IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[fyonn]

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@Chris_W1 wrote:

Please see the link what jamesmacwhite has posted and hopefully this resolves things for you. 

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Chris, if you had read the link you would know that all it does is give a synopsis of the situation, it resolves nothing. the resolution can only come from Virgin Media...

[VMCopperUser]

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@jamesmacwhite wrote:

I love the fact that the Virgin Media community team are linking to a website that was setup to poke fun at the situation but being recommended as a reference for the latest information.

Still, just about a month left before I move "WILL THIS BE THE YEAR" to 2023.

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In a way I guess it's slightly unfair.  Like blaming waiting staff in a restaurant for cold food.  The staff they have are point and click do what your told type of people (granted, some just don't care).  At least some of the staff now know (rougly) what IPv6 is - I have had staff in the past tell me that SMTP, HTTP, DNS are all not-supported on VM's network, but Email and Webpages are supported.

The more you think about it, it does seem like a restaurant.  Slow/No service, Overpriced, Wrong items on Bill, Untidy.  Until people stop enjoying the meal Virgin will not push their standards.  Sadly the manager is in the back seemingly oblivious to it all.

[Chris_W1]

Hi jamesmacwhite, thanks for the message and welcome back to the forums. 

We are always looking at improving the service and any news will be found on the customer news page. 

Hopefully this will be available soon. ^Chris. 

[Felim_Doyle]

There's a Level 2 phone support?

[IllLustration]

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@ChrisJenkins wrote:

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@IllLustration wrote:
Well, to be completely fair, it's only 28 pages if you use the maximum page size ...

Until they deploy and assuming you can't go elsewhere without going back to the dark ages of speed, your best option really is to think of VM as mere connectivity, and tunnel IPv6 traffic over IPv4. If you tunnel all your traffic, you can get back a static IPv4 address as well, and keep mass surveillance at bay to boot.

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As long as you have one of the latest VM routers (Hitron Chita or SuperHub 4) then tunnelling IPv6 via, say, HE TunnelBroker achieves nearly native speed. Not sure how you would tunnel your IPv4 though, or what the overhead of that might be. Do you mean use a VPN? I tried that a while back but (a) the (IPv4) slowdown was way too much and (b) tunnelling IPv6 via a VPN endpoint isn't very reliable. I'm happy to use native IPv4 (with a dynamic address that is essentially static) and tunnelling IPv6 via HE until such times as VM offer it natively (maybe in 20+ years perhaps!).

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Actually, what I had in mind was a VPS, in my case specifically a Linode to terminate SMTP traffic (that's something you just can't do on VM because all their IP space in some DUHL or other), but this could be used to reach other sites when necessary. It's true that I generally prefer to have as direct a route as possible though, especially to CDNs. I guess what I mean specifically is that on VM you're still basically at the level of residential client-only IPv4 service and it's best to think of it like that. Establish outbound connections only if possible, don't rely on inbound traffic unless you have a dynamic DNS on it and are prepared for it to become unavailable or to (even temporarily) resolve to someone else, and tunnel any traffic that needs a "real" IP address on a permanent basis, and IPv6. It also means you can e.g. use cell service for failover. With these "mesh" VPNs or even Cloudflare Zero Trust it's now quite plausible to get access to your network services wherever they're located, even from behind a CGN. The only TCP port I expose on my address is SMTP, as a primary MX for my email. The HE tunnel is very good, and I'm fortunate to still have the permission to enable SMTP on my tunnels because it's an older account, but moving from A&A to VM really does emphasise what having a single "ultrafast" ISP in the area really means for discerning folk such as we.

And yes, I'm aware that this reply is, um, a teeny bit late. 🙂

[adhawkins]

Got my pre-order in with Giganet for FTTP with City Fibre. Static IPv4 and fully working IPv6 at 900 MBits/sec symmetric (for £41 a month).

Just got to wait for them to finish the laying of the infrastructure so I can sort out an install date.

Andy

[ChrisJenkins]

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@IllLustration wrote:

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@ChrisJenkins wrote:

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@IllLustration wrote:
Well, to be completely fair, it's only 28 pages if you use the maximum page size ...

Until they deploy and assuming you can't go elsewhere without going back to the dark ages of speed, your best option really is to think of VM as mere connectivity, and tunnel IPv6 traffic over IPv4. If you tunnel all your traffic, you can get back a static IPv4 address as well, and keep mass surveillance at bay to boot.

---

As long as you have one of the latest VM routers (Hitron Chita or SuperHub 4) then tunnelling IPv6 via, say, HE TunnelBroker achieves nearly native speed. Not sure how you would tunnel your IPv4 though, or what the overhead of that might be. Do you mean use a VPN? I tried that a while back but (a) the (IPv4) slowdown was way too much and (b) tunnelling IPv6 via a VPN endpoint isn't very reliable. I'm happy to use native IPv4 (with a dynamic address that is essentially static) and tunnelling IPv6 via HE until such times as VM offer it natively (maybe in 20+ years perhaps!).

