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Author Topic: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6  (Read 13871 times)

Chrysalis

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UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« on: August 20, 2019, 02:20:30 AM »

Have a look at this data.

https://ipv6-test.com/stats/country/GB

The only 2 major isps to this date is still just BT retail and sky who have rolled out ipv6.  Incidentally both using DHCP6 dynamic allocation.

It seems companies are waiting till they "have" to use it. 

If I go FTTP with cityfibre residential I have to use vodafone who only use the legacy obsolete IPV4 technology.

EE have it on their mobile network but not home broadband.
Virgin Media seem to be in a never ending trial of it.
Bizarrely plusnet trialed it then dropped it.
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niemand

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2019, 06:41:30 AM »

Correct. Companies are waiting until they have to use it.

There are projects in progress to release some more IPv4, too. It's legacy but it's not obsolete. New addresses are being progressively freed up, much of the Internets still relies on it.

Virgin Media have their own reasons for not releasing v6 just yet. There are a few ways of implementing it and if the delay means they do it right that's all good.

EDIT: Just to point out if you have a look at unique IP address statistics so that they can't be skewed by tunneling the UK really isn't 'shameful'. More like mid-table obscurity. Hurricane Electric tunnels can skew statistics quite heavily.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2019, 06:46:46 AM by CarlT »
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psychopomp1

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2019, 05:38:39 PM »

I wouldn't call it "shameful" because IPv4 lets the average residential user do everything they need to. IPV6 is only a must for people like IT workers but then again such users won't really be using mass market ISPs since options like static IP addresses etc are usually available with the smaller ISPs. FWIW my ISP - FluidOne - offers me both IPv6 and IPv4, yet i prefer to use IPv4 since it just works without any fuss.
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Chrysalis

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2019, 06:44:08 PM »

Thats why I consider it shameful psychopump, they only doing whats needed for users to get by, instead of been technical leaders and forward thinking.

CarlT, ask yourself tho, what is the point of it all, if you have a deadlock of (a) websites sticking to ipv4 single stack because consumer isp's dont see a need so they also dont see a need (kitz as an example), and isp's the same the other way round as they waiting for a large website to go single stack ipv6 before they roll it out, kind of like a wild west standoff.

Google have three times almost gone single stack ipv6 to "force things" but keep been talked out of it.

It feels like in 10 years time we will be in the same position.  These projects to release ipv4 shouldnt even be happening, its kind of like a bandaid.

When you look at this from the broadband side of things, it probably seems I am making a fuss over nothing as everything "just works" right?  But on the hosting side of things, there is extreme shortages, its routine now for many providers to run a single ipv4 policy, and they expect their customers to run everything on one ipv4, or run normally using ipv6, or pay a premium for multi ipv4.

What I would like to see is google apply a SEO penalty for ipv4 single stack, (website admins will suddenly treat ipv6 as an emergency implementation if their precious SEO is damaged), for google to do ipv6 only days multiple times a year where all their services go down for ipv4 users to "encourage isps".  This may sound radical but google already do this, they use their market position to force tech adoption, but for some reason they held back on forcing ipv6 so far.  Either that or countries like the UK legislate ipv6 availability enforced via ofcom.  The latter solution avoids pains for consumers with services not going down to force things, as it looks to me a case of market failure where the market wont adapt a technology due to lack of commercial opportunity.  There is already one clear consumer advantage to routed ipv6 which is if a household has multiple consoles, then the ports can be open and available for multiple consoles at once on one network, something not possible on ipv4 NAT.

Maybe I should contact anti piracy groups and any filtering groups to get them to lobby for it, as one thing the UK is a leader on is internet filtering, we love that as a country, and if those groups were to be convinced ipv6 helps that (ironically it does), then they could push things along.
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PhilipD

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2019, 08:18:56 AM »

Hi

It of course comes down to money, no ISP makes money providing IPv6, yet to implement it comes at a cost, so no incentive.

IPv4 addresses might be running out, but except for a tiny small percentage of people having to fill out forms to justify a few precious IPv4 addresses, it effects no one else, as everything still works, granted some things might work better on IPv6, but they still work by and large on IPv4.  Whereas turn IPv6 on, and things can stop working for people as devices suddenly try routing over IPv6 that is either implemented incorrectly by the ISP, or more likely broken in the customers equipment somewhere.

The SEO penalty might push websites to support IPv6, but it doesn't push ISPs to provide IPv6, so not sure that will help.  The industry is moving to dual-stack, not to IPv6 only, so IPv4 is expected to remain for decades to come and really there is no rush to move everyone over to IPv6, which is why we don't see any.  It is a very slow burn :-)

I quite agree more ISPs should be moving over, but I can see why they are not.

