IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
It's likely that ALL sites out there today will still be reachable in 10+ years using IPv4..
Virgin Media will have more than enough ipv4 Addys to give out to customers until they go bankrupt and nationalized...
The issue (as is, and as will be, that VM will not talk about) is new startups that are ipv6 Only.. Lets not forget that startups such as Myspace, Youtube, and LOTS of broadcasting sites are fairly new.
The ISP doesnt care right now because customers aren't impacted. Sadly (with VM) this means that they will probably migrate when half the userbase is ticked off because they cant reach some new fangled site that's in Alexa's top 10..
Then they'll start doing catch-up and tell us how hard they are working for us ;P...
The equipment VM has listed before shows that their headend should be ipv6 compliant, most of the modems and routers they provide are compliant (with patches), so if VM says they are not ready, then it means that their core fibre network must not be ready :/...
Spooky thought that.
VMCopperUser wrote:It's likely that ALL sites out there today will still be reachable in 10+ years using IPv4..
Virgin Media will have more than enough ipv4 Addys to give out to customers until they go bankrupt and nationalized...
The issue (as is, and as will be, that VM will not talk about) is new startups that are ipv6 Only.. Lets not forget that startups such as Myspace, Youtube, and LOTS of broadcasting sites are fairly new.
The ISP doesnt care right now because customers aren't impacted. Sadly (with VM) this means that they will probably migrate when half the userbase is ticked off because they cant reach some new fangled site that's in Alexa's top 10..
Then they'll start doing catch-up and tell us how hard they are working for us ;P...
The equipment VM has listed before shows that their headend should be ipv6 compliant, most of the modems and routers they provide are compliant (with patches), so if VM says they are not ready, then it means that their core fibre network must not be ready :/...
Spooky thought that.
Call me cynical but I can't see any site that's IPv6 only getting into Alexa's top 10 any time soon given how small a fraction of all ISPs worldwide have IPv6 support currently or imminently.
About 60% claim they'll have it ready for consumers this year however this isn't 60% by customer numbers and that's the rub, the really big guys in the consumer space aren't moving as quickly.
IPv6 has been around for the better part of 2 decades and yes there hasn't been any movement on the ISP front, however we are to the point where new companies who require IP's are going to start having to "Bid" for them which will have a cascading effect in the push for v6.
I think ISP's aren’t wanting to move to them until they have to for a number or reasons (you can see the similarity to investing in alternative energy to oil, un-related but valid) including financial reasons and gaining to skill set etc...
Noting the above I am very surprised that Mobile providers aren’t going down the route sooner as IPv6 does have large advantages for mobile roaming!
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, are all on-board with the IPv6 Roll out, and they are the leaders so there will be more to follow very shortly!
The only thing the end-user can do to speed their roll out is to proceed via a tunnel broker or use 6to4 until the ISP is in a position to offer Native IPv6 to it's customers.
Phil
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Phil's Blog: www.dragonf.com - I set my IPv6 Tunnel up in just a day!
how does a typical website get setup?
hobbyist sites, small business etc. will likely use a hosting provider or even their broadband isp to host a website, in both cases there is no bidding for ip's and in all likelyhood they wont even need a new ip and wont be assigned one either as after all web hosting can hosts 1000s of sites on a single ip no problem. Unlike end user connections websites can share ip's with no significant downside.
If a site outgrows shared hosting or perhaps someone doesnt want to go that route from day 1 then they may get a dedicated server and host their website on that, in this case the chances are the datacentre hosting that server will provide ip's, these ip's may come from a new assigned pool or may come from old servers that have been canceleed so recycled ip's. I am seeing some dc's tighten up their policies on ipv4 now but i dont expect any to have actually ran out within the next few years at least as these same dc's still usually allow large amounts on request but they just have stopped giving them out by default. Ultimately one ip is enough to host a website, dns server, email server etc.
Large hosting company, isp, large business basically anyone who is likely to have their own ip allocation, these people will likely be already having a harder time of it at getting new ip ranges however I expect most in this group will already have plenty of unused ip's and prepared for this situation before hand.
What may be an interesting outcome is traditionally website hosting is dirt cheap a completely saturated market but if the day ever comes that one can no longer get their own ipv4 for a website or server then existing ipv4's may start to command a premium.
Well, this post is the first result on googling "virgin media ipv6". It's sad to see there's nothing planned at all.. Is there anywhere else the community can show VM its interest in ipv6 support?
