IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[ksim]

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@ravenstar68 wrote:

@ksim 

I challenge you to find an IPv6 address for Outlook.com.  Yahoo and AOL do support it.    Plex Server - as stated before in theory is capable of supporting IPv6 connections BUT the Plex App on both iOS and Android only supports IPv4 connectivity.  Many IP camera's are still IPv4 only too.

And you completely misunderstand, VM doesn't have any IPv6 support, there is no reason to discuss IPv6 support in apps when you talking about VM. as IPv4 , then you have to jump over hoops with NAT now, doing external proxy and mapping for those devices.

BTW you might ask yourself this:

Virgin announced that they were ready to transition to IPv6 dual stack lite last year.  Yet they didn't.  Why not?  It was also leaked that they had a trial running last year.  Putting 2 and 2 together - one would think that if there was indeed a trial, that it might have thrown up red flags about their action plan.

I did put 2 and 2 together, nothing was working, they can't set it up. have you seen trial results, LG has DSLite everywhere, that red flag won't stop it. but a lack of competence can do that easily. the latest they prooved several times.

Couple this with the fact that in former UPC areas (now owned by Liberty Global), in Ireland and Europe, the ISP's were rolling customers back to IPv4 only to deal with issues caused when using Dual Stack Lite.  I don't think the situation with deployment is as cut and dried as people were suggesting.

have they canceled rollout? have they stopped expansion? ask yourself. why did they decide to back down only in the UK?

If VM did decide to move away from Dual Stack Lite to a full Dual Stack deployment, then the required changes to the network would not be minor.  They would also need to change proposed router firmware to support a proper dual stack approach.

But full DS was never mentioned by VM (DSLite was), and when you will get IPv4 GCNat only, you will dream about having DSLite. And why you think "changes to the network would not be minor", they are minor, it is not something unique no one has ever done,

[jem101]

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@ksim wrote:

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@ravenstar68 wrote:

@ksim 

I challenge you to find an IPv6 address for Outlook.com.  Yahoo and AOL do support it.    Plex Server - as stated before in theory is capable of supporting IPv6 connections BUT the Plex App on both iOS and Android only supports IPv4 connectivity.  Many IP camera's are still IPv4 only too.

And you completely misunderstand, VM doesn't have any IPv6 support, there is no reason to discuss IPv6 support in apps when you talking about VM. as IPv4 , then you have to jump over hoops with NAT now, doing external proxy and mapping for those devices.

I'm not too sure what you are talking about here, your argument seems to be (and correct me if I've misunderstood) that VM should deploy IPv6 right now and if that means doing it via DS-Lite/CGNat then so be it, am I right? OK then you have immediately broken a big swathe of IoT etc. devices that use unsolicited inbound connections. You can't just say that 'they can still communicate directly using the superior end-to-end connectivity which IPv6 allows' because a great deal of cheap devices have no native IPv6 support in the hardware. Maybe you consider those users and devices just unfortunate collateral damage?

BTW you might ask yourself this:

Virgin announced that they were ready to transition to IPv6 dual stack lite last year.  Yet they didn't.  Why not?  It was also leaked that they had a trial running last year.  Putting 2 and 2 together - one would think that if there was indeed a trial, that it might have thrown up red flags about their action plan.

I did put 2 and 2 together, nothing was working, they can't set it up. have you seen trial results, LG has DSLite everywhere, that red flag won't stop it. but a lack of competence can do that easily. the latest they prooved several times.

I haven't see the trial results, I doubt Tim (@ravenstar68) has either and probably neither have you so to simply claim that 'nothing was working' and 'they can't set it up', is at best pure speculation or you just making it up to suit your argument that VM is staffed entirely with incompetents. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the trial worked perfectly for what it was designed to do but caused more overall problems for users for little if any gain?

