IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[MUD_Wizard]

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@Morgaine wrote:

The news from MUD_Wizard is grim indeed. I'm not sure exactly where his ear is positioned and hence how authoritative that report was, but it was grim reading anyway. If this late in the game no IPv6 movement is visible anywhere in VM's vicinity then they would seem to be a complete non-player, not merely the last of the big three UK ISPs to reach the finish line but not in the game at all. With IPv6 deployment now at 20% in the US, it is incomprehensible that a major UK ISP should be so far out of contention. It is holding UK networking back.

It's hard to say exactly where VM are regarding IPv6 deployment, because they're so ultra-secretive. They could be launching a VoIP service and IPv6 next week for all we know. Though usually these things tend to leak out months before. I had heard on the grapevine that both were coming sometime this year, though plans could have changed.

What I do know:

- All hub's firmware are IPv6 capable. The Hub 3 has both dual-stack and DS-Lite capability (which I switched on last October to see if anything was setup - it wasn't). VM just need to configure some options on the hub's to switch IPv6 on and enable the network side.

- Most of Virgin's network is IPv6 ready (stated many times in the press and through contacts inside VM).

- The last public record of VM's IPv6 status was at a presentation during the UK IPv6 Council meeting in September 2015. There have been 3 IPv6 Council meetings since then, two of which Virgin were scheduled to present an update on deployment: http://www.ipv6.org.uk/events/ No slides or video from Virgin for those meetings though.

I would expect they are as ready as they can be without pushing the button on public trials.

When the chickens finally come home to roost inside VM, they'll probably be looking for a scapegoat for the VM IPv6 disaster, and no doubt some manager will say "Our customers did not ask us for it." Well wrong, customers have been asking VM for native dual stack IPv6 for many years, myself since 2011, and the only reason why management is probably unaware of customer wishes is that the Community admins haven't set up a dialogue between us and the VM Product people. Not a peep in over half a decade.

This is a very ineffective way of running a Community forum, and now VM is paying the price for not listening to its customers by coming in last in a major part of Internet networking. It's very sad.

I agree. Though you shouldn't blame the community forum as decisions will be made higher up at the strategic board level. Community admins have very little say in company strategy and Liberty Global, like any telecom company, is focused on what makes them the most money rather than technology.

Any fiasco will more likely be because VM rush out a product based on IPv6 without sufficient user trials. Their modus operandi with products tends to be throw it into a trial last minute shortly before launch to the public. Let the public suffer with the issues due to lack of testing. The "permanent beta" popularised by the dot-com era.

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[Morgaine]

MUD_Wizard wrote:
> "Community admins have very little say in company strategy"

I'd be very surprised if they had any at all. I've worked in some large UK comms companies (network admin and developer) and that's not how they're organized, it's typically very hierarchical and partitioned by function.

But where Community admins have enormous say is in establishing communications, as that is their corner of the organization. It would be beyond belief that in VM their job description is to block customer needs from reaching the ears of product teams and higher management --- I don't believe that for one instant.

And so my request is for a channel of communication, which is well within spec.

[MUD_Wizard]

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@Morgaine wrote:

@MUD_Wizard wrote:
> "Community admins have very little say in company strategy"

I'd be very surprised if they had any at all. I've worked in some large UK comms companies (network admin and developer) and that's not how they're organized, it's typically very hierarchical and partitioned by function.

Same here.

But where Community admins have enormous say is in establishing communications, as that is their corner of the organization. It would be beyond belief that in VM their job description is to block customer needs from reaching the ears of product teams and higher management --- I don't believe that for one instant.

And so my request is for a channel of communication, which is well within spec.

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As long as you don't mind that information only flows one way. As a communications company, the one thing that VM are very poor at is communicating, without going through several layers of lawyers first.

[Morgaine]

MUD_Wizard writes:
> "As long as you don't mind that information only flows one way."

