IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
If you want IPv6 support on Virgin Media sooner (rather than who-knows-when later), you may need to take matters into your own hands.
I haven't had a chance to read all 100+ pages of this topic so this info may not be new, but that's what i did this weekend. I have Virgin Media Fibre 100M Broadband (started with 50M a few years ago, that is a story in and of itself).
The results:
(NTL listed above is the old name before Virgin Media rebranded)
Ok of course this is not an admission that Virgin Media lack of IPv6 is excusable by any means. Just that if you want something enough, sometimes you have to do it yourself.
My setup is basically the original Hub3 Virgin Media router/modem, however i also set up a linux host on my home network running pi-hole, that provides ad-blocked DNS services for my entire home LAN. So on that system, I simply utilized the free Hurricane Electric tunnelbroker offering, which sets up for you (on their side) a tunnel to the IPv6 based internet over your IPv4 network. They also provide instructions for the setup on your side and it was more straightforward than i imagined.
And voila, IPv6 on Virgin Media.. If folks are interested in the gory technical steps, I can set up a separate post.
You can also of course go the simpler route and set up IPv6 connectivity on an individual host basis more easily (H.E gives you up 5 tunnels per account) if you don't need your entire LAN with IPv6 connectivity.
What sort of performance are you able to get? Many of us are finding our HE tunnel speed limited (for reasons unknown).
FWIW you can't run more than one HE tunnel per real IPv4 address because of the way the 6in4 protocol works. This shouldn't be a limitation for most people.
Excellent question, you're absolutely right to ask and I really should have included this caveat that it's only a fifth of what i get natively through IPv4.. a simple speedtest on ipv6-test.com reveals ~20Mbps (vs the 100Mbps i normally get via native IPv4):
This speed restriction is likely at the Hurricane Electric tunnelbroker side, as I used iperf to a server i've colocated (on a gigabit line) and got:
$ sudo iperf -V -c 2001:470:1...:....::2 # connecting from server outbound toward home (download speed)
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 2001:470:1...:5a9::2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 45.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 2a03::...:...:8:: port 58704 connected with 2001:470:1...:.....::2 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 22.6 MBytes 19.0 Mbits/sec$ sudo iperf -s -V # connecting from server inbound TOWARD home (upload speed)
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 2a03:....:.....:8:5054:ff:fee9:6bf1 port 5001 connected with 2001:470:1...:.....::2 port 59088
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0-10.2 sec 11.4 MBytes 9.34 Mbits/secSo again definitely not a replacement for Virgin Media getting their IPv6-act together and providing native connectivity, just something to dabble with if you can't wait.
It isn't the HE side. 6in4 is bottlenecked on Virgin Media, lots of other reports about it from people here and other threads. I've personally tested it on a Linode VPS with a tunnel endpoint terminated there, it can sustain speeds much greater than 20 Mbps. The tunnel may have performance drops at times as there is no SLA or minimum guaranteed speeds with the tunnelbroker service but on Virgiin Media there seems to be a cap at around 15/20 Mbps, no matter what package you are on.
Interesting you are the Gigabit package, meaning you have Hub 4 and seeing the same performance issues, it rules out this being Super Hub 3 related, given the issues with latency/performance the SH3 has.
- No i don't have the gigabit package on virgin media.. I have a server colocated that has gigabit interconnectivity (i mentioned it to indicate the bottleneck would not be my server, the other end of the speedtest connection)
... so when I bypassed terminating the same hurricane electric tunnelbroker setup/endpoint within virgin media's network using a FOU tunnel which encapsulates ipv4 inside UDP at my gigabit-connected colocated server one hop away from HE's ipv6 backbone), the results are a LOT different:
basically same hub3 router, same linux kvm guest acting as my gateway/tunnel-endpoint termination, except the traffic is encapsulated WITHIN udp so Virgin Media' network mangling is not detecting it as protocol-41 traffic.. (vs the 20mbps i was seeing going direct).
So basically.. Virgin Media network engineers, you've got some explaining to do..
aleksmariusz wrote:Virgin Media network engineers, you've got some explaining to do..
Ha-ha, good luck.
they will tell you:
I can confirm that we do not traffic manage/ traffic shape our broadband connections, however VPN and other forms of tunnel connection are not supported and we cannot guarantee a perfect connection between points.
We are not discussing here how we can make IPv6 work, everyone who needed it got it either using VPN or changed broadband provider, we are only laughing on VM staff incompetence here. How they are telling: that no one needs IPv6, that VM has plenty of IPv4 addresses and will never need IPv6, proto 41 is single-threaded, how IPv6 is insecure and they are not implementing it because every user will be hacked. I lost my hope with VM ages ago.