Couple this with the fact that in former UPC areas (now owned by Liberty Global), in Ireland and Europe, the ISP's were rolling customers back to IPv4 only to deal with issues caused when using Dual Stack Lite.  I don't think the situation with deployment is as cut and dried as people were suggesting.

have they canceled rollout? have they stopped expansion? ask yourself. why did they decide to back down only in the UK?

How about, and hands up this is only speculation, in other UPC regions maybe they were looking at IPv4 address depletion and DS-Lite was the only quick way to continue to grow the customer base? It is widely believed that VM in the UK has a large pool of available IPv4 addresses and that pressure to 'do something' isn't there. If DS-Lite is causing issues then why blindly press on with doing it in the UK if it isn't immediately necessary. Maybe just row back a bit and consider a better solution (full Dual Stack anyone) even if it takes considerably more time to deploy and is more expensive to do?

If VM did decide to move away from Dual Stack Lite to a full Dual Stack deployment, then the required changes to the network would not be minor.  They would also need to change proposed router firmware to support a proper dual stack approach.

But full DS was never mentioned by VM (DSLite was), and when you will get IPv4 GCNat only, you will dream about having DSLite. And why you think "changes to the network would not be minor", they are minor, it is not something unique no one has ever done,

And what makes you so adamant that VM are going to move to IPv4 CGNAT only? Unless you are actually a senior member of the company, again it's just speculation or making stuff up to suit your agenda. And you think that massive network infrastructure changes are just 'minor'? OK!

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[ksim]

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@jem101 wrote:

I'm not too sure what you are talking about here, your argument seems to be (and correct me if I've misunderstood) that VM should deploy IPv6 right now and if that means doing it via DS-Lite/CGNat then so be it, am I right? OK then you have immediately broken a big swathe of IoT etc. devices that use unsolicited inbound connections. You can't just say that 'they can still communicate directly using the superior end-to-end connectivity which IPv6 allows' because a great deal of cheap devices have no native IPv6 support in the hardware. Maybe you consider those users and devices just unfortunate collateral damage?

You do not understand it. It is already broken as your IoT devices behind NAT right now. are you portmapping every IoT device now? or using UPNP? then your setup is insecure and broken. My setup benefits from IPv6 a lot.

I haven't see the trial results, I doubt Tim (@ravenstar68) has either and probably neither have you so to simply claim that 'nothing was working' and 'they can't set it up', is at best pure speculation or you just making it up to suit your argument that VM is staffed entirely with incompetents. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the trial worked perfectly for what it was designed to do but caused more overall problems for users for little if any gain?

Yeah, it was ok in Ireland, was ok in Europe, and suddenly not ok in the UK. And the most professional team addressed users problems right away. Ha Ha. after the trial VM went silent, I am sure if they decided to go FullDS they would tell that as a reason for the delay. They already proved incompetence, no reason to think about complex plans, then the explanation is simple.

How about, and hands up this is only speculation, in other UPC regions maybe they were looking at IPv4 address depletion and DS-Lite was the only quick way to continue to grow the customer base? It is widely believed that VM in the UK has a large pool of available IPv4 addresses and that pressure to 'do something' isn't there. If DS-Lite is causing issues then why blindly press on with doing it in the UK if it isn't immediately necessary. Maybe just row back a bit and consider a better solution (full Dual Stack anyone) even if it takes considerably more time to deploy and is more expensive to do?

full DS doesn't require more time or resources. But have you think even a second that any big company is trying to unify structure to reduce cost. Managing different configurations is painful. Going Full DS for LG only in the UK is a huge waste and not cost-effective, they will never do that, as it requires separate and additional training for the UK staff, support, separate set of documentation. again IPv4 pool is never a reason for IPv6 rollout, there is always CGNat for that issue.

And what makes you so adamant that VM are going to move to IPv4 CGNAT only?

because it is the only way.

Unless you are actually a senior member of the company, again it's just speculation or making stuff up to suit your agenda.

I can use logic, if there is no IPv6, you will do CGNAT. kind of simple.

