IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[Morgaine]

This is what happens when a company makes it their official policy to not communicate with their customers, they completely lose touch with reality.  Communications company that doesn't wish to communicate, network technology company that has doesn't wish to stay in touch with network technology.  It's like a script from some daft comedy.

[impromptu]

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)

[GreenReaper]

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. 😕

[Morgaine]

Oh, I've been misspelling his name since forever. Sorry Daryl. 🙂

[Morgaine]

ARIN (the Regional Internet Registry for Canada and USA) is making a very clear point with their "Do you get 6?" campaign:

ARIN: Do you get 6?  http://teamarin.net/get6/who-gets-it/

"To connect to the whole Internet, not just the old Internet, websites must be IPv6-enabled."

It's hard to put the message more simply and cleanly than that.  But understanding has a prerequisite:  to be listening.

[Morgaine]

APNIC (the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region) has a very informative IPv6 usage stats page, and it can be queried for the UK AS-numbers IPv6 usage alone.  The column titles can be clicked for resorting, and clicking twice on "Users (est.)" yields our top residential ISPs sorted by number of users.

Their 13 columns are a bit excessive, so I've extracted 4 of them for easy presentation:

AS-Company      Users           IPv6-Users      %-UK-IPv6
Sky UK Ltd      12,998,832      10,749,463      91.25
BT-UK-PLC       11,369,722      405,500         3.44
Virgin-Media    11,151,453      601             0.01

The above highlights what many BT Infinity users have been suspecting:  that BT has already enabled a large number of residential CPEs for IPv6 despite the lack of any official announcement. The business customers on that BT AS number are highly unlikely to represent 400,000+.

Hats off to Sky for being a great leader.  But what a grim picture for Virgin Media.

[42picky]

So glad that I found this post. I am currently on TalkTalk and gave them their cancelation notice. I was about to go for Virgin but after seeing their IPv6 coverage now I know who to drop from my list.

There were two things I was looking for: static IPv4 and IPv6 support, none if them is supported by Virgin.

[Morgaine]

Some of the missing slides from the recent UK IPv6 Council meeting are now available, and BT's presentation shows the following information on IPv6, shortened a little:

IPv6 on BT Broadband and BT Infinity Broadband Rollout:
  • Network rollout was completed October 2016.
  • All BT Broadband lines support IPv6 with a compatible router.
  • Supported by the new BT Smart Hub today.
  • Home Hubs 4 and 5 support from early 2017.

So, the guesses made by eagle-eyed BT Infinity customers appear to have been accurate:  BT rolled out IPv6 without announcement, and those 405,500 BT IPv6 users recorded by APNIC are most likely the folks who have BT Home Hub 6 / Smart Hub.  That's not a large proportion of their CPEs, or the BT numbers seen by APNIC would be a lot larger.  Probably the most important point in the slides is "[BT IPv6] Network rollout was completed October 2016."

Well done (1) Sky, and quite promptly, (2) BT.

Virgin Media ... hello?  Is anyone alive in there?

[Optimist1]

Some news here http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/11/virgin-media-plans-adopt-ipv6-middle-2017.html

[ravenstar68]

They're wrong about Netflix though.