPv4 (it's in the RIPE NCC database). If Virgin Media UK also do it Dual-Stack it will make what they're doing in Ireland look worse.

I do hope VM UK isn't going to botch it up by using DS Lite.

[madwayne]

how do you utilise your ipv6 address, I am able to see via ipconfig that theresan ipv6 address.

however my system isn't connecting via the ipv6,  so what do I have to do for that?

having a look

[GreenReaper]

If it's just a "link-local IPv6 address", that doesn't count - it's just something which can be used on your local network, not to connect to the Internet via IPv6.

[madwayne]

I have absolutely no idea, but until recently even that wasn't available.

so how does this get setup and when will it be available and what issues of any will it cause for apps using ipv4addresses

[GreenReaper]

It should be set up automatically when Virgin Media gets around to enabling it on the router. Without that, no useful IPv6 service will be provided unless you do so yourself via an IPv6 tunnel through e.g. SixXS or Hurricane Electric. These do work, via IP encapsulation (6in4), although it has a nasty habit of dropping out when the connection does, and not coming back until you reboot the router.

Getting IPv6 working properly doesn't seem to be a super-high priority for Virgin, but perhaps they're having trouble with getting the Internet filtering systems to work, or recording logs for MI5. >_>