IPv6 support on Virgin media

[dgcarter]

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

[Shelke]

VM definitely need to keep assigning unique IPV4 addresses to their customers hubs, even with IPV6 enabled. Shared IPV4 is a nightmare for many reasons. You can't host, can't game properly when games need port forwarding. And if someone else behind the shared IP does dodgy things they would end up getting everyone behind that IP banned along with them, GG.

VM have no problems with IPV4, all they need to do is toggle on IPV6 along side without doing any IPV4 adjustments.

[ravenstar68]

@Morgaine

I wasn't talking about switching IPv4 off completely.

However I can say that DS-Lite will cause users problems, you see users will no longer have a unique public IPv4 address, instead the B4 element on the users router will have a private WAN v4 address.  From the B4 element the connection is then tunneled over IPv6 to the AFTR element where it is passed to the local gateway and then gets a public IPv6 address that is shared with multiple users. i.e. CGNAT

So now we have double NAT - once on the router to translate from the LAN to the WAN IPv4 and once at the gateway to translate from private to public CGNAT address.

So what'll happen?

No port forwarding, either manual or automatic (via UPnP)
Strict NAT for all gaming consoles which means no one can host games - bye bye multiplayer in many cases.  Games hosted on external public servers run by the major companies should be unaffected (so you should still be able to play WoW and Diablo as well as the Call of Duty games and Elder Scrolls online)
No Teredo for XBox one.
You want to access a home security solution over IPv4 from outside your network - forget it.
You want to work from home over IPv4 - it may be possible, but if your employer won't be able to guarantee that only you can connect if he filters by IPv4 address.

People who are merely consumers of IPv4 services i.e. who only surf and stream from the internet will be unaffected as double NAT won't affect these services.

If Virgin Media does roll out DS-Lite these boards are going to be fun.

Tim

[Shelke]

@ravenstar68 if they did do a public rollout like that I'd be posting ASAP to be reverted back to IPV4 only.

I could are less about IPV6, the whole attitude of "ooh, IPV6, SHINY, roll it out." Is like the people who demanded 4K content from VM two years when 4K is only a temp stop before 8K tvs and no provider had any 4K content either. Aka the 'early adopters' only thinking of their base line, not the bigger picture.

What matters to me is ease of accessibility plus ease of hosting your own things. Right now that is best done over IPV4 with your own unique IPV4 assigned and that's not going to change for a very long time (talking 6+ years easily here.)

[ravenstar68]

See I do think we need IPv6 rolled out.  At the moment we're in a chicken and the egg situation.  ISP's don't want to roll it out as there's no incentive and many game and hardware manufacturers haven't included it because ISP's don't provide it.

I will repeat what I've said previously, IPv6 rollout should have been done LONG BEFORE we neared the point of IPv4 exhaustion.  At that time the two protocols could have theoretically been run side by side with an aim to phasing out IPv4 much sooner,  While I can understand the logistics of ISP's running pure dual stack would be a nightmare, a better solution would be to have a transition mechanism that puts a public IPv4 address on the B4 element.

The overall connection could still be tunnelled over IPv6 to the AFTR  element but there would be no double NAT involved.

Tim

[Anonymous]

Gamers on VM are going to be screwed.

It seems this is a price they are prepared to pay. Perhaps some sort of opt-in roll out as described previously may mitigate the problem.

I doubt it will encourage the major platforms to get themselves together and incorporate better IPv6 support. Surprised they haven't taken an Apple like approach. Why have a walled garden if you don't use it to do some gardening?

[thelem]

@Morgaine wrote:
"I'm no fan of DS-Lite, and I've described several times how I would have phased this IPv6 rollout differently, starting with Dual Stack for minimum disruption and easiest evolution. But I do recognize that DS-Lite has a role later in allowing ISPs to turn off their legacy IPv4 equipment and to grow beyond the limits of IPv4, which Dual Stack cannot do."

Presumably it is possible to set up DS-Lite with one IPv4 address for every customer. If configured in this way, are there major downsides when compared to full Dual Stack?