And you think that massive network infrastructure changes are just 'minor'?

Because I've done it (on smaller cases), I have friends in ISPs who've done it. Do you know what is major in the IPv6 rollout? it is staff training, providing new scripts for the support. Equipment is IPv6 compatible unless you are running your network on something from the last century. IPv6 configuration and routing are much simpler.

[VMCopperUser]

If the user base grows, CGNAT will be a requirement.  At this point in time no ISP is going to be willing to start buying unused IP blocks.  $25 per IP might not sound like a lot, but for a ISP who wants to buy thousands at a time it's a big chunk of change.  Keep in mind that the modem/router combos they use probably cost less than that.  They do have room from what I see, but it's not an awful lot.

I am not fully against CGNAT - I know that it will be a requirement once they are out of IPv4.  I would much rather them move to Dual Stack, then if required CGNAT(v4)+IPv6.

They should be able to pull enough data from the routers (Forwarding rules, UPNP request) to know who they could turn on CGNAT for, and who would obviously need it turned off.

Sadly we have two problems and they shouldn't be mixed.  CGNAT is one, IPv6 adoption (By VM) is the other.  Once CGNAT rolls out, all those people who are "just happy" will be upset when little Timmy does something dumb and gets the NAT ip range blocked on some forum or something.

When I think of VM managing CGNAT then their email service comes to mind, it used to allow you to check what IP's had logged in - That's great as you can monitor for compromised accounts!  Sadly they never managed to make it show anything other than the proxy IP that sat between you and the email server.  Imagine how much their web proxy and web filters have broken over the years, once NAT layers get added into that mix then problems are going to be harder to diagnoise, and Virgin will try to push users back to the content providers as being the problem makers.

So there will need to be at some point a middle ground where we have IPv4 CGNAT and IPv6.  I don't like it, I don't support it, but I know it has to happen.

[VMCopperUser]

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@ksim wrote:
full DS doesn't require more time or resources. But have you think even a second that any big company is trying to unify structure to reduce cost. Managing different configurations is painful. Going Full DS for LG only in the UK is a huge waste and not cost-effective, they will never do that, as it requires separate and additional training for the UK staff, support, separate set of documentation. again IPv4 pool is never a reason for IPv6 rollout, there is always CGNat for that issue.

Because I've done it (on smaller cases), I have friends in ISPs who've done it. Do you know what is major in the IPv6 rollout? it is staff training, providing new scripts for the support. Equipment is IPv6 compatible unless you are running your network on something from the last century. IPv6 configuration and routing are much simpler.

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The UK arm and the rest of the UPC network don't need to align for customer support as customer support is not shared.  Some of the hardware seems to now be similar (different models from what I see).

CGNAT will add a HUGE amount of retraining so staff can understand issues around CGNAT.  In many of the other places UPC change from DS-Lite to IPv4 only to "fix" problems.  That's about the extent of training they have.  As others have said before too, there's plenty of equipment out there that's not IPv6 compatible.  My SIP phones and Solar Inverter need IPv4, the Inverter is fine for NAT (it uploads data to a server).  Other users have working legacy equipment that doesn't support IPv6.

[ksim]

@VMCopperUser

I am not arguing that. Full DS is way better, I do not believe that it will happen for the VM in the UK. We know CGNat is happening no matter what, and having DSLite is the best VM customers can hope for.

Legacy equipment that requires external access is a minority, LG already ignored customers with those devices in other countries, that not a stopper for them. even support and staff are not shared between entities, everyone is trying to reduce the number of documents to manage, reusing support scripts and common issues knowledgebase from Ireland is a bigger benefit than any hassle for old customer devices. Unified configuration management and troubleshooting for the infrastructure is also great benefit in cost.

