IPv6 support on Virgin media

I was under the impression that no traffic shaping currently takes place.

A quick google doesn't seem to show me anything.

The old page on VM Site links to a document that is basically empty, it has boxes to be filled in with what sort of shaping takes place, but they are not filled in at all.

Just curious if you have a source.

Hello

Yep you are right VM stopped traffic shaping/throttling a few years ago June 2018. As stated in https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-broadband-traffic-management-policy.

With regards to IPv6 VM did trail it a while ago and never took off, VM decided in the UK that as they have enough IPv4 addresses themselves it did't take off as the system they trailed wasn't full IPv6, mind you saying that from what I have seen around is that VM Eire used IPv6 as default for the consumer market.

A lot of VM backend systems are already IPv6 like this forum as if you use a tunnel and check your profile it shows an IPv6 address. I personally use Hurricane Electric - https://www.tunnelbroker.net tunnel via a pfSense box.

Regards Mike

Regards Mike

We already discussed that, created a separate topic in support. VM is shaping proto-41, confirmed by other users, reported to VM with all pieces of evidence and information they asked, but they are incompetent to check or understand. even fixing routing took them months, during this time they were saying that routing traffic to London to London through Germany is intended, and the following BGP in your exchanges is for losers.

---

DJ_Shadow1966 wrote:

I personally use Hurricane Electric - https://www.tunnelbroker.net tunnel via a pfSense box.

 

---

I'd be interested to know what sort of comparative IPv4 vs. IPv6 performance you are getting with this (e.g. using https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest or https://ipv6-test.com/speedtest/ ). I'm still seeing my connection limited to ~14Mbps on IPv6 but getting the full 100Mbps+ on IPv4. Historically performance used to be virtually identical.

The oddball routing problems where traffic to HE was going via Germany and France back to the tunnel end-point in London were resolved long ago.

I recently upgraded my OpenWRT router to 19.07 (which had a significant kernel update for my device) and there was no change in the performance and the device doesn't appear to be suffering. I also raise the issue with HE support and they were not able to see any issues with the tunnel end-point I was using.

---

ksim wrote:

We already discussed that, created a separate topic in support. VM is shaping proto-41, confirmed by other users, reported to VM with all pieces of evidence and information they asked, but they are incompetent to check or understand. even fixing routing took them months, during this time they were saying that routing traffic to London to London through Germany is intended, and the following BGP in your exchanges is for losers.

---

So your talking about the 6in4 throttling that some people (me included) were seeing.

VM said that they were not doing that, but while I think it's great forum staff sometimes reach out for answers, I do doubt some of them reach out far enough to find out if it's true or fake.

I seem to remember that the speeds on that would jump up and down, and HE said it's not their network.  Sadly VM didn't seem interested in investigating the problem, and users can't fully find out where the fault is.  There might be a technical explanation that's valid, but without a knowledgeable (or caring) tech the answer will never be found.  There are, I think, some QoS filters that run in the hubs that users can't see nor turn on or off.  Not saying that's the problem, but who knows.  We are heavy users (1.4tb/month atm) and honestly see no throttling to speak of, I can't see why they would throttle VPN/Tunnels when they don't throttle heavy users.  So until someone discovers the problem I am going to assume it's not intentional (By VM at least).

---

VMCopperUser wrote:

but while I think it's great forum staff sometimes reach out for answers, I do doubt some of them reach out far enough to find out if it's true or fake.

I tried not only this forum, phone support, the same level of incompetence, and I also called network engineers directly using contacts from the peering database. And the level is not that far from the forum staff.

We are heavy users (1.4tb/month atm) and honestly see no throttling to speak of, I can't see why they would throttle VPN/Tunnels when they don't throttle heavy users.  So until someone discovers the problem I am going to assume it's not intentional (By VM at least).

---

I am not saying that they are throttling on purpose, I fully agree they are throttling connections because of incompetence. it is clear that TCP and UDP are not throttled as it would create a lot of noise from the user's side, but there are other 100+ protocols where most of the users won't notice.

---

DJ_Shadow1966 wrote:

With regards to IPv6 VM did trail it a while ago and never took off, VM decided in the UK that as they have enough IPv4 addresses themselves

---

Perfect proof of incompetence on all levels, IPv6 is not solving the shortage of IPv4, it just CAN'T as the protocols are not compatible. The shortage of IPv4 can be solved only by NAT. Take a look at cellphone mobile operators, they have small IPv4 pools and a lot of moving clients, are they early adopters of IPv6? Nope, they just did NAT, and this even not noticed by clients.

