Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Weaver on December 29, 2015, 02:08:29 AM
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Names of ISPs I have heard mentioned / rumoured as going for IPv6, rolling it out, trialling, whatever. Where exactly are we now?
* BT Retail
* Zen
* PlusNet
* Sky
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(And about a dozen very small, niche and business ISPs who have actually had live IPv6 in operation for years.)
* I'd like to hear from customers just how far the ISP has actually got.
* Who is missing from the above list?
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Sky ISP: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/06/uk-isp-sky-broadband-push-router-firmware-update-with-ipv6-support.html (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/06/uk-isp-sky-broadband-push-router-firmware-update-with-ipv6-support.html)
Zen ISP: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/08/uk-isp-zen-internet-expands-ipv6-trial-to-entire-customer-base.html (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/08/uk-isp-zen-internet-expands-ipv6-trial-to-entire-customer-base.html)
[Moderator edited to fix the broken link.]
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Im still on IPv4. Plusnet were trialling it but afaik nothing yet about it being rolled out to all.
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Has any kitizen on BT Retail been upgraded?
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Apparently a load of sky customers (on adsl) already have ipv6 live.
They seem to be doing a closed trial for FTTC customers currently. They did say was an open trial at first but then pretended they cancelled it.
Funny that zen was late to start a public trial but then quick to rollout after their trial started.
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Has any kitizen on BT Retail been upgraded?
BT Retail plan to upgrade their customers to IPv6 between April and December this year.
Some were upgraded last year as part of a trial...
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/09/uk-isp-bt-to-deploy-ipv6-to-entire-network-by-december-2016.html
You may have missed a small firm called A&A from your list ;D
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I missed out A & A as they have had IPv6 on offer for a decade or more, FOC to all customers not just a trial. I left out over half a dozen small ISPs as I was concentrating on those big guys who are moving towards adoption.
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Enta resellers can add IPv6 on users connections and have been able to for a while, but it's not on by default.
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Some of the smaller outfits that come to mind are
Andrews and Arnold
Goscomb
Watchfront
Aquiss
Bogons
Fidonet
Claranet
idNet
And at one time I had a list that was a bit longer than this.
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Have noticed that my BT Infinity connection had IPv6 activated on it in the last few days.
Some others on the BT forums are reporting the same - so looks like BT Retail's rollout is picking up speed..
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I've noticed in the last few days that IPv6 has been enabled on my Sky service too.
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When I flash my new firmware (is overdue), I will check if native dhcp6 is working for me on sky.
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oooh. BT and Sky! changed days.
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@chrysalis - so is DHCPv6 coming from your ISP? Not from your own router? BTW, what router are you using, Chrys?
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I wonder if ISPs will start using prefix delegation, to automate the whole process for a simple customer network.
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yes dhcp6 is isp side.
for lan side it uses router advertisement.
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So WAN side give you an IPv6 host address? Have you been issued a prefix for your internal network, or is that pushed out to you as well?
For comparison my router gets an IPv6 WAN address, but I need to configure the LAN side of the router with the /64 that A&A are currently routing onto my line. I'm not sure whether whether either A&A or my kit support PD so I need to put that prefix in manually. Then it's up to me to configure via my preferred combination of RA and/or DHCP. (Currently using stateful DHCP by the way, but stateless works as well with my kit).
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the wan side gives you the prefix. usually a /64
by the way I not yet tested if sky have routed a ipv6 subnet to my line. Still configured to use the HE tunnel.
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What size prefixes are BT and Sky et al giving out now then? Can you actually ask them for whatever you need?
I have a /48 and an extra /64 from AA, but I think I can get more /64s with no ceremony needed, if memory serves.
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For BT Infinity, I have been issued a 2a00:23c4:XXXX:1::/64 address
As its a residential service, that doesn't offer static IP addresses I doubt they will give me more!
I presume it may well be different on their business orientated services..
On the Home Hub I am currently using, the allocation method is set to Stateless but Stateful mode is a option I can pick
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who needs more than a /64?
