IPv6 support on Virgin media
Does anyone know whether (and if so when) Virgin plan to implement IPv6 on its network?
Forum Discussion
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!
jamesmacwhite wrote:
.. … 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,…
Since getting the geolocation database in my last post updated, Netflix works fine over my HE tunnel, tested with IPv4 disabled.
TonyJr wrote:
jamesmacwhite wrote:.. … 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,…
Since getting the geolocation database in my last post updated, Netflix works fine over my HE tunnel, tested with IPv4 disabled.That's a major change then, because they had previous blocked all the HE tunnel POP endpoints a long time ago, so it made the geolocation issue redundant given the blocking of the specific endpoints was implemented and treated as a VPN/Proxy. That's certainly a change, because you wouldn't normally be able to start a stream without being detected with proxy/VPN, normally this error: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101441.
If that doesn't happen on for example of one the London POP endpoints now, that's interesting.
- I can confirm that if your IPv6 geolocation data is correct for whatever service Netflix uses then Netflix works fine over a (UK POP terminated) HE tunnel. I went through the same issue as @TonyJr a couple of weeks ago and got MaxMind to update the data it has for my HE /64 and /48 (because Speedtest also uses that data and their CLI kept thinking I was in the US...).
For me anything and everything is now working over IPv6 (HE tunnel) with < 10% speed penalty compared to IPv4. I'm a happy bunny. No need for anything more complex than that now for me. Hurrah!The Iceland website didn’t work/was blocked via the HE tunnel on Tuesday, but a quick email fixed that.