While they may not be actively throttling, they could well be applying traffic prioritisation at different parts of their network. In this model you typically see a number of tiers of importance applied to different traffic types, with DNS requests, VOIP and gaming traffic taking highest priority (as they’re latency sensitive). There’s often a “scavenger class” at the bottom of the list that’s essentially “everything else” and takes lowest priority. It may well be that the proto41 traffic is falling into the scavenger class and getting squashed by other traffic. 

Note I said “at different parts of their network”. You may well see traffic being deprioritised on links further upstream even if your own link is far from saturated. 

For most customers, IPv4 still does the job.  For example, there are virtually no websites which are not accessible via IPv4 - https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/02/05/list-of-ipv6-only-services/

I begin to understand what the bowl of petunias in the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy felt like...

... is there any merit in comparing VM/LG to the Sperm Whale and Magrathea to the IPv6 connected future-Internet?

---

WiteWulf wrote:

While they may not be actively throttling, they could well be applying traffic prioritisation at different parts of their network. In this model you typically see a number of tiers of importance applied to different traffic types, with DNS requests, VOIP and gaming traffic taking highest priority (as they’re latency sensitive). There’s often a “scavenger class” at the bottom of the list that’s essentially “everything else” and takes lowest priority. It may well be that the proto41 traffic is falling into the scavenger class and getting squashed by other traffic. 

Note I said “at different parts of their network”. You may well see traffic being deprioritised on links further upstream even if your own link is far from saturated. 

---

I suspect something like this happening also. I recently did some testing with the same IPv4 tunnel endpoint configured on a Linode VPS, the performance of the HE.net tunnel side is more than capable of fast speeds, something in Virgin Media's network is doing something to 6in4. If I only get 1/10 of my line speed on 6in4 for 1 GB download test, yet a Linode VPS on a 10 gigabit backbone shows what the tunnel side is really capable of, I think we know where the problem might be!

---

Optimist1 wrote:

For most customers, IPv4 still does the job.  For example, there are virtually no websites which are not accessible via IPv4 - https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/02/05/list-of-ipv6-only-services/

---

Web Sites can sit behind a single IP because of the hosts header.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7230#section-5.4

For "most" customers I agree that you can have something that will roughly work.  For "many" customers they will be confused why things don't work well.  For "some" customers the service will be missing many functions.

Without all services working, you don't have a full internet service.  Yes you could go to Indian restaurant to have a curry and find that it doesn't serve rice.  "Most" customers could find something to eat, "many" customers would wonder what's going on, "some" would say it's not a proper Indian restaurant.

Thing is the majority of the customer base doesn't care nor benefit from IPv6, so there isn't really any incentive for them to bother rolling it out other than as a marketing bulletpoint

So i wouldn't expect them to push for it too much

Why do you think IPv6 is of no benefit? so all of us asking for it, running tunnels etc have no need!

The world has run out of IPv4. IOT has taken over, we no longer have a single device in the home. cell phones, tablets, laptops in every bedroom, smart devices and TVs. Cameras, VoIP etc. All need to communicate.

NAT and port forwarding is unmanageble. IPv6 is the answer. Just VM/LG haven't got into the 21 century yet.

A good time to remember a great story by El Reg, about what Virgin Media thought about IPv6 over three years ago when one customer ranted about it.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/virgin_media_no_ipv6/

Their position is mostly unchanged today! In short, we are the nerds, VM doesn't see the demand, notice how zero official VM staff have replied on this thread for years, we're probably a nuisance to them at this point

---

jamesmacwhite wrote:

 In short, we are the nerds,

as it something bad, without us "nerds", the rest would be queueing in a postoffice now.

VM doesn't see the demand,

and will never see, because I am busting my ass that IPv4-only customers have full access services my company is providing and have the same experience, even more I have to sacrifice usability and cost-effectiveness because of that.

notice how zero official VM staff have replied on this thread for years,

like it something bad, every time they open their mouths we hear something ridiculously stupid things.

we're probably a nuisance to them at this point

everything beyond rebooting a router is a nuisance for them.