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For BT Infinity, I have been issued a 2a00:23c4:XXXX:1::/64 address
As its a residential service, that doesn't offer static IP addresses I doubt they will give me more!
I presume it may well be different on their business orientated services..
On the Home Hub I am currently using, the allocation method is set to Stateless but Stateful mode is a option I can pick
Which hub and firmware build can I ask?
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I did a check now, no ipv6 issued to my router from sky.
Of course I am assuming sky are using a compatible system.
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the wan side gives you the prefix. usually a /64
Can I confirm we're talking about the same thing, I must admit that when talking/thinking IPv6 I sometime revert to thinking in IPv4 terms.
For comparison on my connection I get a WAN address for the WAN interface. My DSL is PPPoA so I believe that's negotiated by PPP (IPCP?) rather than DHCP. (I'll need to remember to look at a PPPoE customer to see if that uses DHCP, but my guess would still be IPCP). The WAN address prefix is different from the /64 prefix assigned to my line for me to use internally.
I'll need to have a check - I'd assumed that the customer/internal prefix wasn't pushed out as I'd seen no mention of this possibility either in the router documentation or A&A, however I might have missed it, or maybe the function doesn't work on PPPoA or on my kit.
WAN 2001:8b0:1111:1111:0:ffff:xxxx:a27e
Internal 2001:8b0:fff3:yyyy::/64
By the way, for those of us who remember Novell addressing, we now have the option to make addresses contain silly words once more.
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@aesmith I think you're correct, AA uses PPP IPCP. I believe my router, a Firebrick, gets a separate address for its own WAN via PPP, but I have to set up a LAN address-range assignment by hand on the Firebrick.
I have noticed comic addresses such as face:b00c.
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In every instance of using ipv6 whether it be home isp or datacentre it has used DHCPv6 for me, I suppose tho there will be isp's out there not using it and deploying it via another system.
In regards to pppoe and pppoa, the authentication to the isp is typically done over ipv4, so the ipv6 doesnt also need to use ppp as the connection to the isp is already established.
If I recall correctly tho aaisp setup their system so ipv6 connectivity can stay online if there is a ipv4 outage, so that probably explains why they using PPP IPCP. The basics are the same tho, AAISP will have issued a prefix to you, and thats what needs configuring on the router if its not an automatic process.
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Cheers. I might be wrong about IPCP, looking at Cisco documentation they seem to sort of piggyback DHCPv6 over the top of PPP, using the accounting mechanisms. On a quick skim that could either be just a Cisco specific thing, or it may refer only to the back end and not how the IPv6 information is passed up to the client. I'm not sure that the authentication is necessarily IPv4, at the authentication stage the remote device doesn't yet have an IP address, and in fact PPP could theoretically be carrying a different L3 protocol anyway.
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There is an ip address, its just not presented to you.
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You mean as used between the gateway and the RADIUS server? That need bear no relation to the IP address subsequently issued to the PPP client, it won't in fact know which address to issue until the authentication is successful.
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By the way have you ever worked on a deployment using other than ISP provided addressing? That seems to be the big unknown in terms of design guides etc at the moment, whether to use PI, or to use addressing from one of your providers and use NAT when accessing the Internet via any other ISP, or use ULA and always NAT.
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I think it's our responsibility to put an end to NAT as it's a nightmare for application designers and simply was not part of the plan when older protocols were designed. If we collectively decide to drop NAT then future IPv6-only protocols will be able to start afresh, without this burden if carrying out NAT case research and outing various kludges into their code.
I can understand the attractions of NAT for protecting the sysadmin against the pain of network renumbering and issues with multiple ISPs, but I feel that PI space is the way and it should be made a lot easier, with ISPs being encouraged to support it. More research is urgently needed into how to mitigate the costs of using PI space in terms of bloating routing tables and complicating routing. If I remember correctly, AA are happy to support your PI space, think I read that somewhere.
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Routing table size is going to be the issue if every one goes PI, although in time that may not become an issue with updated kit etc. The telecoms industry must have gone through something similar with number porting. You're correct as well, A&A will announce PI addressing.
