IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[TonyJr]

I really hope they assign a /48 prefix per customer and not just one /64 . Or at least let a /48 prefix be requested

[legacy1]

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@r3loaded wrote:

Quick question regarding IPv6 - when the time comes, will it just be a case of VM rolling out a firmware update to Superhubs to enable IPv6 support?

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Assuming modem mode is what it is its done even if the router mode gets updated for IPv6 your LAN will need to be IPv6 to connect to non-mapped native IPv6 sites.

If IPv4 was 1-10 and IPv6 was 1-20 and a site is on 15 an IPv4 LAN can't get to it.

[legacy1]

Theirs just no detailed diagram that shows how 4to6 works so I thought I have a go.
ftp://bridgemode.bounceme.net/IP%204to6.png

So if the above is correct yes we can connect to native IPv6 sites with native IPv6 users able to connect directly back to us (if the routes processes IPv6) and still use IPv4 LAN but in order for all this to happen we have to be told a lie to where we've going and where its from by IPv4 to/from 192.88.99.1.

For real native IPv6 to work on a LAN your LAN must be IPv6.

Dual stack for us users of both IPv4 & native IPv6 when sites move off IPv4 to IPv6 that free up IPv4 is a needed thing to happen.

[Dagger]

I just hope they route a prefix at all. I've seen too many ISPs recently put a /64 (or worse, /56 or /48) on-link and then just not route a prefix on top of that. The /56 and /48 cases in particular suggest that those ISPs don't really understand what they're doing.

rDNS delegation would be kinda nice too, so I don't have to remember all my IPs.

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If IPv4 was 1-10 and IPv6 was 1-20 and a site is on 15 an IPv4 LAN can't get to it.

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Perhaps better to use 11-20 for your IPv6 example there, since a v6-only node can't connect to v4(-only) nodes.

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Theirs just no detailed diagram that shows how 4to6 works so I thought I have a go.

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From your reference to 192.88.99.1 I'm guessing you're talking about 6to4. 6to4 is basically just a regular 6in4 tunnel with the endpoint being the anycasted 192.88.99.1, so that you don't have to set up an account with someone to bring the tunnel up.

Note that 6to4 is only usable with a public v4 address to talk from -- if you're behind NAT, you can't use it. (But it gives you a routed /48, so you just route a /64 from that onto your LAN in much the same way you would if you got the /48 natively. Yes, this does mean you're going to end up with v6 on the LAN; that's pretty much always the case if you want machines on it to talk to IPv6 servers.)

Unfortunately, right now the closest 192.88.99.1 to VM (owned by Goscomb?) is having some issues with ICMP rate limiting (namely I think that the rate-limiting may be applying to ICMP packet-too-big errors), so PMTUd doesn't work through it... which is a bit annoying.

Would be nice if VM set up their own 192.88.99.1, but it looks like they aren't even capable of that at the moment either...

[legacy1]

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@Dagger wrote:

Would be nice if VM set up their own 192.88.99.1, but it looks like they aren't even capable of that at the moment either...

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Better if they start work on a IPv6 DHCP server(s) and dual stack us.

[Benjamin_T]

Hi All,

Quoting Mark's last post - Whilst we already have enough IPv4 address space for our current network needs, as part of ongoing network upgrades, we have been looking at making our network ready for IPv6 connectivity. There are many factors which need to be worked through to ensure a seamless experience for our customers but we anticipate we will progress with initial stages of IPv6 deployment at some point during 2012.

[TonyJr]

Excellent - the ball has started rolling. I still hope that we can request a prefix higher than the /64 minimum e.g. /56 or /48.

[legacy1]

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@TonyJr wrote:
Excellent - the ball has started rolling. I still hope that we can request a prefix higher than the /64 minimum e.g. /56 or /48.

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Do we really want to run out of IP's again? What you going to do with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses?

A Prefix length of /120 for 256 addresses (or less) of native IPv6 is enough. 

[Anonymous]

i'd like 1024 addresses as thats what i ahve now on my internal network 🙂

[karen_cookson]

It doesn't work like that with IPv6.  The network is based on the first 64 bits and the host on the last 64 bits.  Therefore if things are done correctly a /64 should be the minimum given.  If they are using stateless autoconfiguration then the host section address (last 64 bits) is based on the MAC address.

Also note that there isn't NAT, so therefore a firewall is very important