Obviously that wouldn't give Virgin the advantage of being able to use fewer IPv4 addresses, but it would be a useful stepping stone for them towards shared IP addresses. If shared IPv4 addresses become a big problem for a significant number of users then I can see a dedicated IP address being a chargeable feature, or included only in the more expensive packages. The vast majority of people will be able to check their email and watch Netflix from behind CG-NAT, while those who need their own IP would still be able to have one.

[thelem]

@Shelke wrote:
Shared IPV4 is a nightmare for many reasons. You can't host, can't game properly when games need port forwarding. And if someone else behind the shared IP does dodgy things they would end up getting everyone behind that IP banned along with them, GG.

Those are all problems caused by the game / website not supporting IPv6, they need to be fixed by the game / website makers.

[VMCopperUser]

I don't think the Xbox Teredo should be a issue.

Once a Xbox has a working IPv6 connection then that becomes a non-issue (Hosting IPv4 games will still be broken tho).  CGNAT without IPv6 would kill the Teredo, and more to the point you were making, it would stop all non-requested UDP inbound streams.  So a large chunk of things will either not work, or work highly sporadically.  TCP tunnels should work fine as long as they were started from the Customer side.

I think PLEX is in the same chicken and egg situation.  PLEX works great with a lot of devices, a lot of devices that have no intention of adding IPv6 support!  So they are probably of the view, why bother.

What I dislike is how we view IPv4 over IPv6 as a "Transition" mechanism.  I also dislike how we have to lump CGNAT in at the same time.

The reality is that there's two issues at play here, CGNAT(DS-Lite), and IPV6 Deployment.  IPv6 deployment should have started years ago, when the IPv4 pool became an issue THEN DS-Lite should have been something they looked to move to. 

The other thing that I don't like with CGNAT is that we are moving back to PHORM again... Yes I am barking up a old tree here, but If they are sharing data for a single IP then that means they will be doing some form of network accounting.  That's the same type of MITM customer data snooping they wanted to monitize previously!  The thing is that now there will be a legal requirement for them to record data, and once it's there then they might as well make money off of it.  It have no doubt in my mind that it has been seen and considered by someone internally.

[Anonymous]

You make a very good point. From a deployment perspective converting the network to be IPv6 managed dual-stack then cherry picking users to use DS-Lite afterwards makes a lot more sense to me( as a not-ISP network engineer). Surely this would give lots of options to, for example, force new users to be DS-Lite or start charging for IPv4 for those that feel they really need it.

DS-Lite has been deployed elsewhere so presumably these CGNAT boxes have somewhat known scaling. Cherry picking would at least allow the scalability to be assessed in a more controlled way while giving the most benefits. Sky ran into a surprising issue with their DNS resolver capacity. A DNS resolver is a heck of a sight simpler than a DS-Lite AFTR.

Daft question but does anyone know how DS-Lite was rolled out to the German Liberty Global networks that have been mentioned?

[Shelke]

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@thelem wrote:
@Shelke wrote:
Shared IPV4 is a nightmare for many reasons. You can't host, can't game properly when games need port forwarding. And if someone else behind the shared IP does dodgy things they would end up getting everyone behind that IP banned along with them, GG.

Those are all problems caused by the game / website not supporting IPv6, they need to be fixed by the game / website makers.

---

I'm not interested in IPV6, what I am interested in this outlook of stick lots of customers behind a single IP address and thinking that it will work. Say you have 29,000 customers natted behind the IP 1.2.3.4. All it takes is one person to say get their self banned on Sony's PSN and that will ban all the other customers who will be stuck with the natted IP for 4+ years because VM IP leases are very sticky. And couple that with how big companies are linking together on abuse issues, one IP ban on Sony PSN under a natted IP could lead to other companies like netflix, googles' youtube etc banning that IP too.

And  I do want to be able to host over IPV4 when I need it.

Literally moving back towards natting IPs is like saying let's all go back to living like it's the 80s. Regressive move. The adding of IPV6 shouldn't interfere with how IPV4 is allocated to hubs now. They should be isolated systems.