However, devils advocate asks what actually fails to work currently with NAT, and would not work with the much more straightforward IPv6 NAT? I've come across a few cases where it's helpful for a front end server to have a native address, but those are individual border hosts not the end user clients. I'm not convinced that the requirement for those border gateways would go away without NAT because some of this is to do with opening firewall ports dynamically. (For example SIP early media needs protocol specific firewall support even without NAT).
I also note that in the recent past I've worked with two organisations that possessed Class A ranges and numbered their entire internal networks from those public address. Neither of them routed direct from end users to the Internet without NAT. I don't even know how it could work at that scale, in an organisation with probably thousands of separate Internet connections around the world.
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NAT also reduces attack profile and protects from ISPs deciding to charge per device using the connection.
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I would say security should not be an issue, any half decent stateful firewall will only permit valid replies to valid outbound connections, not really any different if the connections are NA/PAT or natively routed. However I suppose you could say that concealing your internal address structure can't hurt.
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My comments were motivated by my thinking like a protocol designer (which I am, or used to be) having read about the struggles that the Microsoft instant messaging design team (Windows/MSN Messenger) had with NAT, and the similar struggles that Teredo has.
I fully sympathise with the concerns of sysadmins and the devil's advocates. It's a question of whom you love more, the software designers or network architects.
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I would encourage any kitizens who want to learn about this technology to try it out using the HE or SixXs tunnels. Or even Teredo, if you're using Windows. and of course, you could always choose an IPv6 ISP.
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It's a question of whom you love more, the software designers or network architects.
Funny you should mention MSN and Windows Messenger as we have mostly come across it when customers want it blocked from their network. This is actually quite difficult with a conventional firewall as the software doesn't use standard ports. It wouldn't surprise me if it was designed to be difficult to block.
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I am back on native ipv6 now, took some work on my router to get it working tho as sky use /56.
Also its not very sticky, even just a router reboot was enough for the ipv6 prefix to change :( not very good that sky are using dynamic ipv6 allocations.
The dynamic allocation may make me revert to my he tunnel as I cannot stand dynamic ip addressing.
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Why the bloody hell are Sky dynamically allocating prefixes? You can already have privacy addressing yourself within your subnet if you wish? Why make it impossible to write certain firewall rules, configure external systems properly, why break all existing TCP connections and cause data loss for no reason whenever the prefix jumps?
Sounds like they simply have no clue. I've never ever been with an ISP that uses dynamic addressing, don't need the admin grief and the unreliability. Ugh.
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Already sent email to a senior networking bod, as its ridicolous.
Spent last hour or so tho working on my router as I had to be exotic to get QoS working on ipv6. First I had to get DHCP preservation working for ipv6 so I could get steady ipv6 allocations on my network which is a bit of a pain since its designed to use a OS generated UID instead of hardware MAC. Then I had to take a look at ip6tables since asuswrt is not adding rules for MAC's on the upstream, so all my ipv6 traffic was same speed as my very low default setting limited to 1mbit/sec upload, which was strangling downloads as not enough bandwidth for ack's. I have already modified the qos script to set appropriate downstream rules.
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Who did you contact? I recently e-mailed Ian Dickinson who has done presentations on Sky's IPv6 rollout (http://www.ipv6.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/UK-IPv6-Council-Sky-Dickinson-20160630.pdf), and he was nice enough to reply(fairly quickly).
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Mark Evans but I think Ian Dickinson would have been better as it looks like he is much involved in the ipv6 setup at sky.
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At least you are able to know the name of a human, not a bad sign
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[rant_at_Sky]
I simply couldn't get anything at all to even work like that as there's no way for me to change the IP addresses of hosts once the prefix has been advertised and the hosts have all picked their IP addresses based on it. I'd simply have to turn IPv6 off for good really quick. How are they even expecting anything to work ? Perhaps they are assuming that everyone has some kind of router with a dynamically varying NAT translator. AESmith uses IPv6 NAT, which is where he and I differ. It would still silently screw all your open TCP connections though, which is the nastiest of all possibilities. That's a bloody joke. Apologies for being so frank, but what a bunch of utter clowns.
