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IPv6 support on Virgin media

dgcarter
Dialled in

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

1,493 REPLIES 1,493

I'm only guessing there so can't be sure how they would roll it out. I'm on VMB Voom 3 and using 5 statics. I envisage I will wake up one morning and there will be an upgraded Hitron router with an IPv6 address. My Ipv4's will remain the same. Not sure how the IPv6 will be different to residential or even if it will be?
Perhaps the Voom 3 will become vanilla IPv6 and a GRE Full Ipv4 NAT (business) as opposed to IPv6 and CGNAT IPv4 (residential)?

And leaving VM because of this will become anybodies prerogative with the trade in of speed etc but I wouldn't expect to see a mass exodus just because they aren't supplying modem mode which I'm guessing only a small percentage of their users actually use.

 

The suggestion that VM would remove modem mode in order to force a DS-lite solution confirms what I have always thought of VM. That they know better than their customers as to what customers actually need.

I want IPv4, not all the ISPs offer IPv6, so need connectivity when I am on client sites, holiday etc. aAfirewall that works. I need VPN connectivity, I need to be able to securely expose home devices to the internet. Looks like I am going to have to give up vivid 350 for a 3Mb FTTC.

Hub4/Gig1-> pfSense->Microtik CRS312/CSS326/CRS305->Meshed Asus RT-AX89X
VM Network - Timwilky

Modem mode isn't necessarily the issue here in terms of not being able to use your own router. It makes it more complicated, but in theory under DS-Lite, you could still broadcast the IPv6 prefix provided across your LAN without modem mode, it's just more technical and modem mode was useful to basically remove the whole double NAT scenario. However given DS-Lite looks to be the solution, double NAT won't be a problem but then that's because you won't be able to do NAT in the first place anymore! Sneaky move there.

It is disappointing that Virgin Media has chosen this solution. On the one hand it makes sense because it's parent Liberty Global has been doing this across Europe, so it's not exactly going to do a whole different IPv6 implementation for the UK. I don't personally like it considering the likes of BT/Sky implemented dual stack which in my opinion is the better way to go for all involved. This will basically ruin the party for any gamers, user hosted servers etc behind an existing VM connection. Clearly Virgin Media think their core customer base isn't doing this on-mass. Virgin Media will probably argue that if you want do that kind of stuff the business plans are going to be "solution". I can (to a point) understand the whole, hosted services/servers scenario, but gamers wanting open NAT types having to go down business type plans? I mean I guess Virgin Media kind of positions the Vivid 200 package as "for gamers" but is it going to be any different than the rest of the residential VIVID plans? It's not ever clear if VM business plans will provide a IPv4 that's not CGNAT/shared either.

Given the news coming out, sounds like I'm going to be clinging onto my SH2 with an IPv6 tunnel for a while yet, DS-Lite sounds like a trainwreck for the more technical enthusiast level people on VM right now. The sad thing is there are plenty of other providers which have a more sane IPv6 implementations but the lack the comparative speed offerings. Who knows, maybe we are in the minority 1% that the 99% of VM customers won't notice or even care about. I'd love to know what the trials concluded and the feedback.

Funny how this has been going on for 9 years and now that IPv6 support on Virgin Media is likely inbound soon, no one wants it, not in this form anyway!

Hopefully customers will be able to opt out of IPv6 in order to continue using modem mode, this is something offered by LIberty Global's UPC service in mainland Europe. If the choice is modem mode or IPv6 i'd happily choose modem mode.

100% would also opt-out of DS-Lite and continue using my Hurricane Electric tunnel with a /64 routed prefix and keep my semi-static IPv4 which is actually routed to me for sure!

But what would you do if VM turned around and said "yes, you can have an IPv6 /48 prefix & Full Nat Ipv4" for £5 extra per month?

Would people take that offer up?

Currently, we are only guessing and I'm guessing how they would switch me over on Voom 3 with minimal interruption which I think they could do right now as my IPv4 statics are getting served via GRE. Maybe they have planned it like this for a while and if I'm honest, it kind of makes sense from a deployment point of view.

Maybe they will switch residential over and wait for those to kick up who want modem mode and then give them the two options ie switch to something like above or as mentioned go back to IPv4 until they totally pull it?


@Timwilky wrote:

The suggestion that VM would remove modem mode in order to force a DS-lite solution confirms what I have always thought of VM. That they know better than their customers as to what customers actually need.

I want IPv4, not all the ISPs offer IPv6, so need connectivity when I am on client sites, holiday etc. aAfirewall that works. I need VPN connectivity, I need to be able to securely expose home devices to the internet. Looks like I am going to have to give up vivid 350 for a 3Mb FTTC.


