There have been a lot of dramatic headlines lately discussing the allocation of the last batch of IPv4 addresses. Some say the internet has run out of IP addresses, and the pool of available IP addresses has officially run dry while others more dramatically state: Uh oh... the Internets are full.
No need to panic - the situation is not so dramatic. The last IPv4 ranges have been allocated but we've got hundreds of thousands already available in our pool so we won’t be running out any time soon.
The IPv4 news reports have triggered fresh interest in the ongoing upgrade of the internet to support IPv6 though, including a few questions from our members, so here's an update about what we're doing...
IPv6 is a major change in the way the internet is connected worldwide so it needs us to make changes in our network, websites to make changes in the way they are hosted and more. There are some fantastic guides out there (like these from ThinkBroadband and Mashable) so have a read if you want to know more.
Work is underway in our network to enable IPv6 and we’re currently planning internal tests to understand the impact on our network and customers. After that testing is complete later this year we'll be able to finalise our rollout plans and share them with you.
So - not a huge amount of detail to share right now, but as you asked we wanted to let you know. It's a bit like watching the in-flight display on a long haul flight - not very interesting to watch every minute but we'll make an announcement when we pass something interesting. Now, what films are there to watch...
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31 comments:
One thing which you don't mention is that customers cannot access any of the growing number of IPv6 only sites out there though? Based on this, they cannot access "the Internet", only a subsection of it.
Yes, it's not as acute as some apocalyptic headlines would have us believe but...
The fact that you can offer IPv4 connectivity to new customers for a few more months doesn't really address all the issues your customers might face.
Sooner rather than later a geographical region will run out of IPv4 addresses, forcing new sites in that region onto IPv6 and some sort of tunneling arrangement.
Your customers may then see a difference if they can use a Be tunnel onto the IPv6 backbone rather than rely on IPv4 all the way to the regional IPv6 oasis, the performance of which is out of your control.
In the interests of managing your customers' expectations of service quality you could say a bit more about how you are working to guarantee that in a world where some people are already on IPv6 and more and more people will be forced to be IPv6 natives as time goes on.
Good to know you guys are working on this. Hope the switchover testing goes well!
Will the switchover require a router software upgrade?
Thanks :)
As others have said once servers are forced to run on IPv6 only which let's face it could be quite soon then BE customers will not be able reach them!
IPv6 should have been rolled out years ago, what's the hold up? Other ISPs have had IPv6 rolled out for over 8 years now.
Oh!!
Be to offer the most 'complete' broadband with ipv6 offerings.
Some of us already have ipv6 with tunnelling to he.net servers, if Be could setup a tunnelling server with Be addresses that would give more interest.
I second the request for comment about IPv6 only services and sites. Of which some (albeit minor sites) are appearing. This will only get worse in the coming months.
please could someone give an example of a IPv6 only site or service ?
saying new sites will have to go v6 'quite soon' is a bit of an exaggeration. as you can have several (infinite?) domain names served by a single public IP (v4) and NAT at the user end means we're not going to be out of addresses in real terms for a long time.
ISP's and hosting providers will need to do some reengineering to use their allocation a bit more efficiently but that will cause less disruption (and cost less) than the IPv6 switch, so it'll happen first.
If more companies had taken to working on IPv6 before we reached this stage of IPv4 allocation, this would've been a complete non-issue and the swap-over could've been almost completely seamless. But again, the mentality of "oh it doesn't matter now, we've got ages" prevails.
Be - It's good that you are at least working on this, but your response is a bit weak.
It's not like this has crept up on anyone, its been known about for a while so I'd expect your planning and rollout to be in an advanced stage, when do you expect IPv6 to be working for customers? Can you give an estimated date? "We're working on it" just doesn't cut it.
alxknt - You'd struggle to find networking hardware that could handle an infinite number of connections unfortunately. Also SSL (which most sites should be using, see http://codebutler.github.com/firesheep/) requires a dedicated IP address per domain name (SNI isn't quite widely supported enough yet, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication)
"please could someone give an example of a IPv6 only site or service?", Nope, but I'd expect to be able to within 6 months.