---

Actually, what I had in mind was a VPS, in my case specifically a Linode to terminate SMTP traffic (that's something you just can't do on VM because all their IP space in some DUHL or other), but this could be used to reach other sites when necessary. It's true that I generally prefer to have as direct a route as possible though, especially to CDNs. I guess what I mean specifically is that on VM you're still basically at the level of residential client-only IPv4 service and it's best to think of it like that. Establish outbound connections only if possible, don't rely on inbound traffic unless you have a dynamic DNS on it and are prepared for it to become unavailable or to (even temporarily) resolve to someone else, and tunnel any traffic that needs a "real" IP address on a permanent basis, and IPv6. It also means you can e.g. use cell service for failover. With these "mesh" VPNs or even Cloudflare Zero Trust it's now quite plausible to get access to your network services wherever they're located, even from behind a CGN. The only TCP port I expose on my address is SMTP, as a primary MX for my email. The HE tunnel is very good, and I'm fortunate to still have the permission to enable SMTP on my tunnels because it's an older account, but moving from A&A to VM really does emphasise what having a single "ultrafast" ISP in the area really means for discerning folk such as we.

And yes, I'm aware that this reply is, um, a teeny bit late. 🙂

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I run my own mail server, and so I have SMTP in/out to my VM IPv4 address and my HE IPv6 address, no problem. It is very rare for me not to receive mail as I should, and for sending I use a reputable outbound relay service, for a small fee, just to ensure trouble free operation. Of course, I do have SPF, DMARC and DKIM configured as well. Although my IPv4 public address is dynamic, it changes very rarely and I have suitable DynDNS setup to update my public DNS provider (and the HE tunnel endpoint) within a few minutes at most. So for me at least the (kind of) dynamic nature of the IPv4 address has never caused me any real issues.

[ChrisJenkins]

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@adhawkins wrote:

Got my pre-order in with Giganet for FTTP with City Fibre. Static IPv4 and fully working IPv6 at 900 MBits/sec symmetric (for £41 a month).

Just got to wait for them to finish the laying of the infrastructure so I can sort out an install date.

Andy

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When CityFibre come to my area (it is' scheduled' apparently) I will certainly look at them. if they can provide a service at a suitable price point and do it without needing to dig up my front garden/drive then it may well be a no-brainer.

[IllLustration]

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@ChrisJenkins wrote:

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And yes, I'm aware that this reply is, um, a teeny bit late. 🙂

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I run my own mail server, and so I have SMTP in/out to my VM IPv4 address and my HE IPv6 address, no problem. It is very rare for me not to receive mail as I should, and for sending I use a reputable outbound relay service, for a small fee, just to ensure trouble free operation. Of course, I do have SPF, DMARC and DKIM configured as well. Although my IPv4 public address is dynamic, it changes very rarely and I have suitable DynDNS setup to update my public DNS provider (and the HE tunnel endpoint) within a few minutes at most. So for me at least the (kind of) dynamic nature of the IPv4 address has never caused me any real issues.

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Fair enough, that way works very well too and it's what I originally did when hosting mail on VM (back when it was part Blueyonder). I'm just fanatical about not touching cloud storage unnecessarily, so I'm doing it using Exim and sock5 via ssh instead of store-and-forward SMTP (I could also use policy routing on TCP port 25 traffic through a Wireguard VPN, if I wanted a more agnostic solution). The VPS is also my backup MX and makes it possible for me to keep receiving mail when the connection has failed over or is down. The input path was never the problem, just the output stage, so you want your SMTP client to pretend to be the VPS, but you can still keep your primary connection as input MX for speed. It works well. But I still want to be a proper peer on the 'net--all this mucking about is a hideous workaround for residential services. I guess I'm a bit spoiled? When you've had static IP, and especially blocks of static IP, all this dynamic IP + NAT nonsense just makes me sad ...

[adhawkins]

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@ChrisJenkins wrote:

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When CityFibre come to my area (it is' scheduled' apparently) I will certainly look at them. if they can provide a service at a suitable price point and do it without needing to dig up my front garden/drive then it may well be a no-brainer.

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I'm assuming they'll need to run a cable under my front lawn in the same way VM did when they install 20-odd years ago. From memory the just lifted up a relatively thin line of the turf, stuck a plastic pipe or something in there and ran the cable through that, then put the grass back.

I guess we'll find out when City Fibre come to do the install. The termination of the fibre in the pavement looks to be about 6 inches to the left of where the VM cable is terminated, so should be relatively straightforward I would hope.

Andy