IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
New hostnames are rolling out in some areas, with a reference to "v4wan" (IPv4 WAN). This could mean a v6wan is getting closer.
made up example of the new format: manc-12-b1-v4wan-123456-cust1.vm1.cable.virginm.net
Interesting they've modified the reverse DNS format.
I found recently on my OpenWrt router that if I changed a certain kernel parameter related to Router Advertisements, it managed to pull two specific v6 prefixes from Virgin Media upstream on the WAN, there was no IPv6 routing happening, but based on speaking to someone at Liberty Global, they've been configured for a while. These are the prefixes I got that ended up in my IPv6 routing table:
2a02:8800:f000:18b0::/64
2a02:88fd:18:a::/64
Which are from:
2a02:8800::/24
2a02:88e0::/27
So there is clearly some IPv6 on the WAN side, sort of by accident that OpenWrt could pick them but as I mentioned, I did have to change a kernel option related to router advertisements.
Looks like someone else has discovered the IPv6 Router Advertisements that are hiding if you know how to enable them. They reported being able to configure working IPv6 on VM Business. I have also found this is the case on the residential side too, using modem mode.
https://twitter.com/lukegb/status/1392550938037166082
It goes back to my post here: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/QuickStart-set-up-and/IPv6-support-on-Virgin-media/m-p/4670393/highlight/true#M175064. Speaking with someone from Liberty Global a while back, the IPv6 configuration has likely been active for a while it seems. However because there is no response to a DHCPv6 request, a router normally won't pick up anything so unless you dig into it, it goes undetected.
The person on Twitter went one step further and assigned themselves an IPv6 address based on the RA received and it does in fact work. Obviously doing this is completely unsupported given the lack of a customer prefix delegation so manually assigning an address like this has no guarantee it has actually been assigned to you. Assigning a IPv6 address manually technically works if you assign one within the correct subnet. The original poster notes:
- No IPv6 direct peering with Cloudflare (the traffic goes via Telia instead)
- Comcast IPv6 is completely inaccessible at the moment (although this might be just transient, apparently Liberty Global were having some "difficulties" configuring their networking equipment earlier...)
https://www.reddit.com/r/VirginMedia/comments/nb5a2j/virgin_media_ipv6_deployment_smells_close/
I'm not sure this is necessarily a sign of a roll out as I believe the IPv6 RAs have been hiding behind the scenes for a while. In the case of OpenWrt, you need to tweak /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/{$wan_if}/accept_ra to 2, for the Virgin Media IPv6 routes to be added to the routing table. By default this is 0 and therefore you'd never see them normally.