IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[Morgaine]

Indeed, @SlySven, it's been plummeting like never before over the past week, huge daily drops far in excess of the gradual declines seen before.  Here are the APNIC figures since my message 468 above:

DATE         AS      Users      IPv6-Users  %UKv6
==========   ==      ========== ==========  =====
2018_04_06:  VIRGIN  14,027,866      7,911   0.05
2018_04_07:  VIRGIN  13,954,795      6,102   0.04
2018_04_08:  VIRGIN  13,895,296      4,659   0.03
2018_04_09:  VIRGIN  13,828,296      2,491   0.02

There isn't much further that it can drop! 😛

It's because of this huge rate of attrition that I attributed it to termination of the IPv6 trialists' test accesses, as I can't think of a better explanation.  It's such a pity that Virgin has this policy of total non-communication with their customer base on such issues, leaving us with nothing better than informed guesswork.

Anyway, we'll know soon enough, assuming that IPv6 is announced shortly.  If it isn't then who knows what's going on.

Morgaine.

[Morgaine]

Another day's drop brought Virgin Media IPv6 usage counts down to probably as low as they'll ever go (around 1200), a baseline which I think may correspond to internal IPv6 users only.  This seemed a good point at which to provide a graphic to help us visualize the changes in Virgin's IPv6 usage over the period during which I've been recording, from 2017-05-21 to the present date, 2018-04-11:

I've placed vertical bars at 4 points of interest, namely the origin and 3 major peaks, as listed in the x-axis caption.  These three peaks represent what might be the maxima of two IPv6 trial periods and the peak point of IPv6 infrastructure rollout which was being exercised by the trialists.  The final collapse in the IPv6 counts over the last week seems to correspond to termination of the trialists' IPv6 access, presumably in preparation for IPv6 service launch.  Needless to say this is all purely conjecture.

Time will tell. 🙂

These two final points complete the data set being graphed above:

DATE         AS      Users      IPv6-Users  %UKv6
==========   ==      ========== ==========  =====
2018_04_10:  VIRGIN  13,783,600      1,203   0.01
2018_04_11:  VIRGIN  13,713,567      1,205   0.01

Morgaine.

[matthewsteeples]

I suppose it depends how "Users" is measured. If it's the number of unique IP addresses seen, then IPv4 and IPv6 are going to mean very different things. Eg I would show as 1 IPv4 user, but 20 odd IPv6 users (because each device in my house would be communicating via its own IPv6 address, maybe more than one in the case of Windows where, by default, it gives you a new address every so often).

Having said that, I suppose it can't be that method, because then the likes of Sky would show a higher number of IPv6 users than IPv4, so they must be looking at the correct level

Either way, come on Virgin, give us some 128 bit goodness 🙂

[cje85]

I've always wondered how the numbers on that page are worked out. In terms of total number of customers BT is the biggest ISP, followed by Sky, then Virgin is a distant third due to the limited availability of cable services. But the "users" on that website show Virgin has the most users, followed by Sky then BT.

[Morgaine]

The question of what the APNIC IPv6 counts actually represent is asked quite regularly, so I'll just paste what I wrote a year or so ago in a discussion at the UK IPv6 Council group, which is hosted at LinkedIn.  BT had just reached its first 1 million daily IPv6 "counts" as seen by APNIC and was congratulated for it, which led to the question being raised:

There's no need to guess what the numbers mean, as APNIC's excellent George Michaelson regularly gives talks about the measurements they make. For example, "Weighting the World one Click at a Time" was given at the Cisco-Ecole Polytechnique symposium not long ago.

As scientists and research engineers are well aware, sometimes you can't measure the thing that you want directly, so you use a "proxy" from which to estimate it indirectly. (Not the same thing as "proxy" in networking, but nevertheless related.) George gave the rather nice example of Cavendish trying to determine the mass of the Earth, by way of introduction.

In our case, the numbers we want cannot be measured directly either, and ISPs won't generally reveal anything under the excuse of commercial sensitivity, particularly if we want updates every single day. And so we use proxies from which to derive estimated figures because we cannot obtain official ones.

APNIC's measurements are proxies. 

Although they do not reflect anything as precise as the number of actual IPv6 users per ISP, they are nevertheless much better than nothing at all, and indeed highly useful both as a proxy and in their own right to show trends and changes in rate of growth. Even the ISPs themselves cite APNIC figures, incongruously explaining that they are prevented from releasing official ones, as we have seen ourselves at UK IPv6 Council meetings. :-)

APNIC's measurements also have another good property, in that they are gathered automatically and hence any artifacts or skews apply equally to everyone. While the numbers are somewhat artificial in absolute terms, this is public information and is well known. The "1 million" marker was of course of no special significance, but it's as good as any other, and it did at least give us the opportunity to pat a provider on the back for making good progress in IPv6 deployment, just like awarding plaques does. :-)

Numbers are always welcome, even proxies.

Exactly the same applies to Virgin Media as applied back then in respect of BT.  Virgin management doesn't release publicly the data that we need to quantify its degree of IPv6 deployment, so we use proxies instead.  APNIC's stats are one of the most informative proxies, but there are many other sources available too such as Cisco's 6Lab and Google, and all of the other RiRs provide IPv6 stats as well, not just APNIC.

For hard details on APNIC's measurement methodology, I highly recommend searching for "George Michaelson" in all the usual places.

Morgaine.

[Morgaine]

Just a quick graphic update to confirm that Virgin IPv6 counts are still in their collapsed state, post 2018-04-10:

Hopefully they're now sorting out the final details prior to launch of IPv6, after what appeared to be two significant IPv6 trial periods and then 2 months of infrastructure rollout.  Yes yes, I know, too optimistic by far. 😛

Morgaine.

[fyonn]

Thanks for the update, I've been refreshing this page regularly to keep up to date

[Tudor]

You can “subscribe” to messages

[Morgaine]

Sunday update. 😛

In short, we're still in the post-2018-04-10 collapsed state of Virgin's public IPv6 activity, so my tentative interpretation since that time continues to seem possible.

Morgaine.

[matthewsteeples]

I really hope you're right, but based on recent experience with other trials, I would imagine that IPv6 rollout is going to start on an opt-in basis with people registered for trials, and then ramp up from there (as they did with the Intel bug fix). I don't think we're going to get a "big bang" approach.