Having Ipv6 only at home shouldn't be a big issue (as long as the home devices support Ipv6).  It's really easy to find 4to6's out there, so no matter where you are right now those tunnels exist and are cheap/free.  CGNat of any kind is likely to kill the likes of remote connection/vpn's, do bear in mind that many of the DSL providers out there are also moving to similar systems, the flip side to that is that other providers have been working on this problem for a long time and many allow you to opt out of CGNAT.

In my mind there are ways it could be addressed.  Remove modem mode, and if the router see's any port forwarding rules (manual or UPnP) then change that connection to a non-nat setup.  4in6 with everyone having their own IP (This has been shot down by others here, but I still cant see how that wouldn't be possible).

I think Virgin moving to IPv6 will help push content providers to be more IPv6 Centric, Talk-Talk are trying just like VM to not make this move, but once VM and TT make the move then UK connectivity will be great and hopefully we will see everyone else shift along with it.

CGNat is bad, but VM (and TT) bods were dumb enough to sit on IPv6 until it was forced on them due to IPv4 running out (If they really have "Ran out").

What came first, the chicken or the egg?  In VM's world it was the Chicken and Egg fried rice. DOH.

----
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 wrote:

But what would you do if VM turned around and said "yes, you can have an IPv6 /48 prefix & Full Nat Ipv4" for £5 extra per month?

Would people take that offer up?

Currently, we are only guessing and I'm guessing how they would switch me over on Voom 3 with minimal interruption which I think they could do right now as my IPv4 statics are getting served via GRE. Maybe they have planned it like this for a while and if I'm honest, it kind of makes sense from a deployment point of view.

Maybe they will switch residential over and wait for those to kick up who want modem mode and then give them the two options ie switch to something like above or as mentioned go back to IPv4 until they totally pull it?


I doubt anything will change for business users.

You will likely be able to keep your IPv4 and get assigned IPv6.  They were two different beast at one time, I am not sure about now but I would suspect that the separation will continue.  IPv6 has some issues that happen early on too, so If I was them then the testing of that would be done on residential users before a business rollout :P.

----
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.

oooohhhhh - 26/01/19 = 20111

past the 20k barrier!!

Sunday update --- and the rise in VM IPv6 counts continues, APNIC permitting.

If anyone is counting the weeks between my (usually) fortnightly graphs, they'll have noticed that the last one failed to appear on schedule. There was a good reason for that: APNIC had a little hiccup on the 19th January, and its data became questionable.

Being an engineer, data capture and analysis is stock-in-trade, and so is watching out for data anomalies. One such anomaly is common-mode changes in variables that are considered independent, which usually indicates that there is a problem with the data capture or its transmission. In some situations it is possible to perform Common-Mode Rejection to recover the wanted data safely by removal of the common-mode contribution, as long as certain conditions are met. I gathered another week of daily samples to check, but unfortunately the required conditions are not met. We're going to have to live with this glitch in the curves, a valuable reminder that indirect proxy measurements are often less robust than direct ones.

The following graph shows the signed magnitude of the increments in each day's sample value relative to the day before, for all four of the UK ISPs monitored, starting one month before the anomaly for reference. Virgin Media's curve appears as a straight line hugging the x-axis because VM increments are dwarfed by the common scale and much larger increments of the other three, but the same anomaly is apparent in VM data when examined at a smaller scale.  Namely:  on 19th January 2019, APNIC's IPv6 counts for all four ISPs dropped simultaneously by a large factor (negative increment), and remained low for four days:

apnic_2019_01_27_Sun_incr.png


By itself, this large drop would not have prevented Common-Mode Rejection and data recovery, but unfortunately after the equally sudden rise 4 days later, none of the curves showed that the increments masked by the 4-day common-mode drop had accumulated to provide continuity after the common-mode fault ended. As a result, continuity is missing and cannot be recovered by interpolation across the fault. We are in effect in a new data sequence now: the measurement apparatus has changed.

Here is the current graph for all four ISPs, visually suggesting a common-mode fault and loss of statistical continuity with the data before the event:

apnic_2019_01_27_Sun_all4.png

 

And finally, our usual plot of Virgin's IPv6 activity at finer resolution:

apnic_2019_01_27_Sun_vm.png

 

Fortunately the continuity remaining in the curves is easily sufficient for eyeballing purposes (it could have been *much* worse), so APNIC's hiccup hasn't altered our ballpark analysis. IPv6 activity is clearly still at the highest level ever seen in Virgin's AS5089 and is still growing, so we can be confident that something interesting is happening.

Today's IPv6 sample count for VM stands at 20,531 per day.

Morgaine.

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