IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[VMCopperUser]

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@Timwilky wrote:

I think VM/ Liberty Global actually listened. DS Lite is the worse of all options and walked away before customers did.

A true dual stack or V4 only and continued use of a HE tunnel. 

Many of my remote PoPs are Ipv4 and then RFC1914 with NAT.  CGNAT will always be a game ender

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Even if they have enough IPv4 to spread around now they will run out at some point.

CGNat on the IPv4 side will become a must-have at some point.

I don't keep track with all of the transition options out there, but when it comes to carrier IPv4 depletion then DS-Lite seems to me to be a good option.  Horrible for me as I have IPv4 only hardware that connects to IPv4 only services (I know there's 4to6 options better than DS-Lite, but they don't allow "inbound"). 

I do not like DS-Lite, as they have neglected the migration (and let me stres, NEGLECTED) then there's obviously less wiggle room for other options.  Show me something better if you can see it, I would be interested to know if something exist.

[jamesmacwhite]

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@Timwilky wrote:

I think VM/ Liberty Global actually listened. DS Lite is the worse of all options and walked away before customers did.

A true dual stack or V4 only and continued use of a HE tunnel. 

Many of my remote PoPs are Ipv4 and then RFC1914 with NAT.  CGNAT will always be a game ender

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Maybe. A more recent quote from a spokesperson when asked about IPv6 by ISPreview, hinted that they have or had been testing more than one deployment but there's no details around it. To my knowledge there has been no further public test of IPv6 outside of the DS-Lite one in 2018, anything new has been internal or not large enough to be news worthy. I don't think any APNIC stats or IPv6 usage stats by AS number indicate anything happening either. So it's basically a cold case until we find out anything else I think.

I still think Openreach going live in my area is a safer bet for getting IPv6. The CBTs showed up on the pole and in pavement chambers last week, hoping it's not long until they go live so an ONT can be ordered!

[legacy1]

This is what I see for IPv6

I'm on the edge of the world their is no beyond! 

[jamesmacwhite]

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@VMCopperUser wrote:

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@Timwilky wrote:

I think VM/ Liberty Global actually listened. DS Lite is the worse of all options and walked away before customers did.

A true dual stack or V4 only and continued use of a HE tunnel. 

Many of my remote PoPs are Ipv4 and then RFC1914 with NAT.  CGNAT will always be a game ender

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Even if they have enough IPv4 to spread around now they will run out at some point.

CGNat on the IPv4 side will become a must-have at some point.

I don't keep track with all of the transition options out there, but when it comes to carrier IPv4 depletion then DS-Lite seems to me to be a good option.  Horrible for me as I have IPv4 only hardware that connects to IPv4 only services (I know there's 4to6 options better than DS-Lite, but they don't allow "inbound"). 

I do not like DS-Lite, as they have neglected the migration (and let me stres, NEGLECTED) then there's obviously less wiggle room for other options.  Show me something better if you can see it, I would be interested to know if something exist.

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A few others, 464XLAT, NAT64, DNS64 etc. All share the same principles of being primarily IPv6 with some handling of IPv4 due to compatibility, but designed to basically be IPv6 only networks. The only major areas that breaks with IPv4 with some of these options is literal IPv4 addresses unable to be handled or anything that expects direct port to port communication with IPv4 can longer function given IPv4 is being translated in some way.

I think the conflict with these transitional mechanisms is we want IPv6 because we are enthusiasts and like this stuff, but don't want to give up routed IPv4 due to running stuff at home or hosting things available across the WAN and IPv6 not being everywhere, making accessing over IPv6 only not viable for obvious reasons, so we are basically torn between the legacy and the modern. Virgin Media could argue, they have no reason to maintain native IPv4 due to people doing this, given it's not part of the contract or really a designed use case. It just so happens some people are doing it and with the whole sticky IPv4 leases that basically means you will likely have the same IPv4 address for years despite being a technically dynamic IP unless your modem is offline for a long period of time or they do some network segmentation changes in your area and even then you've still got DDNS. It's quite by chance you can just host stuff on your residential connection and they've let it happen or not really tried to stop it.

