Comcast Carrying 1Tbit/s of IPv6 Internet Traffic

New submitter Tim the Gecko (745081) writes Comcast has announced 1Tb/s of Internet facing, native IPv6 traffic, with more than 30% deployment to customers. With Facebook, Google/YouTube, and Wikipedia up to speed, it looks we are past the "chicken and egg" stage. IPv6 adoption by other carriers is looking better too with AT&T at 20% of their network IPv6 enabled, Time Warner at 10%, and Verizon Wireless at 50%. The World IPv6 Launch site has measurements of global IPv6 adoption.

Advantages?

[ArchieBunker]

So any advantages to running an IPv6 tunnel other than so say you use IPv6?

Their implementation sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their implementation of DHCPv6-PD blows. It's incompatible with openWRT, Netgear, pfSense router firmware. You'll get your prefix, but it will get either dropped or changed within several hours. Then this premature change of the lease will fall out of sync with radvd on the routers then you will completely lose IPV6 connectivity. With all the IPV6 address space available, why not give out a static IPV6 prefix, but no, they want to change it frequently. This is completely contrary to their IPV4 DHCP servers which will basically give you the same IP address forever until you change the MAC address on the router.

So screw Comcast's IPV6. I'll stick with my hurricane electric tunnel and it's static IPV6 prefix until my router breaks. Maybe be then Comcast's implementation will actually work with most of the routers on the market that support IPV6.

Re:Advantages?

[Rising Ape]

The problem with that is how many home users know how to configure the firewall? There are legitimate reasons to have incoming connections. Unless you want to reinvent uPnP for v6, but that would be needlessly complex and probably have security flaws of its own.

Frankly there's no excuse for any modern software to be vulnerable even if connected directly to the internet with no firewall. This isn't 2003 any more, and in any case it's commonplace for computers to be connected to all sorts of untrusted networks such as public wifi. So anything that assumes "a firewall will take care of it" is utterly irresponsible.

Re:Saying something good about ComCast hurts my br

[jslaff]

Hurts my brain, too, but... I really have to admit that in the past 25 years with Comcast, first just for TV, then internet, then phone, I've had pretty much zero complaints. In fact, I get discounts off my bill for asking (minimal, yes, but $10 a month off $180), upgraded boxes for free for the asking (true, just one of their old SD DTAs to an HD DTA), and actually got a few hundred bucks for signing up my VERIZON cell phone through Comcast. In fact, the one company that I will never go back to for anything major is Verizon. I was one of the original DSL customers where I live in Montgomery County, Md., and saw my speed grow as the years went by. I had Verizon DSL for about 10 years when, all of a sudden, it stopped working. Cold. Swapped out DSL modems, swapped out my old router for a new one, different PCs, nothing. I KNEW it was their equipment. I called, and they said they would send someone out...in 2 weeks. (And of course, that would do no good, since it was on their end. We also had a Verizon land line, which worked perfectly.) I said I had been a Verizon customer in some manner all the way back to Bell Atlantic and Nynex days--2 weeks. I had a Comcast coax line in my office for a TV that I wasn't using anymore. Went to Best Buy, got a Motorola cable modem, called Comcast to register it, and in 10 minutes I was up and running. No problems at all. For less money than Verizon DSL. When I called Verizon to cancel everything, they said that had I said the magic word--Retention--they could have fixed it the next day. In a word, aaargh.

Re:Their implementation sucks.

[WaffleMonster]

Their implementation of DHCPv6-PD blows. It's incompatible with openWRT, Netgear, pfSense router firmware.

There seems to be problems with Comcast IPv6 that I can see.

Lease query is fucked up/does not work at all so if your cable modem reboots while the lease is still valid the CMTS has forgotten all about it and won't let any traffic pass until you transmit a renewal request for your PD. It seems some consumer router gear uses Ethernet/media detection to notice the link has bounced and refresh the lease...otherwise your basically SOL and have to manually do it.

I don't think it is fair to blame Comcast for a systems shitty/buggy support for DHCPv6 prefix delegation. Comcast is not doing anything magical or non-standard. Vanilla ISC DHCPv6 client has worked flawless for me.

Incidentally have maintained same IPv6 prefix for over a year now since they turned up v6.

Then this premature change of the lease will fall out of sync

To be fair if the client is fucked up and not properly renewing lease sometime before it expires I don't see how that's Comcast's fault. If you don't ask for renewal you won't get one.

With all the IPV6 address space available, why not give out a static IPV6 prefix, but no, they want to change it frequently.

Exactly they should hand out addresses or at least make them very sticky so that anything short of some kind of reorganization/renumbering does not result in a new prefix. It really sucks even if radvd is sync'd there are still implementation problems with the zero lifetime pulling and hosts if using SLAAC locally.

This is completely contrary to their IPV4 DHCP servers which will basically give you the same IP address forever until you change the MAC address on the router.

If you allow your IPv4 lease to expire good luck getting the same address back. At least on the two occasions I've had my system down long enough for it to happen and was greeted with a new address. It may very well be certain areas are configured differently and so mileages vary.

So screw Comcast's IPV6. I'll stick with my hurricane electric tunnel and it's static IPV6 prefix until my router breaks.

The HE tunnels were awesome. I was sad when I shut mine down.