Virgin Media Virgin Media Community

dgcarter · ‎27-03-2010

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

Optimist1 · ‎12-01-2019

@louis-m wrote:
IPv6 support on Virgin media
on ‎27-03-2010 18:11
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
As mentioned..... post almost 9 years ago!
Now we're just about to hit the 18000 mark on the IPv6 counter in this thread which roughly equates to about 5.610 addresses per day since this thread was started! OMG, I need to get a life and go and watch some paint dry!

Probably "next year", in line with what VM have been hinting for several years now, and I expect to continue to do indefinitely.

louis-m · ‎13-01-2019

Sunday 13/1/19 = 18404 tick tock, tick tock

Morgaine · ‎13-01-2019

Today's is the highest daily increment of recent times, and it follow a pretty high (though not record) Saturday too:

==========  ====== ========== ========== ===== ========= ======
DATE        AS     Users      IPv6-Users %UKv6 Increment %ISPv6
==========  ====== ========== ========== ===== ========= ======
2019_01_07: VIRGIN 10,560,952     17,065  0.10       278   0.16
2019_01_08: VIRGIN 10,565,590     17,167  0.10       102   0.16
2019_01_09: VIRGIN 10,559,118     17,396  0.10       229   0.16
2019_01_10: VIRGIN 10,558,475     17,499  0.10       103   0.17
2019_01_11: VIRGIN 10,552,087     17,667  0.10       168   0.17
2019_01_12: VIRGIN 10,540,417     17,992  0.11       325   0.17
2019_01_13: VIRGIN 10,542,576     18,507  0.11       515   0.18

The +515 is a record increment since the latter half of 2018, taking VM's IPv6 usage to the record daily of 18,507 counts. It should be stressed though that one or two days of high valued samples does not carry any real statistical significance. Just to put it in context, here is the plot of daily increments over the time that I've been recording APNIC data for the UK:

As this plot shows, we've experienced much higher daily increments in the past, as well as very large daily drops, so don't read too much into such incremental changes until they begin to persist over a period. 🙂

Morgaine.

"If it only does IPv4, it is broken." -- George Michaelson, APNIC.

louis-m · ‎15-01-2019

Tuesday 15/1/19 = 19147 still on the up.....

Anonymous · ‎20-01-2019

I've just been watching the UK IPv6 Council's annual meeting video update from Virgin: https://youtu.be/16FdlxyFQgY?t=1302

It adds a bit of colour to the slides which were posted a month or so back. Their representative was an engineer and clearly not permitted to represent the wider business but it was clear that he was keen and that they are technically able to launch as soon as possible.

The big downside came in the Q/A at the end of his presentation. It seems that there is much debate about Modem Mode within VM. There is a strong chance that when IPv6 is rolled out that Modem Mode will not be permitted any more. The reasoning being that not many devices exist that support DS-Lite and that the end-user experience would be very poor as a result. This is extremely disappointing to say the least.

"Enthusiast" firewalls OpenWRT and pfSense all support DS-Lite just fine and from a cursory search so do routers from Linksys and TP-Link. That said the state of documentation is currently pitiful so I have some sympathy with the anti-MM voices within VM. Surely this is a chicken-and-egg situation though and if VM permitted MM the state of documentation, device firmware and community assistance would evolve. I'd be quite happy if VM denied any support to people who enable Modem Mode.

louis-m · ‎20-01-2019

Would modem mode matter here? You would simply put give your router an IPv6 address and then distribute from there. I don't see it being too big an issue.

VMCopperUser · ‎20-01-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
I've just been watching the UK IPv6 Council's annual meeting video update from Virgin: https://youtu.be/16FdlxyFQgY?t=1302
"Enthusiast" firewalls OpenWRT and pfSense all support DS-Lite just fine and from a cursory search so do routers from Linksys and TP-Link. That said the state of documentation is currently pitiful so I have some sympathy with the anti-MM voices within VM. Surely this is a chicken-and-egg situation though and if VM permitted MM the state of documentation, device firmware and community assistance would evolve. I'd be quite happy if VM denied any support to people who enable Modem Mode.

Not real sure who the guy is, LinkedIn seems to suggest he's a principal design engineer, but Virgin tend to have a lot of people giving a lot of views and none of them ever seem to be official. What he described is moving everything to a core Ipv6 network before the switch ever happens, I think Morgaine has given that as a likely core goal and as such seems to be correct.

