IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[Anonymous]

I have raised the issue on the UK IPv6 Council discussion group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6693475240711876608

Perhaps this might yield some contacts. If you are in the network business in any way you might wish to join the group and like the post. Can't hurt anyway. 😉

[ksim]

> getting past first/second line support to get to someone who actually knows what TCP/IP and 6in4 means in a networking sense

for this they should hire someone with a networking sense

> Finally, switch ISP as per ksim.

Yeah, I sacrificed the speed, now on 80 instead of 200, but it is cheaper, I am happy with 80 anyway, upload speed is the same, but do not want to pay to a company with that level of support and attitude towards customers. They never called back when promised, even when I've added the contract, maybe they are even happy and celebrated this.

[jamesmacwhite]

I forgot about the IPv6 Council group! I'm on it (although not a network engineer by job title), I have liked your post. Virgin Media I think have been to about 3 of the IPv6 Council meetings in terms of presenting/ISP updates. Originally it was Daryl Tanner who represented Virgin Media in 2014 and 2015 appearances and then more recently it was Loba Olopade in 2018. It hinted that 2019 was when they were going to finally launch, but nothing happened as we know!

[ChrisJenkins]

I've requested to join the IPv6 Council UK group. If they approve I will like your post! Anything to try to raise the visibility of this issue...

Sadly, switching ISP isn't a viable option for me at thsi time.

[jamesmacwhite]

Well, the results of sending all IPv6 traffic through Wireguard rather than 6in4 from a download speed shows the massive difference and potentially worth doing going forward if no resolution can be done on this. Here's an IPv6 enabled speed test from Think Broadband after adjusting my WAN routing rules:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1595850808110784855

Upload isn't great, but it's the same for IPv4, so could be congestion currently, but there we go actually usable download!

[ChrisJenkins]

Yeah, that's pretty much the same as I got when I ran my tunnel over OpenVPN (UDP) through aNordVPN endpoint. Thats 5x whet I get over a native VM IPv4 connection for heaven's sake. Setting up a permanent VPN is (for my setup) non-trivial but maybe I will have to seriously explore this option.

[jamesmacwhite]

I'm at the point where I am going to implement this as the permanent solution. I will continue to try and help push the 6in4 issue, but resolution is unlikely, given how long this has been going on and the lack of response on the matter. I'm not in a position to switch ISPs either, so it's either live with it or workaround it, neither ideal, but at least the latter resolves the downstream speed problem from an IPv6 point of view.

I can still have 6in4 configured on my VM IP for inbound, I proxy inbound traffic through Cloudflare anyway so only having these ports open to Cloudflare IPs not world + dog. Given you don't get any protection on the residential side in terms of DDoS and such and having 80/443 open to the world is just prime bot/port scan/spam traffic, Cloudflare can deal with that for me!

[VMCopperUser]

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@adhawkins wrote:

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@ksim wrote:
> perhaps Ofcom

they do not consider any IPv6/6in4 services essential and required for an ISP to provide as part of broadband.

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But don't Virgin promise that their network is not traffic shaped or managed? There's plenty of evidence her to suggest that this claim is false...

Andy

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Who's to say that it is traffic shaping or traffic management.  For all we know it's an issue where the least common protocols are handed over to be processed by a cpu and the limit is instead in the firm/software due to processing limitations.  There is likely no desire to fix the problem even if they know it.  If your whole network should be turning IPv6 on then the whole 6over4 issue becomes a non issue as people will move to the isp given v6 or tunnel v6>v6.  It's like your tap dripping a month before you are going to replace everything in the kitchen, you just let it drip.

As for the staff not knowing what the problem is, that's not so uncommon.  BT Openreach near me hired level2 tech staff (for installers, not customers) a few years back, the interview process included a example of what you would do and it was all flow-chart based answers.  They really don't want people who know what they are doing, they just want people who can follow a script and do as they are told.  Garmin just paid $10 million for a encryption key to fix their network, I bet internal investigations show it's someone akin to a level2 tech member who follow instructions on the "Hay This Your Boss, Open File for Me, I tell you" email they got.

[thelem]

The UK IPv6 Council tweeted a link to an interesting presentation from Google: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/interim-2020-v6ops-01/slides/slides-interim-2020-v6ops-01-sessa-the...

To summarise: They have successfully switched the guest wifi networks in most of their offices to IPv6-only! There is a self-service way to opt-in to dual stack, but fewer than 15% of users have taken that option, meaning 85% are using IPv6 only.

I wonder if this approach could finally give ISPs an incentive to move to IPv6. The biggest reason to switch is the lack of IPv4 addresses, but adding v6 support doesn't immediately help that. Either you go dual stack, which needs the same number of v4 addresses as v4-only, or you go DS-Lite, which is just the same as CG-NAT on a v4-only network.

If it's actually practical for a significant proportion of users to switch to v6-only then that would hugely relieve the pressure on v4 addresses. They could sell off a bunch to pay for the network upgrade, and still have plenty to give out to anyone who asks for one.

[matthewsteeples]

2 problems with that

1) They're running NAT64 which is basically another form of carrier grade NAT (so no different to DS-Lite)

2) This is a guest network for a corporate environment, so no one is going to be running servers on it or other things that you'd typically do on a home network, and people are going to be using relatively new and updated devices... And they still only got to 85%. Good luck convincing VM to implement something that will cause at least 900,000 customers to need to contact support!

When they get round to it, I'd bet on them offering DS-Lite to all, and then a real IPv4 address for a monthly extra. They win both ways then. Majority of customers are happy, minority of customers pay a bit more to do whatever they want a public address for, and they sell the majority of their addresses.