60M : VM IPv6 plans?

[mike86]

I don't get why VM are being so secretive about it. Their rep in the video barely gave any useful information.

[General Maximus]

because they don't want to admit they are way behind the curve and it is going to be another 3 years before they catch up to BT and Sky.

Edit: I have just watched it and VM should be ashamed of themselves. They like to talk flap on about technology use terms like docsis 3 in their advertising but I can honestly say that I could have done that presentation more professionally and with more detail. Even if there weren't any new announcements they could have done a quick recap of what they have done, what they are doing and how things are going. Sky and BT's presentations were excellent and make VM look like a bunch of monkeys. It looks like somebody has walked into the janitors closet in the morning and said "who wants a paid day out to a conference and we'll give you double time for it".

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

because they don't want to admit they are way behind the curve and it is going to be another 3 years before they catch up to BT and Sky.

I somehow don't think it's going to be that long given CMTS are running IPv6. Keep an eye on the other LGI territories for some clue as to timelines.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

because they don't want to admit they are way behind the curve and it is going to be another 3 years before they catch up to BT and Sky.

Edit: I have just watched it and VM should be ashamed of themselves. They like to talk flap on about technology use terms like docsis 3 in their advertising but I can honestly say that I could have done that presentation more professionally and with more detail. Even if there weren't any new announcements they could have done a quick recap of what they have done, what they are doing and how things are going. Sky and BT's presentations were excellent and make VM look like a bunch of monkeys. It looks like somebody has walked into the janitors closet in the morning and said "who wants a paid day out to a conference and we'll give you double time for it".

Originally Posted by mike86

I don't get why VM are being so secretive about it. Their rep in the video barely gave any useful information.

You know that the thing you're both watching is from last year, right? There's another one later this week:

Originally Posted by Martin_D

Updates about IPv6 deployments by UK ISPs - Wednesday, 20 April 2016 from 14:00 to 17:00 (BST)

http://www.ipv6.org.uk/blog/

Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but let's see what they have to say first.

[Ignitionnet]

VM's main problem is that for IPv6 to work those piles of excrement in people's homes have to behave themselves.

Given those struggle with DOCSIS if it's not presented as they like new IP stacks can be a challenge.

Superhub firmware, as people will have seen, struggles enough with IPv4.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

VM's main problem is that for IPv6 to work those piles of excrement in people's homes have to behave themselves.

Given those struggle with DOCSIS if it's not presented as they like new IP stacks can be a challenge.

Superhub firmware, as people will have seen, struggles enough with IPv4.

It's not just the superhubs, there's any number of devices that have poor IPv6 support (potentially) that might break the second Virgin enables IPv6 on the hub. As you say, the UBR's and such have had IPv6 support for a long time, it's the CPE onwards that's the issue.

[pip08456]

I bet the SH1 is going to love IPv6!!!!

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Kushan

It's not just the superhubs, there's any number of devices that have poor IPv6 support (potentially) that might break the second Virgin enables IPv6 on the hub. As you say, the UBR's and such have had IPv6 support for a long time, it's the CPE onwards that's the issue.

Everything past the Superhubs isn't VM's problem, which is nice.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Everything past the Superhubs isn't VM's problem, which is nice.

I'm sure all the customers will be reasonable about that....

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Everything past the Superhubs isn't VM's problem, which is nice.

Originally Posted by Hugh

I'm sure all the customers will be reasonable about that....

Exactly. Say it's not Virgin's problem, but if they flick a switch and boot 5% of customers offline as a result, it'll very quickly become Virgin's problem. At the very least, Virgin has to account for these issues and have agents trained on how to deal with them (Even if it's just disabling IPv6 on a device).

[Ignitionnet]

I'm not sure how customer routers are going to fall offline as a result of VM enabling IPv6.

If the customer-owned routers don't support it they just won't send the DHCPv6 request?

The issue with the Superhubs is more that VM will want them migrated to IPv6 on their HFC-side interface, the major point of IPv6 for cable companies is to allow for more addresses than RFC 1918 allows for HFC-side addresses, so they need them to support it.

Zero point in VM deploying it if their owned CPE don't support it, hence the dependency.

A full migration to IPv6 would allow for clean, centralised management of all Liberty Global cable territories without workarounds to compensate as there would no longer be RFC 1918 IPv4 address overlap between them forcing it.

Sorry if I'm missing something, which I might be!

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I'm not sure how customer routers are going to fall offline as a result of VM enabling IPv6.

If the customer-owned routers don't support it they just won't send the DHCPv6 request?

The issue with the Superhubs is more that VM will want them migrated to IPv6 on their HFC-side interface, the major point of IPv6 for cable companies is to allow for more addresses than RFC 1918 allows for HFC-side addresses, so they need them to support it.

Zero point in VM deploying it if their owned CPE don't support it, hence the dependency.

A full migration to IPv6 would allow for clean, centralised management of all Liberty Global cable territories without workarounds to compensate as there would no longer be RFC 1918 IPv4 address overlap between them forcing it.

Sorry if I'm missing something, which I might be!

Obviously can't comment on the HFC side of things, but on the consumer side there have been any number of issues with IPv6. It seems that although quite a lot of routers support IPv6, their implementation is broken in some capacity - they don't route properly, they drop packets, or they just have no proper security in mind.

Imagine this: Pure IPv4 network is running just fine. Then a router suddenly gets an IPv6 lease and starts broadcasting that to the other devices on the network. Those devices get an IPv6 address, so naturally next time they lookup google.com, they see the AAAA record, try to connect via IPv6 only to have the router drop the packet. Suddenly, Google no longer works, all from just enabling IPv6.

I hope the situation is better these days, but certainly a couple of years ago there was a mess. I believe (can't cite a source though) that Vista's initial IPv6 support was also in some way broken, though I hope it has been fixed since then - still, customers aren't always known for keeping up to date. All they will see is one day it works fine, the next it doesn't.

Also, it needs to be done.

[pip08456]

You are going back more than a couple of years ago with the IPv6 problem in Vista Kush. That was sorted out at least 5 years ago that I know of and possibly even earlier. The same can be said for XP.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by pip08456

You are going back more than a couple of years ago with the IPv6 problem in Vista Kush. That was sorted out at least 5 years ago that I know of and possibly even earlier. The same can be said for XP.

Oh yeah, I have no doubt it was patched a long time ago. What I am saying is it just takes the customer to have not updated and they've suddenly got an issue that was caused by Virgin enabling IPv6 (NOTE: I'm not saying it's Virgin's fault, just that the customer will see it that way). That's just one example, there's any number of broken devices out there, so Virgin can't really flip the switch network wide, it'll have to be a slow rollout and manage impact.

I don't think the vast majority of customers will be affected but even 1% is still tens of thousands.

[pip08456]

I very much doubt it will be as high as 1%'

0.000005% perhaps.

I should imagine most of those will have the SH1.