Don't suppose they have attracted too many Cisco, Juniper or Firebrick router owners.[/rant_at_Sky]
I'll shut up now as you have no need to hear from me, I should think everyone can work it out for themselves. My apologies.
Sounds like there's going to be a lot of breakage when some ISPs roll out IPv6 this Autumn if clue==0
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No offence (to any Kitizen) meant. :no:
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AESmith uses IPv6 NAT, which is where he and I differ.
I don't at the moment, although I was advocating it as an alternative to PI for an organisation with more than one ISP, or one that wants to be able to change ISPs without renumbering their internal network.
It would still silently screw all your open TCP connections though, which is the nastiest of all possibilities.
Would it? I understood that the prefix was changing on a router reboot and presumably other disconnect/reconnect scenarios. I didn't read this as meaning it changes "hot".
Having said that I can't understand why they'd not make the assignments static, they can't be short of address space. That wouldn't be an issue anyway with DSL or other always-on connections, since they use the same amount of address space whether static or dynamic. What they should be doing, in my opinion, is to assign a fixed prefix to the customer but then to push it out via prefix delegation. That would be the equivalent of most ISPs on IPv4, and saves most customers having to hard-code the prefix in their router.
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Well, whenever a local-end IP address changes, then an o/s, if it knows about the change, needs to dump all TCP connections, as otherwise of course a remote correspondent receiving subsequent TCP PDUs will have no idea about who is the strange person sending these packets with an incomprehensible new src address in them, as they won't match the appropriate field in the remote’s TCP connection object. (I once made this mistake when I was designing an implementation of a novel transport protocol many years ago.) Of course, if an o/s doesn't know about the address change, then it can't do anything about it: a local sender just keeps on retransmitting and a remote end keeps throwing incoming packets away or firewalling them out.
I suppose a clever o/s might pick up a new router advertisement and pass it up to TCP subsystems, but does an RA mean that you've _lost_ the old addresses you had or just that you've just gained some additional ones? I'm not at all sure. What about multihomedness or multiple gateways? This isn't the same as DHCP expiry. I rather doubt that these mechanisms were designed with such craziness in mind. I've never heard of a “negative RA”-type mechanism.
But no network designer can go around assuming that all possible operating systems have that behaviour. And what if you aren't even producing RAs driven by some dynamic mechanism, like DHCPv6 from-the-ISP (how?) or PPP IPCP ? My router is just set up to generate RAs based on static configuration. So if an ISP changed a prefix, then then I'd never know. So Sky aren't going to sell to many Firebrick owners!
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My point was not particularly to support dynamic allocation, but just to point out that if it occurs only on a router reboot there's not going to be a lot of traffic "in flight" at the time. The whole prefix delegation thing is something I haven't played with, and in theory it should allow things to readdress in due course, but I'm sure it is intended for provisioning and for pushing out planned change not for on the fly unscheduled changes. Apart from anything else it wouldn't work if the customer has anything statically addressed.
I suspect in Sky's case it's just not really been thought through, in terms of how much more disruptive a change of prefix is compared to a change of external IPv4 address. Are Sky providing and supporting a router supporting their IPv6 provision? Would be interested to know how they handle all this on their chosen box.
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Weaver NAT is not needed on sky's setup, each device still gets its own ipv6, so there is no sharing.
But it is annoying that it means things like setting up a tbb monitor is difficult and in addition any configuration files have to be changed whenever it changes.
To solve the latter problem I have already made a script which fetches the prefix and then will regenerate my config files using that prefix. However I am still annoyed about the prefix changing so easy, my connection is very reliable and will stay up for several months at a time, but I dont like been in the position where i am scared to reboot the router, do maintenance etc. for in fear of losing my ip address.
Some people on the skyuser forums are been very defensive of sky's setup, so I am in disagreement with them, apparently for the others their prefix does survive a router reboot, but it doesnt for me. Although one guy gave me a few reasons why it might be happening which I am going to look into.
