IPv6 support on Virgin media

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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.

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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. 🙂

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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.