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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

21369 - 30/1/19 ..... another 1k jump so increasing a bit again.

21369 - 30/1/19

jpeg1
Alessandro Volta

Can anyone estimate how much the change to IPv6 will cost VM? 

Then I can guess how much this is likely to put up the monthly cost, since you may be sure it won't come out of their profits.

- jpeg1
My name is NOT Alessandro. That's just a tag Virginmedia sticks on some contributors. Please ignore it.


@jpeg1 wrote:

Can anyone estimate how much the change to IPv6 will cost VM? 

Then I can guess how much this is likely to put up the monthly cost, since you may be sure it won't come out of their profits.


No one can estimate that.

If you go back 10-15 years the cost was averaged out at like $2 per US customer cost to the ISP and $340 (10 year) cost to the customer of the ISP.  You do need to keep in mind tho that a large chunk of that $340 was down to new hardware and most of that old hardware has been replaced by now too.  Now Virgin (and many other network providers) are faced with the fact that they are being forced down the CGNAT path.  CGNAT will probably have a larger cost than IPv6.  According to ComCast, buying IPv4 addresses are more expensive than the total cost of Deploying IPv6.  In essence, they have no choice, and their no choice solution is also the best value one too.  (Hmmm.... 4exit, NATtemain, More4ain)....

Will VM put their cost up.... Yea, They will find some way to charge us more for it than it cost them (In training, hardware, and software).  When I phoned retention's a couple of days ago they kept telling me how my service level really dictated the number of "devices" my network could run.  Based on that then I can only assume they have yet to start any actual training on anything of value.  I argued that DSL gave me a higher upload speed than Virgin Media, he said that Virgin Media would be more ideal for more devices.  Can't wait to see how they "sell" IPv6 to us.  You can be sure that it's not going to be good, nor cheap.

----
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.

Deploying v6 is a one-time cost, whereas CGNAT is a never-ending ongoing cost. Deploying v6 will save them money. (It helps that something around 40-70% of the traffic on a dual-stack ISP goes over v6, which lowers the CGNAT cost if you have v6 available.)

What does that mean for the monthly cost? Obviously that'll continue to go up by however much they think the market can bear. The only impact that costs have on pricing is to set a minimum viable lower bound, but that's only relevant if there's enough competition to force the prices down to that level.

I don't think VM will charge you directly for the IPv6 implementation eg your monthly charge is going up to X because of IPv6.

What they will do is charge indirectly ie we've kept our prices low for x amount of years but now we have to increase it by X due to rising costs etc

As I've mentioned in this thread, I think the standard user will be chucked onto IPv6 with IPv4 CGNAT and if you want anything different, you will have to pay extra ie IPv6 with IPv4 Statics & Full NAT

@jpeg1 writes:

Can anyone estimate how much the change to IPv6 will cost VM?

Then I can guess how much this is likely to put up the monthly cost, since you may be sure it won't come out of their profits.


That would have been an interesting question to ask if Virgin existed in a vacuum, a world in which external factors did not affect them, a world in which they could have continued providing only IPv4 indefinitely so that IPv6 would amount to "an extra service". But that is not the case here, because such a world does not exist.

A better question to ask in the real world of today would be how much money have Virgin already lost by being so late to the IPv6 game, since late panic deployment is always more costly than doing things early and in risk-free baby steps. Also, how many opportunities to leap ahead competitively have they squandered, and what risks have they now heaped upon themselves by not having IPv6 rolled out half a decade ago, or at least the instant that Liberty Global had a plan ready for it.

Last but not least, how much money has Virgin lost by refusing to listen (let alone talk) to its customers who have orders of magnitude more technical experience of networking than any VM manager, judging by the evidence we've seen over the years.  It was a resource which cost them nothing yet would have cost a fortune to obtain through contracted Professional Services, but which they deliberately chose to ignore.

In summary, talking about costs is important for a business, but knowing what the costs would be in a non-existent fantasy world doesn't really help much. Lots of things could have happened in an alternative universe, but did not materialize in this one.

The question which is closest to the present reality which might be worth entertaining is "How much extra will IPv4 be costing Virgin in a few years' time, given that they are on the path towards having IPv6-only internal infrastructure?  (Deploying IPv4 only at the edges.)" That's a highly relevant question which large numbers of companies are already asking themselves, often publicly in presentations. There is no reasonable doubt that IPv4-as-a-Service is coming, and it will cost its users more and more over time for the simple reason that it is a heavy and unwanted burden in a world that is inexorably moving to IPv6.

Morgaine.

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

Definitely agree with that. I'm on VMB Voom 3 and the minute IPv6 is available, I will be configuring it. I'd imagine they will leave the GRE tunnel serving up my static IPv4's as it is now and then at some stage in the future (in a galaxy far far away), I wouldn't be surprised if they informed me they were closing down the IPv4 service and to keep it you would have to pay X. Hopefully by that time, the rest of the world will be well on their way to IPv6 and I can bin the IPv4.

I do think the change to IPv6 will be more imminently evident to residential users as they will be switched to IPv6 and IPv4 CGNAT. Maybe VM will allow residential users (for a limited period) to switch back to IPv4 to gain full NAT or force them onto a new (and slightly more costly) tariff?

04/02/19 = 22045  over 22k now and still climbing!

How accurate are those figures? What does "user" mean? An IPV6 address? If so, the whole 128 bits, or just the routeable 64?