Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

82.25.128.0 - 82.25.143.255 Is one of the 82 ranges assigned to NTL. Not sure if they have all the 82.25 but it looks like they may as this is another 82.25.0.0 - 82.25.15.255 but registered to a different area

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

82.0.0.0 - 82.47.255.255 is VM in the 82.x.x.x/8 range, which is 18.75% of it.

As I say, 9.8 million is approximately the total of all VM's IPs that are currently useable, including all non-broadband uses.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

Seems reasonable. Now how many customers do they have? I believe it's somewhere between 6 and 7million?

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

Including mobile, business, commercial, wholesale, local, further and higher education, leased lines and providing all of 3, Orange and T-Mobile's network, M2M, smart meters, and the London underground? No idea, but I'd guess a lot.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

Looks like Plusnet are trialling carrier grade NAT for exactly that reason.

http://community.plus.net/forum/inde...,110652.0.html
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5...addresses.html

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

It's IPv5 that I feel sorry for! :)

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

this whole issue is kicking off now as plusnet have announced a trial of carrier grade NAT ouch, a huge fail as they havent even started on ipv6 yet.

It does seem uk isp's have their heads stuck in the sand on ipv6 and simply refuse to invest.

Will VM do the same, wait until their ipv4 is critical then announce some kind of idea to extend ipv4 rather than go dual stack.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

I don't think you understand, it's going to be necessary for all providers to do some kind of NAT eventually. Even if the world switched over to IPv6, there's still millions of pieces of software that rely on an IPv4 address - such as the PS3 or the 360. They can't do IPv6. Plusnet trailing this isn't a sign of failure, Virgin and Sky will have to trial it as well at some point, even if they deploy IPv6.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

They just require a software update and since they are subject to compulsory automatic software updates in order to be useable online anyway, that's a non-issue.

Still, NAT is already standard on ISPs in many countries, and on *all* mobile ISPs in the UK. Most educational establishments also use NAT as do halls, student residences, etc.

I would say, in fact, that consumer ISPs providing routable IPv4 addresses are the exception from the norm. The vast majority of internet providers and internet devices use NAT - coffee shops, hotels, airports, libraries, schools, universities, mobile providers, phones, smartmeters, small/medium businesses, trains, underground, etc. - all predominately provide NAT'd connections to the end user.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

It's nowhere near as simple as that. Every single game on those systems would need to be updated in order to facilitate online playing as they mostly use a P2P model that is not set up for IPv6 in the slightest. This is probably why Microsoft and Sony have never bothered to add IPv6 support thus far - because it would only be useful for a select few games (new titles and old titles that publishers were willing to patch, which isn't cheap).
Never mind that the console itself won't be able to connect to download the update without a valid IPv4 address (admittedly this can be somewhat mitigated with off-line updates, such as those on a disk).

I dare say the next-gen consoles will support IPv6 out of the box.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

its a sofware limitation.

once isp's start moving, other things will follow suit, more and more websites go dual stack every day but until broadband isp's get moving it will be a slow moving thing, once isp's get their act together everything else will follow, but the attitude of oh the devices dont support it so why bother is very wrong.

VM and other isp's should have been deploying ipv6 alongside ipv4 long before today.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

I'm not disagreeing with that, what I'm saying is that nobody's going to go back and update all of the software from the last 30+ years. Hell, nobody's going to update the vast majority of the software from just 5 years ago. There'll be games released this year that won't have IPv6 support and still won't 10 years from now. That's why it'll be important to run dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 for a long time (even if the IPv4 stack is NAT'd to hell).

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

updating software is trivial. and 30 year old software is something for those dev's to worry about not yourself an isp.

A long term future is probably every end user still been able to use an ipv4 ipfor legacy alongside ipv6, but those people with ip ranges been moved over to ipv6 this will free up many ip's, many datacentres do this already, they give a base ipv4 but additional ips are ipv6, and I have datacentres trying to reclaim ip's of me as well. For this reason I am dual stacking alot of services I host now as eventually those services will have to be ipv6 only. I also am testing ipv6 on my home rig although I can only do this via tunneling due to the fact I cant get ipv6 of either of my isp's.

The dual stacking for long time as you put it should have started 10 years ago then CG nat wouldnt have been close to been needed, plus I think wont be needed is isp's manage ips well like removing of customers with multiple ips instead of natting people with single ips.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying about how the future will pan out (regarding dual stacking and such), however I think you're completely underestimating the software issue. IT's not hard to update software, but the same logic can be said for why Windows ensures so much backwards compatibility - because people just don't update their software. It costs too much and the older the software is, the more it costs. IPv6 isn't an evolution of IPv4, it's completely different and would need to be coded from scratch in most software.
Then look at the (prime example) of games - Microsoft charges to release title updates, so which publishers are liable to pay developers to update the code, then go through certification and all that? It just isn't going to happen. It's actually just easier to stick to IPv4, even if it's NAT'd. Likely what'll happen in future is everyone will have IPv4 via NAT and if you need a dedicated IP, you can pay extra for it.
Eventually, you'll probably lose all IPv4 support until you specifically request it from your ISP. I don't think IPv4 will ever be totally eradicated, it'll exist in some form for the next 50 years at least.

Re: VM IPv6 plans?
 

Kushan you scare mongering tho.

I am saying ipv6 dual stack now today, dont mess about just get on with it. To dual stack doesnt mean drop ipv4, it will still exist to allow for people and companies to migrate. Then when enough mainstream supports ipv6 then ipv4 could be possibly slowly phased out.

Instead I expect VM will do a plusnet, do some kind of carrier grade NAT before even announcing ipv6, in fact I wouldnt be surprised if uk isp's just think of profit and standardise carrier grade nat so they can charge for normal ip's as a premium feature. That would be typical uk fashion of making money.

aaisp eg. have noted they expect to never need to use carrier grade nat, instead they will just claw back ip's from those with ranges assigned to them and not in use.

I can understand clawing back ip's from those with large allocations, but using carrier grade nat on customers with only one ip is just bad management.

Have VM eg. been lobbying microsoft etc. for changes? or just sitting back chilled as if nothing is a problem.

Whats so sad about all this its far easier to dual stack ipv6 than it is to rollout carrier grade NAT, so one has to wonder why plusnet have rolled out something more complex first.