Let's just accept a few things:

1.  IPv6 transition is unavoidable, you have to do it, or just die.
2. There is no reason to delay transition if you can do it now, that won't save you money or anything, just creates more pressure from "nerds" and social media
3. Shortage of IPv4 is not relevant to IPv6 (explained billion times)
4. Moving to IPv6 benefits your internal infrastructure (if you worked with networks it is clear) and your support (no more NAT issues)

To summarise, VM just incompetent to do IPv6 transition.

I don't disagree. Here's one to add:

If they won't deploy IPv6 anytime soon, please stop messing with protocol 41, so tunnel users will be less likely to be angry at "when IPv6?" is still asked in 2050.

BT and Sky are two of the majors who both support it - both using proper full-fat Dual-Stack as well.

The major UK fixed line home ISPs are

1. Sky - IPv6 in use by >90% of subscribers
2. Virgin - No IPv6
3. BT - IPv6 in use by >65% of subscribers. It's not supported by their older hubs, but these are gradually being removed as customers churn and hardware fails. I imagine if lack of IPv6 is a problem for a particular customer then they would send them a new hub.
4. TalkTalk - No IPv6
5. PlusNet - No IPv6

The mobile providers:

1. EE - IPv6 in use
2. Vodafone - No IPv6
3. O2 - No IPv6
4. Three - IPv6 rollout in progress

These ISPs serve the majority of UK domestic internet traffic. If you ignore PlusNet (by far the smallest) then half of the UKs major providers have IPv6 support. We need them all to support IPv6 before services can start to rely on IPv6.

https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/GB

---

Timwilky wrote:

<snip>

NAT and port forwarding is unmanageable. IPv6 is the answer. Just VM/LG haven't got into the 21 century yet.

---

VM/LG are doing IPv6 in Ireland, but in such as way that it alienates all the Gamers. They have to ask to be "downgraded" to IPv4 so they can port forward for games.  I don't know the technicalities of how they do IPv6, but it must be completely different from BT.  As a BT and VM user I have no such problems with the BT version of IPv6, it just works and I don't have to port forward for any gaming.

The way BT/sky do it (I am not a customer so may be wrong) is to impliment full dual stack. LG/VM want to use an infeerior solution of DS lite meaning IPv4 is on CGNAT. a useless half baked solution that fails to provide bi directional IPv4.

One day the world will be fully IPv6. But until that day, you cannot remove IPv4. So full dual stack is the only acceptable migration solution.

Interesting thread of which I have only just become aware as a simple end-user with what looked like a "simple" problem to solve, i.e. my new LG "smart" (or maybe not!) TV looks for an IPv6 DNS server address (with no alternative IPv4 option) when it tries to connect to my local Cat 5E LAN, which is connected to the incoming VM coax connection via my ASUS RT-AC66 B1 router and a SuperHub 2 in modem mode - but then refuses to connect to "anything"!

Therefore I was simply searching for an appropriate IPv6 address to manually enter into the TV's ethernet connection menu, but it would appear that this is currently "unobtainable"! (OTOH, the wireless connection from the same TV appears to work fine - and thus why????)

So, am I correct in "guessing" that the Cat 5E connection won't work UNTIL VM does bring in genuine IPv6 DNS address connections - and thus my TV will have to contiue to be connected via WiFi?

And thus is VM going to keep refusing to acknowledge that current consumer-end technology is not always backwards compatible with their existing IPv4 network technology and thus we will be saddled with that situation "ad infinitum"?

PS: please don't suggest VPN & tunneling approaches because, frankly, I have enough other issues to deal with and one more "complication" (however well it might work if sorted) would be an unwelcome addition for my ageing brain to deal with as I have otherwise no real use for these ATM.

Not quite understanding why you would need to give it an IPv6 DNS server when you have you wouldn't have any IPv6 on your LAN anyway? It should just use IPv4 like most things do if no IPv6 is present. You shouldn't need to specify anything IPv6 at all, just set it to DHCP and leave it.

I wouldn't normally advocate this, but if it's an issue, the LG TV should have the option to just disable IPv6, mine does, but there are loads of models about, but if it's running LG's webOS, it should be the same.

Modem mode should work fine, providing your ASUS RT-AC66U can pick up the DHCP lease on the WAN. Can sometimes require you to reboot both the Super Hub and router for the WAN to be passed down properly.