IPv6 Trial Update

[#1]

I should add that I've got a /48 on the trial.
To those of us used to the scarcity of IPv4, this may seem wasteful, but RIPE guidelines say it's perfectly acceptable to give a /48 to each residential customer and other ISPs like Zen already do so.
Since high touch customers are those that previously required a static IP address, they're more likely to want more IPV6 address space too. Things like virtual machine managers increasingly want to delegate an entire /64 to each virtual machine. IoT gateway equipment similarly will often want their own /64.
I'd previously been using a /48 from Hurricane Electric so it was much easier to renumber to another /48 than have to juggle stuff around to fit into the /56.

[#2]

Interesting.

A /48 would have made the boundary/subnetting/PD/DNS a bit easier to arrange for sure and to have been a bit more future proof against some extreme subnetting cases.  But the /56 is certainly more than adequate for my needs.  Personal view that 256 x individual /64 subnets are likely 253-255 more than most people will need!

It's certainly been very nice to be able to separate out guest wifi, IOT wifi, trusted devices wifi, wired DMZ, IOT wired, servers wired, cctv, lodger, etc.  I'm well aware I'm not a typical use-case!  I haven't quite gone to /64 per service, but I did consider it.  My networking gear supports port isolation so that's what I have in place in parts of the setup.

I had a HE > Plus migration exercise, but I'd actually started from aaaa:bbbb:cccc:00xx for the subnets, so the migration was pretty pain-free.  I didn't end up using NPT though it was quite tempting to have the HE-over-5G as a fallback to the PlusNet FTTP.

[#3]

Whilst a /56 will get people going at the moment, I don't think there's any reason NOT to allocate everyone a /48 especially to power users.  There is no shortage of IPv6 addresses, there is plenty of space to allocate every person on the planet thousands of /48 each.
RIPE-690 (Plusnet get their IPv6 allocations from RIPE) says:

"You should not be concerned with exhausting the IPv6 addressing space, and you should think big when planning future requirements. If you need more space, you can go back to your RIR and, providing your addressing plan justifies it, you can obtain more IPv6 addresses."

"If you want a simple addressing plan use a /48 for each end-user. This will work very well for customers coming from other ISPs, those that have their own ULA, or have been using transition mechanisms. This will also be easier when you have a mix of customers using the same infrastructure, whether they are residential customers, SMEs or even large corporates"

It looks to me like power users will start to get irritated by a /56 soon enough, and since there is no reason not to allocate a /48 that just seems like the better choice...

Each recent Android phone will already request itself a /64 via RFC 9663

[#4]

@kaiex @wmh @smithg @Shackman205 @andrew1601 @camchalmers @ormondia @CarrieSweetpea @machare @James_w 

IPv6 should now be enabled. You might need to disconnect/reconnect or reboot your router to pick up the IPv6 address.

[#5]

Thank you - appear to be up and running ❤️ 

[#6]

Many thanks Dave,

Connection seems to be running perfectly.  Using a Mikrotik HAP AX3 router, simply enabled the DHCPv6 Client, stopped and started the PPPoE client and a IPv6 address pool was populated.  Allocated an address to the bridge and all clients have picked up an IPv6 address and seem able to access the internet successfully.  Test-IPv6 is scoring me 10/10 and the firewall rules seem to be working correctly.  Just need to configure addresses to my vlans, but that can wait until tomorrow!

[#7]

Many thanks @dave it is working fantastically. Just setup on my UniFi UCG Ultra, everything receiving IPv6 addresses and full connectivity.

[#8]

Thanks @dave, running an NanoPi R6S with FriendlyWRT and working perfectly! It refreshed automatically and is all connected

[#9]

@TimSmall My experience with IPv6 is quite limited as I'm just beginning to learn. I'm certainly not able to quote Ripe documents. However I'm struggling to comprehend why a residential user would need (or just want to have) more than 256 subnets. Would you care to educate me and explain how these could be useful. 

[#10]

Note to self: remember to allow dhcpv6 host traffic on the firewall interface, otherwise it might not work.  Thanks @dave , I can confirm that I have now picked up my IPv6 prefix.  

[#11]

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@IMM wrote:

@TimSmall My experience with IPv6 is quite limited as I'm just beginning to learn. I'm certainly not able to quote Ripe documents. However I'm struggling to comprehend why a residential user would need (or just want to have) more than 256 subnets. Would you care to educate me and explain how these could be useful. 

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The rationale for justifying larger prefix sizes in IPv6 is very rarely to do with absolute numbers and the risk of hitting limits. Instead, it is usually down to making use of the inherent structure of IPv6 addressing and benefiting from things like consistency from having a fixed prefix size for all customers (big or small, business or residential, if every customer gets the same /X prefix then logs, firewall rulesets, routing policies etc can be easier to maintain), never having to evaluate address current or even future address space requirements (if everyone gets a prefix way beyond what they can ever imagine using then it reduces the likelihood they will ever have to return for more, even for reasons we haven't yet thought of), etc.

The benefits of 'oversized' prefix sizes might not be must-haves, but they can be nice-to-haves, and besides which; why not? Whether it is a /56 or a /48 it shouldn't really matter. Premature exhaustion of an ISPs allocation should never be a risk if the right size allocation has been obtained in the first place, and a /48 per customer (or 'end site' in RIR terminology) is a perfectly acceptable approach in RIR address space allocation policies.

[#12]

I little update following IPv6 activation on Thursday night:

Everything I've done has worked without problem so far, with one exception (see below). Main network working ok, vlans enabled for IPv6 and working fine, server in DMZ vlan responding to IPv6 requests from the internet, wireguard VPN tunnel from my travel router working great
Then sat down to watch some TV on Sky Stream device last night, only to find it kept stopping and losing network connection. Investigations suggest these have a problem when IPv6 is enabled on a network, so no fault of Plusnet! What is weird is that to get were fine when I was using unique local IPv6 addresses on the internal network but now they have global unicast addresses and can access the internet via IPv6 they break. Fixed the situation last night by turning off IPv6, but moved them to their own IPv4 only vlan this morning and turned IPv6 back on elsewhere and everything is ok again.

Thought I'd let you know in case anyone else has Sky Stream (or I guess Sky TV).

[#13]

@dave I’m on the IPv6 trial and have my PlusNet plan renewal coming up soon. I’m keen not to lose IPv6. Will renewing my existing plan cause issues for my place on the trial? If I move to a higher speed plan on renewal will this cause any problems? Thank you, Stuart

[#14]

IP addresses (etc) are attached to the account not the connection.

There have been instances where IPv4 static IP addresses have become detached from accounts, but that is readily remedied.

[#15]

I struggled to understand @MJN 's explanation of the benefits of IPv6 but if it allows my fridge to talk to nextdoor's Vacuum cleaner then I suppose that's progress................