[jem101]

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@ksim wrote:

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@jem101 wrote:

I'm not too sure what you are talking about here, your argument seems to be (and correct me if I've misunderstood) that VM should deploy IPv6 right now and if that means doing it via DS-Lite/CGNat then so be it, am I right? OK then you have immediately broken a big swathe of IoT etc. devices that use unsolicited inbound connections. You can't just say that 'they can still communicate directly using the superior end-to-end connectivity which IPv6 allows' because a great deal of cheap devices have no native IPv6 support in the hardware. Maybe you consider those users and devices just unfortunate collateral damage?

You do not understand it. It is already broken as your IoT devices behind NAT right now. are you portmapping every IoT device now? or using UPNP? then your setup is insecure and broken. My setup benefits from IPv6 a lot.

Hang on a minute, my webcam behind an IPv4 only NAT router isn't actually broken is it? Because right here and now I can view it from the outside world, so by definition; it's working not broken - as indeed is all of my home automation system. Do what you want and all of a sudden the webcam (at least) IS broken, why; because it doesn't support IPv6 addressing in hardware. And no I don't use uPnP, since I loath it with a passion for exactly the same reason you do, I make a point of disabling it everywhere I go. So I do indeed manually port map devices. Would IPv6 remove the need for me to do that? Well yes it would except I'd have to get a new webcam - maybe you would like to contribute to the cost?

So your setup benefits from IPv6, good for you, now you probably don't intend to, but you really are coming across as 'well IPv6 will help me a lot so I insist that it be deployed immediately irrespective of what might immediately break for many other users - after all as long as ksim isn't inconvenienced and has an easier life, then that's all that matters!

I haven't see the trial results, I doubt Tim (@ravenstar68) has either and probably neither have you so to simply claim that 'nothing was working' and 'they can't set it up', is at best pure speculation or you just making it up to suit your argument that VM is staffed entirely with incompetents. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the trial worked perfectly for what it was designed to do but caused more overall problems for users for little if any gain?

Yeah, it was ok in Ireland, was ok in Europe, and suddenly not ok in the UK. And the most professional team addressed users problems right away. Ha Ha. after the trial VM went silent, I am sure if they decided to go FullDS they would tell that as a reason for the delay. They already proved incompetence, no reason to think about complex plans, then the explanation is simple.

Really; it was OK in Ireland was it - ever had a quick glance at the VM forums over there and the posting from users bitterly complaining about the problems with DS-Lite and asking, and being granted, to move back to IPv4 only? And why might people want to do that, couldn't possibly be due their setups suddenly being broken could it? Do you seriously think that a company the size of VM and its parent LG would publicly announce the results of a trial, especially if it didn't go the way they hoped and announce what their future plans are going to be and reasons for the delay? Because if you really do think that then I'm afraid, you clearly have no clue about how large organisations work and the internal politics at play. 

Yes the explanation probably is simple and the simplest explanation is 'it didn't work'

Incidentally have you seen the size of the subscriber bases for LG's subsidiaries across Europe? Very roughly, the combined size of all of their mainland European and Irish customers isn't too much more than VM's UK operation alone. What you 'might' be able to make work in say Belgium with 1.6 million broadband subscribers doesn't necessarily work in the UK with 5.3 million users and about three times the revenue.

How about, and hands up this is only speculation, in other UPC regions maybe they were looking at IPv4 address depletion and DS-Lite was the only quick way to continue to grow the customer base? It is widely believed that VM in the UK has a large pool of available IPv4 addresses and that pressure to 'do something' isn't there. If DS-Lite is causing issues then why blindly press on with doing it in the UK if it isn't immediately necessary. Maybe just row back a bit and consider a better solution (full Dual Stack anyone) even if it takes considerably more time to deploy and is more expensive to do?

full DS doesn't require more time or resources. But have you think even a second that any big company is trying to unify structure to reduce cost. Managing different configurations is painful. Going Full DS for LG only in the UK is a huge waste and not cost-effective, they will never do that, as it requires separate and additional training for the UK staff, support, separate set of documentation. again IPv4 pool is never a reason for IPv6 rollout, there is always CGNat for that issue.