I wouldn't mind if the flow were one way as long as it was a flow of *substantive* information, for example a regular blog post by the IPv6 team. That's why I didn't prescribe to admins what they should do, but all I requested was that they help set up an *effective* channel of communication, leaving the details up to them.

It's also important that management acknowledges in some way that customer demand for IPv6 has been noted, mainly to maintain the pressure for IPv6 rollout, but also to ensure that "They didn't ask us for IPv6" is not used as a scapegoat for the inevitable recriminations after VM comes in last.

A two-way dialogue would be better though, so that we can explain politely to non-technical VM management who make poor comments like "We still have plenty of IPv4 addresses left" that it's misguided, because non-technical customers can't be expected to create IPv6 tunnels, and nor should they, so it's directly stopping them from making full use of the Internet. This is bad for UK networking, and it has put UK behind instead of in the lead.

There is also the issue of trials for IPv6, with which so many people here have offered to help. Such technically-informed feedback would be a resource of immense value and near-zero cost to VM, and ignoring it just makes no sense. A dialogue would help there as well, and it can't be one-way because not many will provide feedback for long when it's clearly going into a black hole that nobody is reading. Some kind of ACK is needed at minimum, hence dialogue.

> "As a communications company, the one thing that VM are very poor at is communicating."

I suggest that it's time for a change. Failure to communicate has put VM last on IPv6, and that will cost them both money and less tangible consequences.

[MUD_Wizard]

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@Morgaine wrote:

MUD_Wizard writes:
> "As long as you don't mind that information only flows one way."

I wouldn't mind if the flow were one way as long as it was a flow of *substantive* information, for example a regular blog post by the IPv6 team. That's why I didn't prescribe to admins what they should do, but all I requested was that they help set up an *effective* channel of communication, leaving the details up to them.

Ah, no. That would be nice. Unfortunately it's incredibly hard to get VM to acknowledge even the simplest of things publicly or even privately. I meant if you don't mind information flowing only into VM, not out. e.g. They do like their surveys.

A dialogue would help there as well, and it can't be one-way because not many will provide feedback for long when it's clearly going into a black hole that nobody is reading. Some kind of ACK is needed at minimum, hence dialogue.

[het69]

When you say...

"Most of Virgin's network is IPv6 ready (stated many times in the press and through contacts inside VM)."

I'd expect ALL of VM's network to be IPv6 ready now.  I mean that all core network equipment should already support IPv6.  If it doesn't it's highly unlikely that anything meaningful will happen in 2016 in order to provide IPv6 all the way to the edge of their customer network.

We know that they have 'tinkered' in the past and that they do have several IPv6 prefixes already, but if they're keeping quiet about it I'm generally of the opinion that they've got nothing serious to offer yet.

[Morgaine]

het69 writes:
> "if they're keeping quiet about it I'm generally of the opinion that they've got nothing serious to offer yet."

If you're right about that, then there is some serious laughter and ridicule coming their way the longer it drags on, not to mention loss of custom to their competitors.

BT Infinity subscribers have been reporting IPv6 interfaces and routing coming up for varying periods of time on their Home Hub 5 routers all over the UK for many months now, and IPv6 has been working fine for them while it's enabled. It's pretty clear that BT's rollout plans have progressed far beyond the point of internal employee testing.

That's consistent with BT's claimed intention to enable IPv6 by the end of the year, and even if they slip on that schedule, at least their customers can see clear movement and so the general levels of optimism are high. It must be nice to feel optimistic about your ISP.

[MUD_Wizard]

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@Morgaine wrote:
It must be nice to feel optimistic about your ISP.

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Or at least informed as to what their intentions are.

[Morgaine]

Notice that we're failing at first base. We can't even get the Community admins to communicate with us and acknowledge the request.

[het69]

BT's network is IPv6 ready, as in it's configured and ready and already working for business customers on certain circuits. Their BTnet products assign a block to all new circuit provisions whether the customer wants it or not. It's not extended to the Infinity cabinets though, apart from in select areas where trials were happening, but it could be relatively easily, I'm sure.