Here's another scenario. Let's say we are in the upside down (any Stranger Things fans here?!) and in this alternative reality Virgin Media deploys dual stack IPv6 (I know let's imagine), chances are the IPv6 prefix isn't going to be static as that's typically reserved for business type packages, so dynamic IPv6 prefixes that could potentially change regularly or be like the routed IPv4 address and just stick around but potentially change at any time. Hosting on a dynamic IPv6 address isn't fun either, there are various solutions to this problem like the dynamic IPv4 problem, but it's now more layers to deal with. At some point you do have to pause and look at things and if it's really the right solution.

The irony however that VM Business offering has no IPv6 either, so it's not as if Virgin Media could argue that currently, but if VM Business did offer IPv6 without transitional deployments, that's where I could see some of us disappearing to, providing the cost wasn't massively dipropionate.

[jamesmacwhite]

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@legacy1 wrote:

This is what I see for IPv6

I'm on the edge of the world their is no beyond! 

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For those that can see the Router Advertisements coming from the WAN side, they look something like this when captured with tcpdump.

root@linksys-wrt3200acm:~# tcpdump -vvvv -ttt -i wan icmp6 and 'ip6[40] = 134'
tcpdump: listening on wan, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
 00:00:00.000000 IP6 (hlim 255, next-header ICMPv6 (58) payload length: 80) fe80::201:5cff:fe9c:2847 > ip6-allnodes: [icmp6 sum ok] ICMP6, router advertisement, length 80
        hop limit 0, Flags [managed, other stateful], pref medium, router lifetime 9000s, reachable time 3600000ms, retrans timer 0ms
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:8800:f000:18b0::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time 2592000s, pref. time 604800s
            0x0000:  4080 0027 8d00 0009 3a80 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  8800 f000 18b0 0000 0000 0000 0000
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:88fd:18:a::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time infinity, pref. time infinity
            0x0000:  4080 ffff ffff ffff ffff 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  88fd 0018 000a 0000 0000 0000 0000
 00:00:05.669770 IP6 (hlim 255, next-header ICMPv6 (58) payload length: 80) fe80::201:5cff:fe9c:2847 > ip6-allnodes: [icmp6 sum ok] ICMP6, router advertisement, length 80
        hop limit 0, Flags [managed, other stateful], pref medium, router lifetime 9000s, reachable time 3600000ms, retrans timer 0ms
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:8800:f000:18b0::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time 2592000s, pref. time 604800s
            0x0000:  4080 0027 8d00 0009 3a80 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  8800 f000 18b0 0000 0000 0000 0000
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:88fd:18:a::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time infinity, pref. time infinity
            0x0000:  4080 ffff ffff ffff ffff 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  88fd 0018 000a 0000 0000 0000 0000
 00:00:03.819429 IP6 (hlim 255, next-header ICMPv6 (58) payload length: 80) fe80::201:5cff:fe9c:2847 > ip6-allnodes: [icmp6 sum ok] ICMP6, router advertisement, length 80
        hop limit 0, Flags [managed, other stateful], pref medium, router lifetime 9000s, reachable time 3600000ms, retrans timer 0ms
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:8800:f000:18b0::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time 2592000s, pref. time 604800s
            0x0000:  4080 0027 8d00 0009 3a80 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  8800 f000 18b0 0000 0000 0000 0000
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:88fd:18:a::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time infinity, pref. time infinity
            0x0000:  4080 ffff ffff ffff ffff 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  88fd 0018 000a 0000 0000 0000 0000
 00:00:04.057022 IP6 (hlim 255, next-header ICMPv6 (58) payload length: 80) fe80::201:5cff:fe9c:2847 > ip6-allnodes: [icmp6 sum ok] ICMP6, router advertisement, length 80
        hop limit 0, Flags [managed, other stateful], pref medium, router lifetime 9000s, reachable time 3600000ms, retrans timer 0ms
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:8800:f000:18b0::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time 2592000s, pref. time 604800s
            0x0000:  4080 0027 8d00 0009 3a80 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  8800 f000 18b0 0000 0000 0000 0000
          prefix info option (3), length 32 (4): 2a02:88fd:18:a::/64, Flags [onlink], valid time infinity, pref. time infinity
            0x0000:  4080 ffff ffff ffff ffff 0000 0000 2a02
            0x0010:  88fd 0018 000a 0000 0000 0000 0000

You will see a different prefix per customer I'd imagine, but they'll be from the following prefixes 2a02:8801::/32 and 2a02:8880::/25.