A change of prefix probably wont disrupt joe bloggs to be fair, most consumers dont care about static ip configurations.
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Quick update, the prefix actually has a 7 day expiry, and the reason I was losing it was that dhcp6c on my router sends a RELEASE command when its shutdown. Temporary solution I have currently is to kill dhcp6c manually instead of shutting it down with its init script. I cannot edit that init script sadly as it is hard coded but will speak to the dev about it.
I still have the issue the /64 prefix within that /56 keeps changing but the dev of the firmware I am using is going to make a new firmware later today with a newer wide-dhcp client which will hopefully fix that issue.
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I still have the issue the /64 prefix within that /56 keeps changing but the dev of the firmware I am using is going to make a new firmware later today with a newer wide-dhcp client which will hopefully fix that issue.
Is that wholly within your gear, I mean Sky issuing the /56, and your equipment deciding which /64 prefix to use on the LAN? Wondering if your script could have a hard-coded mask so it always assigns a certain /64 within the current ISP issued block?
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I need to correct myself.
My last post was based on me thinking a /56 is the first 3 fields only, its actually the first 3 plus half of the fourth, I was confusing with a /48 which is the first three.
So the /56 was still changing not the /64.
Now to answer your question aesmith yes I can choose which /64 to use, the sla-id function within wide-dhcp controls that.
I have a couple of problems right now, one is a minor annoyance, the other one is quite bad.
1 - The minor problem is the router gets its wan ip in EU64 format, wide-dhcp does have a ifid function where you can make it use a friendly ::1 but that was never implemented in the wide-dhcp code (which got abandoned in 2008) and only added by some linux distro versions of wide-dhcp. I grabbed the debian patches and gave them to the dev of the firmware, but he is definitely not keen on implementing them as he is paranoid about changing ipv6 code, I even supplied him prepatched files, time will tell if I can convince him.
2 - The bigger problem is when dhcp6c is been shutdown on my router it is sending a release command to sky's dhcp servers, this is why the /56 has been changing. Someone on skyuser forums also uses wide-dhcp and does not have this problem but he runs the patched version on ubuntu, I think he doesnt realise how different things are on embedded systems, I cannot just download a debian package and install it on a router.
if dhcp6c is shutdown by the rc command, /56 is lost.
if dhcp6c is shutdown with a kill command without arguments /56 is lost.
if dhcp6c is shutdown with a 'kill -9' command (which instant terminates so does not allow it to do its shutdown routine) the /56 is preserved and is sticky.
Sadly the rc script is not accessible on the router, and if it was it be read only. So this to be fixed requires the firmware dev to resolve it. I have made a shutdown script for it which force kills it using the -9 signal, but this will rely on me remembering to use it before reboots, going offline etc. and if the router ever goes offline by itself e.g. an isp outage it will run the rc shutdown script for dhcp6c although if the isp is dead it probably would not recieve the release command to be fair in that situation.
To automate it? well asuswrt-merlin has wan-start scripts, meaning you can insert commands to be run whenever the wan is brought online, but it does not have a wan-stop script for automation when wan goes offline. However since sky uses dhcp auth, the dhcp-event script may work which is ran whenever there is a dhcp change on the wan interface. However I think that wont be an option since when the ipv6 prefix comes online that will be a dhcp event and I would then be instant killing it.
I could also try to firewall of the release command, but I think this will be impossible unless they somehow use packets identifiable by iptables. There is nothing in wide-dhcp documention I can see in relation to release commands been sent, it would appear its hardcoded and I think one of the debian/ubuntu patches patched it out.
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@Chrysalis - want a spare Firebrick ? :no: ;D
Love and peace, shame about the system software nuisance.
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Massive progress made, he applied the patches no problem.
The only issue left to resolve is the release command, which I expect we will solve by making the rc script forcefully kill it with -9.
The router now gets a friendly formatted ipv6 now ifid works.
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Glad to hear that you're making progress. Good news.