I think that Virgin not having modem mode could be a mistake. The problem will be in the way that the ALG and Firewall functions work more than a multiple-nat layer issue. If your under CGNAT then an extra layer of NAT isn't going to hurt anything, drop your router WAN the IPv4 DMZ and It's hard to see any extra issues being caused by that, just overactive ALG/Firewall problems with the VM Gateway equipment.

It's not so much of a Chicken and Egg thing either. I say that because Virgin Media as a whole is quite small when it comes to users who will be looking for firmware upgrades from router manufactures. Nearly every major home router maker supports DSLite on some equipment, so if they wanted to that feature could be added in today. What I suspect will happen is that non-enterprise equipment will not see firmware upgrades to deal with DSLite as it possibly could be used as a feature component to be marketed to people. But there's another side to this, once the world moves to IPv6 then IPv4 will be useless, so it's a feature that will probably be removed before it's ever as good as it could be.

There might not be a huge problem with CGNat (DSLite) here in the UK. Virgin have waited so long that by the time IPv6 rolls out on their network, all connections from outside VM will be IPv6 enabled. I personally have hardware that will never be IPv6 unless it's replaced (Solar Inverter, SIP VoIP Phone). Nintendo have clung on to IPv4 only devices for far too long now, so a lot of those users are really going to feel the pain. I would imagine that security cameras and media streamers will be a big issue for a lot of people too.

----
I do not work for VM, but I would. It is just a Job.
Most things I say I make up and sometimes it's useful, don't be mean if it's wrong.
I would also make websites for them, because the job never seems to require the website to work.

louis-m · ‎21-01-2019

I think CGNAT will cause issues for those users that want to supply their own services eg serve up http/s for their own use.

Yes, you could argue that they shouldn't be doing it on dynamic IP's etc but most consumer grade routers have dynamic DNS to overcome this and allow consumers to serve up what they want.

From my understanding, CGNAT will prevent this unless each customer is mapped to a unique IPv4 public IP address. Yes, for most users who don't do this, they won't see any difference apart from any CGNAT teething problems.

This is why I think that for users who want the ability to serve up their own services ie accept incoming IPv4 connections, VM will charge them a premium by forcing them to switch to something like business and use a GRE tunnel etc to tunnel an IPv4 network via the IPv6 network. Alternatively, they could use an outside provider for this.... again at a cost.

So my guess is they will rollout IPv6 with CGNAT for IPv4 at no extra cost for residential users. If you want anything more exotic, you will have to pay a premium for it or go elsewhere. I suspect the vanilla user will see no difference and hence there won't be a mass migration of consumers due to the CGNAT limitations.

It will be interesting to see what they do for the business users, especially on the Voom side of things. These users currently use a GRE tunnel to separate their traffic from the consumer side of things and allow a specific IPv4 subnet to be supplied to the end user with full NAT as it is now.
With those users, I suspect the GRE tunnel will still be supplied (at no extra cost) and the endpoint IP's will simply change to IPv6.

Taking the above into account, I suspect that anybody on residential VM who want's full IPv4 NAT after the switch to IPv6, will be forced to switch to Virgin Business or something similar at a premium to retain the same capabilities.

Anonymous · ‎21-01-2019

@louis-m wrote:
Would modem mode matter here? You would simply put give your router an IPv6 address and then distribute from there. I don't see it being too big an issue.

If you are happy with the SuperHub firewall and its rules and whatever limited prefix delegation (likely just a single /64) it would provide then this might work for you.

For me I want a plain Ethernet connection with plain DHCP provided IPv4 /32 (as now) or DHCPv6/SLAAC provided IPv6 /56 (in the future). I'll provide the firewall in the same way I provide the locks on my house. If others are happy with a US multinational providing the locks on their house then on their head be it.

If Virgin can't or won't continue to deliver this service then I'll seek another provider even if it means going slower for a bit (my BT pole hasn't been upgraded to G.Fast yet).

Martin_D · ‎21-01-2019

Am looking at IDnet as it has native IPv6 and also has DNS over TLS. The one downside is the speed compared to virgin. But if thay force router mode on us I will definitely be moving to IDnet.

Looking at FTTP Unlimited 80/20 £45.60 per month

As I use Asus RT-AX88U with Asuswrt-Merlin / Diversion | Skynet / Stubby | Pixelserv-tls So having the Hub 3 in router mode is a non starter. For me

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