I think one big point that is being missed is the fact that NAT is really a bad hack to fix this address shortage problem.
Although it works, it isn't ideal.
For example you (obviously) can't forward a single port number to multiple hosts, I know most of the time the applications in question are able to change their port number, but in those few cases that you can't change the port number you are screwed unless you have multiple IP addresses.
IPv6 solves this problem!
We've all known about this for a decade and a half. Networks and content providers chose the cheap head-in-sand approach.
My guess is that their infrastructure can't do it. Particularly their braindead traffic engineering wouldn't work at all well.
And the bebox is hardly v6 capable (like 95 percent of CPE)
Don't expect movement until movement means profit, or mitigation of loss. And that wont happen til crunch time.
Adam.
(Deployed v6 at a number of UK ISPs. :D )
If BE still has enough of IPv4 addresses that doesn't mean you can't roll over to IPv6.
I have started using some v6 features like 6to4, 6in4 etc. back in 2001. That is almost 10 years!
Even IPv6 protocol were released in 1997 (14 years ago >:) ), ISPs supposed to follow some reglamentations or whatever it is, to provide up to date services.. but not every of them were following nor were interested? ... puzzled
Anyway, sometimes it depends on people who works for the company and gets lazy to follow new technologies on time and so on. Keeping the company down, when it should go up. The requirement to improve services should be the first thing for any company...
Regards,
Giedrius Tuminauskas
It's shocking when in France it's all ready many years that our ISP have IPV6 they also offer boxes with blueray player,media Center all tv channels in HD via phone line, illimited call local and international and now unillimited mobile call too ! Catch up tv and NAS box with 250go Hard drive.... All this for £30 !
Look at free.fr
The freebox revolution
What are the UK provider waiting for ????
the BeBox would only need a small kernel and tools update to do it though. It's linux based so it's a matter of just including support in firmware build.
I agree that the problem is going to be IPv6 sites only, who knows who will come up with the next big new site on the internet and where? APNIC will probably run out first so anyone contacting the next big new Asian site from the UK could very soon have problems. There are actually IPv6 only sites already but they tend to be providing things like IPv6 to IPv4 proxy services and such so no point in giving an IPv4 address to the webpage.
ewanm89: "APNIC will probably run out first"
APNIC claim they have at minimum 5 years remaining!
"It is expected that these allocations will continue for at least another five years."
http://www.apnic.net/publications/news/2011/delegation
I asked about IPv6 a few days ago on the Be Facebook wall, good to see this response. I actually phoned technical support back in 2009 and was told you had no definite plans to offer IPv6 so I guess this is progress of sorts. Some UK ISPs have been offering native IPv6 for years and I would switch to one of them were it not for your excellent overall service and value. It may not happen for a while but IPv6 is coming and surely it is better to switch sooner rather than later. For example, are the routers you are shipping to new customers IPv6 capable? If not they should be.
Could Be address some of the concerns raised in the comments please?
I can't access http://video6.ustc.edu.cn/ via Be broadband.
As such Be's so-called "Internet Service" products don't offer connectivity with the Internet, only part of the Internet, viz. those parts of the Internet which use IPv4.
Trade Descriptions Act 1968 anyone?
I am decidedly unimpressed with these "rubbing hands with glee" comments like "we've got hundreds of thousands already available in our pool so we won’t be running out any time soon".
You can have as many IPv4 addresses in your pool as you like, but this doesn't help you connect with IPv6 hosts.
Instead of the vague and woolly platitudes (i.e. fob-offs) we are seeing at the minute, it would be nice to see more definite timelines, and explanations of what sort of things Be is thinking of doing.
Sad to see that BE's response to IPv6 is exactly the same as it's response to FTTC, ie "We'll do it at some unspecified point in the future". Not entirely surprised to see no response to the comments either. BE made it's name by offering fast, genuinely unlimited connections alongside top class customer care. The only thing that hasn't changed is the fast (for some) and unlimited connections. In technology terms BE is being left behind.