I believe as someone else has stated below, separate support arrangements is a complete red herring - yes it would be slightly beneficial to have identical arrangements for all of it's subsidiary companies but as there is little if any overlap that's not a massively compelling argument. And yes I'm perfectly aware that there are other good reasons to move to IPv6 from v4 not just pool depletion, but purely from a business perspective it really is an important driver.

CGNat is perfectly fine, IF you want to alienate and drive away your more technically-minded users and if you are fully prepared for the explosive increase in calls to customer services complaining of why doesn't my no-name light switch work anymore remotely and why can't I get to xyz website. And as I said above the UK market is much, much bigger than any of the others, the ramifications of breaking existing customer setups are much more impactful 

And what makes you so adamant that VM are going to move to IPv4 CGNAT only?

because it is the only way.

Well unless VM happen to have, say enough spare IPv4 addresses to cover predicted growth for the next five years. Now I don't know if that's true, but you certainly don't know it isn't and absolutely can't say it's the only way!

Unless you are actually a senior member of the company, again it's just speculation or making stuff up to suit your agenda.

I can use logic, if there is no IPv6, you will do CGNAT. kind of simple.

See above, and who is saying that VM aren't going to do IPv6 ever? Just because it's not being done to your timescale and at your convenience doesn't actually mean much. I'd like to see them do IPv6 just as much as you would, I'd just rather it be done 'properly' and not just rushed out to tick a box leaving a trail of disgruntled customers in its wake.

And you think that massive network infrastructure changes are just 'minor'?

Because I've done it (on smaller cases), I have friends in ISPs who've done it. Do you know what is major in the IPv6 rollout? it is staff training, providing new scripts for the support. Equipment is IPv6 compatible unless you are running your network on something from the last century. IPv6 configuration and routing are much simpler.

On the scale of VM? Then I expect that you'll know that when you do a big infrastructure change, regardless of how much planning and testing you do, at the point where you press the big red button, something always breaks. Inevitably it's something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and usually because nobody other than 'Ted in accounts' even knew that it existed. But to Ted in accounts it's the end of the world! Now you do something which works perfectly for 95% of the customers and they don't even realise it's been done, that 5% on the scale of VM leads to a really bad day all round!

Oh and you'd be surprised just how much equipment from the last century is still knocking about. Not core networking equipment no (well at least I'd hope not) but CPE and edge devices. There's no point just thinking about the core infrastructure, it's not about how easy it is to deploy IPv6, it's what experience do the end customers get - because there's no point extolling the many advantages (and I really do know what they are) of the shiny new networking to users complaining when their light switches stop working! Because they'll be coming for you with pitchforks and burning torches!

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[ravenstar68]

Virgin Media are not going to do anything that causes too many issues for the customers.  After all if they break something major, customer satisfaction goes out the windows as do wait times.  As has been pointed out they have 5 million customers across the UK..  I've seen this behaviour with their email system as, one way to make the system more secure is to retire the old settings and just have one universal set of settings regardless if your email address.  VM have done the second, but not the first, because of the impact it would have on customers who don't read the information that VM send out :(.

I'm not a VM employee so I wouldn't get to see the results of any IPv6 trial.  Hell they don't even listen to us when we suggest allowing manual DNS setup on the hubs - but then again neither does BT AFAIK.

NAT broke the internet - Port forwarding provided a workaround but CGNAT means port forwarding will be broken.  Doing a little research does show a newer alternative to Dual-Stack Lite lw4o6 where the core network is IPv6 and IPv4 is tunneled over IPv6 but the NAT is done at the CPE rather than the Gateway.

So Dual-stack lite isn't the only way forward and neither is full dual stack.

Tim

[ksim]

> Because right here and now I can view it from the outside world, so by definition; it's working not broken - as indeed is all of my home automation system.

Again get your facts straight, your home automation forwarding camera image or you have direct stream mapped to the outside world? but indeed you have implemented tons of hacks to get it working, instead of just using it.

