IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
It'd be disappointing if VM disable modem-mode going forwards. I can see no new reason for them to do so. It would certainly give me cause to go hunting for a new ISP if they did.
Now the writing on the wall is close enough for me to read (:smileyhappy:) I've done some digging. OpenWRT has support for DS-Lite provided you install the "ds-lite" package. All that is required is the address for the AFTR either as an IPv6 address or AAAA DNS address. Once configured it sets up an ipip6 tunnel and routes IPv4 traffic down it. All pretty straight forward and pretty much the inverse of the IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnel I've been running with Hurricane Electric for the past 9 years.
Getting hold of the correct AFTR address doesn't seem like rocket science even if VM are coy about publishing it.
I could imagine a diktat that domestic users must use their Superhub as router or else, but I can't see this happening with business users. They'll likely have complicated routers set up by IT staff for their business needs (VPN, etc), and I can't imagine VM would say 'bin your Cisco, you have to use our $100 Superhub'. Or would they go fully dual-stack for business customers?
- Can existing Superhubs be upgraded with new firmware and still be OK? (I have a VMDG480, hardware version 2.00).
I would imagine that all DOCSIS 3.0 hubs (SH 1.0 onwards) will be fine. The move to DS-Lite and an IPv6-only network that this implies wouldn't work if they had to replace large numbers of CPE boxes. Also, I'd imagine they'll want to make the migration pretty quick (relatively speaking) when they launch this thing. Running the existing IPv4 based infrastructure alongside a parallel but unconnected IPv6 network sounds horrendous from an operations standpoint. This wouldn't sit well with a large scale CPE replacement.
A further data point on this is the approach that BT has taken. They have gone down the dual-stack approach and a large percentage of their installed CPEs cannot support IPv6 (Homehub 5.0 anyone). Given this limitation sticking with a dual-stack approach makes sense for them.
Optimist1 wrote:
Can existing Superhubs be upgraded with new firmware and still be OK? (I have a VMDG480, hardware version 2.00).They could, but the most likely answer is that they will not.
The new DS standard is being used, and Liberty Global has designed and made their own replacement, so you should expect old equipment to be not be included. But yea it is possible.
I would expect they wouldn't be replacing CPE, because that would be too messy. In the full-DS world, you can just turn on v6 and the v4 path is unaffected. To go DS-Lite, you essentially need to transition a whole zone at a time. You need a flag day where suddenly your v4 packets start being 4in6 encapsulated. To do that piecemeal (ie commissioning N,000 new routers per day for years and dealing with all the interactions with users, technician callouts, etc) would be painful, so I imagine they're going to identify suitable models of CPE and flip the switch one day.
But that's what I was interested in - what happens to those people who don't have suitable CPE, such as those running their own routers? What is the fallback state? Even if it's say 2% of the VM customer base, to communicate to those users that they need to replace or reconfigure is going to be awkward so I would expect they would have a solution in the backend. The 'solution' of users waking up one day to no IPv4 connectivity sounds like a PR disaster, so I wonder what the mitigation is?
If you think they will forward plan and replace equipment that doesn't meet the specifications then you can forget about that. The old docsis2 modems were only removed because the network was getting beaten to death by the old gear, even then they were not all that active about wanting to change it.
In the VM world they might run both a IPv4 network and a IPv6+(4to6) together based off of your MAC.
Generally they have been good in the past about replacing old gear once a customer starts complaining.
As for a 'Fallback'... https://help.virginmedia.com/system/templates/selfservice/vm/help/customer/locale/en-GB/portal/200300000001000/article/HELP-2232/What-is-Gadget-Rescue
They will push lots of people off onto the pay service where a fix doesn't exist.