In case anyone at Be is considering NAT as a viable option: the day I get a NATed connection is the day I switch ISPs.
Perhaps you'd catch some gullible new subscribers with the switch, but if there's one like me I suspect there will be others.
That takes into account the "we have loads of IPs remaining" and from my calculations BE have 3 or 4 years of IP addresses remaining.
I doubt NAT will happen ever.
@Buffer
"with Hurricane tunnels, which increases latency and reduces throughput"
Incorrect:
Ping statistics for 2001:470:1f08:89a::2:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 11ms
Ping statistics for 78.129.174.185:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 11ms
While downloading Win7 SP1 from my server to another server in the same DC, VIA a HE.net tunnel on each server I got full ethernet speed (ie, maxed out my servers connection).
Just dispelling a myth.
Tunnelling definitionally reduces throughput because of added protocol overhead to encapsulate one protocol inside of another. You may have been able to exercise the connection at line speed, but even in that scenario you would get less data through a data than with native protocol access.
As for latency, I'm not sure what this random data is supposed to prove. If you have to transit another network, that's going to add latency, unless perhaps what you are trying to access would transit that network anyway or happens to have a path that more or less the same.
The latency issue is more probabilistic than is the tunnelling overhead and its impact on data throughput.
I stay with BE in spite of the premium price point because I thought that this was an ISP geared to the more technical user. I don't _need_ anything like the speed I get from BE, I just want it. Better tech is my "compelling reason to buy".
And regardless of the _need_ for ipv6, I want that too. The _desire_ to get ahead of that curve weighs on users more than the _need_ to does on infrastructure providers.
I want to ipv6-enable my business, but similarly to BE it is not a priority...it is something that comes to mind at home on a weekend. It would help _me_ to implement _my_ ipv6 rollout if my home ISP could handle ipv6. Sure, I can get around it, but that is not my expectation from an ISP like BE:
Essentially, I pay my money with 2 expectations. First is that support staff will understand what I'm talking about and not panic at the first mention of Linux. Second is that other users will be more technical (else why are they paying over the odds?) and not swamp the ISP resources with "my email doesn't work" kind of problems.
If BE does not keep ahead technically then it will end up like all the rest. This kind of "don't panic, the internet is not full" statement is a vivid indication that BE's priority is to placate ignorant users rather than solve technical problems.
I expect BE to understand why we all want ipv6...which is basically because we're techies and we just do. I'm thinking I might as well move to an ipv6-capable ISP before things go properly to the dogs here.
Disappointed by the weak statement and slow progress on this.
"please could someone give an example of a IPv6 only site or service ?"
Here's one:
http://loopsofzen.co.uk/
IPv6 for me, too, please. Will Daniels is right (above): I don't _need_ IPv6, I just want to play with it. BeThere is the pro ISP, so I'd like the pro toys please :)
I'd love to see Be on this list:
http://www.sixxs.net/faq/connectivity/?faq=native&country=gb
I've already converted all my servers to use IPv6 - I'd like to be able to access these IPs without tunneling to an IPv6 provider or via IPv4 NAT/proxies.
You should have done this years ago - and this post just sounds like a cop-out. Where has the ISP ability to stay on the bleeding edge gone? Sorry - I don't think many who have posted here are buying your statement as acceptable - nice try though.
wow, still lagging behind (5 months later). Like most big companies in the UK you guys couldn't care less about new (lol) technology. I have set up ipv6 on my servers. Why can't you? you are a capable(?) company.
I've been trying to get my employer to set up on IPv6 for years. Our outsourced infrastructure vendor is not set up for it, so I'm looking to cloud providors instead... If BE don't get a move on, then the next questions so be "who can offer a comparable service with IPv6" then move. BE have had years to do it... They were good with ADSL2. Maybe the change in ownership has put the bean counters in charge?
Just "get on with it"
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