> contribute to the cost?

not before VM implements IPv6

> forums over there and the posting from users bitterly complaining about the problems with DS-Lite

In that case, check the UK VM forum, even IPv4 is not working in the UK. Wrong place to collect statistics. you have 20 people complain about DSLite and 200.000 happily utilizing IPv6 network features. whom you will hear on the forum? Again GCNat is not avoidable, it will be here, the question will you have IPv6 or not.

> Incidentally have you seen the size of the subscriber bases for LG's subsidiaries across Europe?

Yes I have, ~4 times more than in the UK

> And yes I'm perfectly aware that there are other good reasons to move to IPv6 from v4 not just pool depletion, but purely from a business perspective it really is an important driver.

pool depletion is not a driver at all, the solution for pool depletion is GCNAT, not IPv6.

> if you are fully prepared for the explosive increase in calls to customer services complaining

that's your guess, have you ever experienced that, again VM is not the first company who doing DSLite! disruption from those customers is minor, times more people complain about NAT issues every day.

> And as I said above the UK market is much, much bigger than any of the others

if you said something, doesn't mean it is true.

> On the scale of VM?

> CPE and edge devices

devices affected by GCNAT, very minor amount, you can't even imagine.

> Because they'll be coming for you with pitchforks and burning torches!

do you have home automation??? really??? I can't believe that a person who did the configuration writes such stupid things. I can switch off external IPv4 completely and my HA setup will carry on working without any interruption. even more, than half of the devices don't have IPv6 support, and a lot of them do not have even WiFi/Lan.

> Virgin Media are not going to do anything that causes too many issues for the customers.

many are 100 from 4.5 million? Really?

> Hell they don't even listen to us when we suggest allowing manual DNS setup on the hubs - but then again neither does BT AFAIK.

thank god they didn't listen to you about this. it is really stupid. You want custom DNS: go and get a proper router that they do not need to provide support for.

> NAT broke the internet

it is saved it.

>- Port forwarding provided a workaround but CGNAT means port forwarding will be broken.

IPv4 is broken, that's why we are talking about IPv6, and that's why ISP without IPv6 should not be allowed to advertise their services as "Broadband Internet".

[jem101]

@ksim wrote:

> Because right here and now I can view it from the outside world, so by definition; it's working not broken - as indeed is all of my home automation system.

Again get your facts straight, your home automation forwarding camera image or you have direct stream mapped to the outside world? but indeed you have implemented tons of hacks to get it working, instead of just using it.

My facts are perfectly straight, right now it all functions as I want it to do, ergo by definition it works. Tons of hacks? - Exaggeration much!

> contribute to the cost?

not before VM implements IPv6

I was actually being facetious, but I think you know that!

> forums over there and the posting from users bitterly complaining about the problems with DS-Lite

In that case, check the UK VM forum, even IPv4 is not working in the UK. Wrong place to collect statistics. you have 20 people complain about DSLite and 200.000 happily utilizing IPv6 network features. whom you will hear on the forum? Again GCNat is not avoidable, it will be here, the question will you have IPv6 or not.

In what way exactly is IPv4 'not working'? Seems to be working reasonably well, (not perfectly but what does) for some 5.3 million broadband customers in the UK. Oh and be very wary of brandishing the word 'statistics' in a debate because if you do then actually have some quantifiable data to back it up, don't just make some numbers.

> Incidentally have you seen the size of the subscriber bases for LG's subsidiaries across Europe?

Yes I have, ~4 times more than in the UK

Well that's a bit weird because if we look at LG's own website in which they list their subscriber numbers as of December 2019, we see (and I'm using the broadband users only, we could include the TV and phone subscribers as well but they are fairly irrelevant to this discussion and anyway, won't significantly skew the figures) the following;

UK : 5.3 million
Ireland : 376 thousand
Netherlands : 3.4 million
Belgium : 1.6 million
Switzerland : 661 thousand
Poland : 1.2 million
Slovakia : 141 thousand

So the entirety of mainland Europe plus Ireland is only about 37% greater than just the UK alone. And I'm probably being over generous, their operation in the Netherlands is a 50/50 joint venture with Vodafone, so maybe we should downgrade that contribution. Not sure where you got four times greater from? Do you think you might actually be wrong?

