IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
This thread is epic. Kept me warm during the cold winter months, while I was on A&A where I had native v6. Finally yielded to temptation (and speeds) and came back to VM because I was sick and tired of being stuck in the slow lane on 80/20 FTTC and VM were the only other option. My dad's place isn't too far from here and I get nearly double that on LTE when I'm visiting. It was too much.
But I do miss IPv6. That peer-to-peer-ness is painfully absent at first blush on v4. I'm looking into Zerotier and Tailscale as ways of trying to restore it, but it's not IPv6, of course. I'm not too keen on the idea of using HE tunnels because of the effects they have on geolocation detection.
I'm not sure I'd cry over the loss of a public v4 address if DS-lite were deployed; we probably ought to be prepared for the arrival of CG-NAT anyway. Yes, it means you need a VPS to let in v4 traffic on a public port--not ideal, but possible, especially with tools like FRP. And Tailscale/Zerotier are well-suited for CG-NAT situations as they reach out to do the mesh VPN/UDP hole-punch thing. I'm more bothered that I have the Hub4, and so can't actually benefit from all my downstream bandwidth in modem mode.
Here's to hoping for progress--any progress at all--on IPv6 on VM!
IllLustration wrote:… I’m not too keen on the idea of using HE tunnels because of the effects they have on geolocation detection.
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A few weeks ago I notified Maxmind of how HE publish prefix Geolocation data and it has been fixed for me, most noticeable on sites that use Cloudflare. They seem to have done some work behind the scenes.
IllLustration wrote:This thread is epic. Kept me warm during the cold winter months, while I was on A&A where I had native v6. Finally yielded to temptation (and speeds) and came back to VM because I was sick and tired of being stuck in the slow lane on 80/20 FTTC and VM were the only other option. My dad's place isn't too far from here and I get nearly double that on LTE when I'm visiting. It was too much.
But I do miss IPv6. That peer-to-peer-ness is painfully absent at first blush on v4. I'm looking into Zerotier and Tailscale as ways of trying to restore it, but it's not IPv6, of course. I'm not too keen on the idea of using HE tunnels because of the effects they have on geolocation detection.
I'm not sure I'd cry over the loss of a public v4 address if DS-lite were deployed; we probably ought to be prepared for the arrival of CG-NAT anyway. Yes, it means you need a VPS to let in v4 traffic on a public port--not ideal, but possible, especially with tools like FRP. And Tailscale/Zerotier are well-suited for CG-NAT situations as they reach out to do the mesh VPN/UDP hole-punch thing. I'm more bothered that I have the Hub4, and so can't actually benefit from all my downstream bandwidth in modem mode.
Here's to hoping for progress--any progress at all--on IPv6 on VM!
AAISP offer the L2TP service where you can have IPv6 through them using your VM connection, I use this currently for native IPv6. 6in4 is great (and free!), but geolocation is still hit and miss on many services and relying on 6in4 is basically one step above not deploying IPv6 anyway these days. I find when using 6in4 I usually have force DNS requests to only return IPv4 A records rather than AAAA on various sites like Netflix, Discovery+ etc because they think HE is US because of the address space being registered in ARIN. Hence L2TP option avoids that, it is capped at 200 mbps and not unlimited data though.
jamesmacwhite wrote:
AAISP offer the L2TP service where you can have IPv6 through them using your VM connection, I use this currently for native IPv6. 6in4 is great (and free!), but geolocation is still hit and miss on many services and relying on 6in4 is basically one step above not deploying IPv6 anyway these days. I find when using 6in4 I usually have force DNS requests to only return IPv4 A records rather than AAAA on various sites like Netflix, Discovery+ etc because they think HE is US because of the address space being registered in ARIN. Hence L2TP option avoids that, it is capped at 200 mbps and not unlimited data though.Yeah, I asked A&A about their L2TP cap, they say things may change with the upgrade of their LNSs to support FTTP services and when that happens that may well be the way. Plus you'd get a static v4 in the process killing a couple of birds with one stone. But the 200 mbps limit now means if you want faster service you have to order multiple lines and bond, which they do support but obviously I decline to do that for cost reasons.
How are you managing DNS responses? It's probably something I'd only do on an unconditional basis (native always wins).
Cheers.
IllLustration wrote:
jamesmacwhite wrote:
AAISP offer the L2TP service where you can have IPv6 through them using your VM connection, I use this currently for native IPv6. 6in4 is great (and free!), but geolocation is still hit and miss on many services and relying on 6in4 is basically one step above not deploying IPv6 anyway these days. I find when using 6in4 I usually have force DNS requests to only return IPv4 A records rather than AAAA on various sites like Netflix, Discovery+ etc because they think HE is US because of the address space being registered in ARIN. Hence L2TP option avoids that, it is capped at 200 mbps and not unlimited data though.Yeah, I asked A&A about their L2TP cap, they say things may change with the upgrade of their LNSs to support FTTP services and when that happens that may well be the way. Plus you'd get a static v4 in the process killing a couple of birds with one stone. But the 200 mbps limit now means if you want faster service you have to order multiple lines and bond, which they do support but obviously I decline to do that for cost reasons.
How are you managing DNS responses? It's probably something I'd only do on an unconditional basis (native always wins).
Cheers.
That's good to know. They did increase it late last year from 100 mbps so that was nice, but if they would look at further increases, that's welcome. I would assume they will still cap the data though.
The way to essentially force IPv4, is to have your DNS resolver only return A records on domains. The IPv6 response would be replaced with ::, which is a null response. A while ago Netflix straight blocked any HE tunnel and still do as far as I know, classifying it as a proxy. Other services have followed and also have geolocation related logic which often leads to sites thinking you are US, so this is next best way of maintaining IPv6 connectivity but without having to disable IPv6 or do some hacky IPv4 over IPv6 preference, which probably won't work anyway.
This of course is not needed if you have native IPv6, AAISP provides this, but I have for some streaming sites kept this, despite not needing it due to the data cap. I burned 2TB quite quickly with streaming from Amazon Prime and Netflix when I had COVID, so if AAISP do bump the data plans in the future, that would be ideal. Although, I'd hope by then Virgin Media will have got some form of IPv6 deployment happening. No guarantees, given this thread has been going for 12 years!