One of them is believed to be a management network for VM to be able to manage the CPE as you get admiratively denied error when trying to route it, the other is the prefix you have been provided which under a normal deployment would be advertised by your router to devices. In this case, the prefix delegation part usually with something like DHCPv6, is filtered out, so you cannot delegate the prefix with the normal conventional configurations.

Funnily enough, since I originally found them with tcpdump back in May 2021, the what is technically a routable prefix has not changed, I've just looked back at my notes then.

[VMCopperUser]

Yea, I like Stranger Things.

DynamicDNS is great, to be honest I remember it going back nearly 30 years when the ISP's would assign your IP to yourname.yourisp.com so hosting stuff was great (but slow).  Dialup in 92 had that problem solved so really it should't exist now.  In fact, dare I say it, a mix of DDNS ran by the ISP and CGNat could bypass a lot of the CGNAT issues.

This is just me, but.. With telcom prices down and mobile signals getting better I was just thinking of dumping VM.  £63 a month for 200 meg broadband vs £20 a month for 4g/5g that supports full dual-stack that I can take with me when I go somewhere. The shine from fixed line services should be things like great latency, great customer support, migrating to current standards (IPv6 was being planned when Virgin Media was created 16~ years ago), competetive pricing, and high reliability.

How did the girl in Stranger Things get a IPv4 AND GeoLocate it both at the same time?.. DualDUN?

[legacy1]

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@jamesmacwhite wrote:

Here's another scenario. Let's say we are in the upside down (any Stranger Things fans here?!) and in this alternative reality Virgin Media deploys dual stack IPv6 (I know let's imagine), chances are the IPv6 prefix isn't going to be static as that's typically reserved for business type packages, so dynamic IPv6 prefixes that could potentially change regularly or be like the routed IPv4 address and just stick around but potentially change at any time. Hosting on a dynamic IPv6 address isn't fun either, there are various solutions to this problem like the dynamic IPv4 problem, but it's now more layers to deal with. At some point you do have to pause and look at things and if it's really the right solution.

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Here the thing no one has figured out yet with the change of IPV6 subnet and likely a basic firewall your IP to a service you run changes the solution to this problem is by MAC the router knows what IPv6 a given MAC has in your LAN.  

[jamesmacwhite]

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@legacy1 wrote:

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@jamesmacwhite wrote:

Here's another scenario. Let's say we are in the upside down (any Stranger Things fans here?!) and in this alternative reality Virgin Media deploys dual stack IPv6 (I know let's imagine), chances are the IPv6 prefix isn't going to be static as that's typically reserved for business type packages, so dynamic IPv6 prefixes that could potentially change regularly or be like the routed IPv4 address and just stick around but potentially change at any time. Hosting on a dynamic IPv6 address isn't fun either, there are various solutions to this problem like the dynamic IPv4 problem, but it's now more layers to deal with. At some point you do have to pause and look at things and if it's really the right solution.

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Here the thing no one has figured out yet with the change of IPV6 subnet and likely a basic firewall your IP to a service you run changes the solution to this problem is by MAC the router knows what IPv6 a given MAC has in your LAN.  

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Yes, certainly not impossible, just more layers, DHCPv6 with static leases is simple enough, followed by needing a firewall capable of handling dynamic IPv6 addresses e.g. iptables where the rule doesn't target a specific address but the EUI-64 i.e the end part formed based on MAC address and is agnostic to the prefix, but now we are starting to go down needing firmware like OpenWrt or Pfsense to do all that. I'm not sure firmware from Netgear, TP-Link and others and such will have the dynamic firewall part. Right now many here are using 6in4 with a static prefix so you avoid that problem, I doubt we'll be seeing a static IPv6 prefix on residential lines, so just something to bear in mind for those who self host or have things exposed externally.

[Felim_Doyle]

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@VMCopperUser wrote:

Thinking about it.

Are you using the ISP supplied Modem/Router as your Router, or do you have a stand-alone router with the Modem/Router in Modem-Only mode?

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Supplied Cisco Cable Modem / Router which probably doesn't support IPv6 anyway. I thought about it afterwards and wished that I hadn't posted my query.

My assumptions about how my brother got an IPv6 address were probably correct. I was really just thinking out loud.

[TonyHoyle]

I'm sure not even VM would be silly enough to attempt dynamic ipv6..  it's completely unnecessary and almost nothing would support it - you can't go around renumbering your entire network every day.