> And yes I'm perfectly aware that there are other good reasons to move to IPv6 from v4 not just pool depletion, but purely from a business perspective it really is an important driver.

pool depletion is not a driver at all, the solution for pool depletion is GCNAT, not IPv6.

In isolation then no it isn't and in that limited sense then yes, CGNAT is the obvious solution, but taking into account a broader picture and assuming that you wish to minimise disruption to your end users, then purely using CGNAT is something to be avoided. In that case pool depletion just becomes one of the many reasons to transition to IPv6, but if you happen to be in a situation where pool depletion isn't an immediate and pressing concern, then from a purely business perspective the entire reason to move to some kind of IPv6 suddenly becomes less of an issue and more of a 'well we need to do this sometime - but not today!'

> if you are fully prepared for the explosive increase in calls to customer services complaining

that's your guess, have you ever experienced that, again VM is not the first company who doing DSLite! disruption from those customers is minor, times more people complain about NAT issues every day.

Yes it is my guess, but one based on considerable experience of witnessing first hand exactly how end-users react when the underlaying infrastructure changes and things no longer work exactly the way they expect them to. Luckily you seem to know that this is all a minor consideration compared with the numbers who daily suffer from and call in to customer services with NAT related issues. I have no doubt that the have the raw figures to hand on which you based that premise and are more than happy to share them!

> And as I said above the UK market is much, much bigger than any of the others

if you said something, doesn't mean it is true.

Absolutely correct - I really loath the old 'appeal to authority argument'. Which is why before I post something I make an effort to fact check it first - see above regarding the raw figures from LG's website concerning subscriber numbers. Naturally the same should apply to you, so your claim that VM's failure to deploy an IPv6 setup is entirely down to gross incompetence by the entire technical staff is backed up with evidence, yes?

> On the scale of VM?

> CPE and edge devices

devices affected by GCNAT, very minor amount, you can't even imagine.

And you naturally have the statistical analysis to show that it'll be very minor and inconsequential? Because surely you haven't just pulled that statement out of your backside have you? You do have quantifiable evidence to justify it of course?

> Because they'll be coming for you with pitchforks and burning torches!

do you have home automation??? really??? I can't believe that a person who did the configuration writes such stupid things. ...snip

OK not literally turning up at your house in a mob, what I wrote is referred to as a literary trope - you could Google the definition, I believe Google is accessible purely over IPv6 that way you don't need to dirty your hands with 32 bit addressing.😁

> Virgin Media are not going to do anything that causes too many issues for the customers.

many are 100 from 4.5 million? Really?

> Hell they don't even listen to us when we suggest allowing manual DNS setup on the hubs - but then again neither does BT AFAIK.

thank god they didn't listen to you about this. it is really stupid. You want custom DNS: go and get a proper router that they do not need to provide support for.

> NAT broke the internet

it is saved it.

>- Port forwarding provided a workaround but CGNAT means port forwarding will be broken.

IPv4 is broken, that's why we are talking about IPv6, and that's why ISP without IPv6 should not be allowed to advertise their services as "Broadband Internet".

I should probably leave Tim (@ravenstar68) to answer these ones - not really my place.

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Anyhow I think it's becoming obvious that this discussion is going precisely nowhere and has all the hallmarks of degenerating into an acrimonious, insult-trading tirade, and frankly I can't be asked! I've made my case, take it on board or don't, it's entirely everyone else's prerogative. The truth is that (probably) none of us are privy to what VM's plans are (assuming they have any) - and on that basis anything any of us say is no more more than idle speculation.

Best wishes

John