Regards

Phil
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dee.jay

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2019, 08:33:49 AM »

IPv4 addresses ran out some time ago, in fact, 2011!
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Weaver

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2019, 10:03:06 AM »

Thumbs up to Chrys.  :thumbs:
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dee.jay

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2019, 10:19:34 AM »

Also, I just noticed the talk about internet filtering.

Internet filtering is bad, very bad.
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niemand

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #8 on: August 21, 2019, 10:44:20 AM »

IPv4 addresses ran out some time ago, in fact, 2011!

More are being freed up via previously reserved ranges and the selling off of blocks from organisations with insanely large supernets.

Had they irretrievably run out things would change.
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niemand

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #9 on: August 21, 2019, 10:47:28 AM »

Thats why I consider it shameful psychopump, they only doing whats needed for users to get by, instead of been technical leaders and forward thinking.

This isn't the Wild West. The UK is one of the most Internet dependent economies in the world. We don't have the luxury of being 'technical leaders' when people can get fined, sued and taken to task by the regulator for downtime.

VM could've actually provided IPv6 a while ago, however they've rethought how they're implementing in return for a better solution.

Either way conservatism is baked into the UK model due to regulation, etc.
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dee.jay

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2019, 10:52:31 AM »

More are being freed up via previously reserved ranges and the selling off of blocks from organisations with insanely large supernets.

Had they irretrievably run out things would change.

Whilst this is true, there are a lot of universities etc in the USA for example that are not selling their huge /8's.

The problem does not exist in the far east, where IPv6 adoption has been far quicker - mainly because they've had to.

NAT has just been too good.
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niemand

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2019, 10:58:55 AM »

Thumbs up to Chrys.  :thumbs:

Wastage of IPv4 has been a major issue. ISPs handing residential users /26s to allow every device in a home to have a public IP for instance. :P

There's still some mileage in recovering it. VM are taking their time to provide a better solution. TalkTalk I have no comment on.

Either way we're fine. We innovate in the UK in terms of the applications running over networks and how we're using them. The actual networks themselves we have to operate with more caution.

Those paying attention would've noticed some IPv6 traffic from VM, and VM advertising IPv6 prefixes a little while back. Could actually ping them over 6 and everything bar the CPE are dual-stack, the VoIP telco is using v6  :)
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2019, 11:05:00 AM »

We can argue til the cows come home as to whether IPv6 really matters to the home user.

And we can apportion blame to lazy ISPs for not making IPv6 available to those who, for very valid reasons, wish to use it.

But we often overlook the underlying 'blame' which imho should be apportioned to the internet protocol committees, for having originally adopted an inadequate protocol based on IP addresses of fixed length (32 bits).   The competing protocol suite, as the public internet evolved, would have been the ISO/OSI stack.  The rough ISO equivalent of an IP address is the NSAP, which has always been a variable length field, up to 20 bytes. :P

I recall proposals nearly 30 years ago, when the it was first foreseen that IP address space would be inadequate.  One proposal was to adopt ISO CLNP as the IP layer, with TCP/UDP on top. Named TUBA (TCP and UDP with Bigger Addresses).  I don't think proposals for TUBA ever got off the ground. Ive heard it suggested that a factor was dress code... on one side of the table were neatly groomed people in business suits (OSI), on the  other side were long haired people in jeans & T-shirts (IP), and these two sides were never really going to bond. :D

TUBA:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1347
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niemand

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2019, 11:17:16 AM »

We are where we are.

If people are upset with all this dragging out of v4 they should love the more recent commits to the Linux kernel allowing use of the 0.0.0.0/8 range. 127.0.0.0/8 bar some exceptions coming soon, nearly all of 240.0.0.0/4 and most of 224.0.0.0/4 on the way.

EDIT: Just FYI in case I'm giving an incorrect impression I pay AAISP for an L2TP service to provide dual-stack functionality to my home network. Around 35% of traffic at home is IPv6. I would be delighted to not have to do this anymore however we're not in a shameful place in the UK. Mid-table obscurity.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2019, 11:21:10 AM by CarlT »
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aesmith

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Re: UK ISPs shameful lack of IPv6
« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2019, 01:44:07 PM »

To be honest I sometimes wonder if IPv6 will ever make it.  How long has it been coming?  Certainly before RFC1918 made private address space and NAT more acceptable.  And back then it was claimed IPv6 was the only way to get QoS over IP.   Given that it's been "just around the corner" for decades now it's not really surprising that ISPs aren't rushing to invest in a technology that their customers aren't asking for.

Referring to comments about IPv4 space being freed up, Amazon's recent acquisition of a /8 and a /10 suggests that they don't see an end to IPv4 any time soon.   Which reminds me, one of the early mistakes was making these assignments permanent.  Really any address space not announced on the Internet should have been reclaimed.  At my last place we had a PI /24 from the days when the University of London was handling them out.  There was never any pressure to justify our use, even though it was never routed on the Internet.
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