US Telco Support > AT&T > AT&T U-verse > When will AT&T U-verse have native IPv6 support?

When will AT&T U-verse have native IPv6 support?

according to the FAQ

quote:

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We will soon make your leased U-verse Residential Gateway compatible with IPv6 by updating its firmware*:

This update is currently expected to occur in the mid- to late- 2012 timeframe.
It will be automatic and transparent, requiring no action.
Please do not call our Customer Care center requesting to have your firmware updated sooner, as this will not be possible. We also cannot provide an exact date of when your Residential Gateway will be updated.
The following gateways will receive an automatic firmware update to become IPv6 capable in the mid- to late-2012 timeframe. If you have one of these models, you do not need to take any action for your gateway to become IPv6-capable:

2Wire/Pace 3600
2Wire/Pace 3800
2Wire/Pace 3801
2Wire/Pace i38HG (iNID)
The following gateway already supports IPv6. If you have this model, you do not need to take any further steps for your gateway to become IPv6-capable:

Motorola NVG510

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I'm not using 2Wire PoS at all (it's too buggy, slow, power-consumptive, with too many firmware updates, and too frequent auto-reboots), currently have ZyXEL NBG4615 connected to the ONT directly, but plan on switching it soon.

Any ideas on what technologies would AT&T be employing, and whether they'll be creating any special obstacles to trouble-free use the way it meant to be?

FAQ says dual stack...

Dual stack is not a technology; it's merely a technique (a somewhat unavoidable technique, even).

Your reference to the existence of a FAQ prompted me to go to AT&T's corporate web-site, including »att.com/ipv6, and whereas I was somewhat surprised they actually talk openly about "IPv6" indeed, several minutes of circular links and pointless FAQs (with overly vague and even more so obvious answers) hardly answered a single question I've had in mind, merely wasting my time, as per usual. :-/

reply to ConstantineM
If you have an "ONT"... you're either talking about an iNID or you have the horror of an AT&T FTTH setup. For the former, it'll happen whenever it happens. For the latter, well, I'd put my money on a meteor impact before an IPv6 rollout.

I really don't understand what's taking ISPs so G** d*** long to light-up IPv6 connectivity. It's like they have one *really* fat, clueless hamster doing all the work.

reply to ConstantineM
One other thing you should be aware of: "Ipv6 capable" does not automatically mean IPv6 is deployed. There is a pretty good chance that when they update the software "late 2012" (knowing AT&T it will probably not be "mid 2012"), that they won't actually deploy it yet.

Cable DOCSIS 3.0 is also already fully IPv6 capable, but there is no major IPv6 deployment as of yet.

My guess is that major providers won't really get serious about IPv6 till about 2014/2015 or so.
--
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

reply to cramer
cramer, kindly please don't go around contemplating what never-yet-heard-of individuals might possibly mean by ONT one day — there has to be at least some unambiguous terms by which I could refer to my FTTU connection and distinguish it from FTTN. ONT is always Fibre To The User / Premises / Home if placed on user's premises with the Ethernet plug. There is no "either-or", period. AT&T has already stole the phrase "fibre network" to mean low-capped-sync-VDSL2-FTTN, we don't need more terms stolen from their intended meanings. ONT is ONT.

That said, knowing that you're otherwise not a rookie, why in your opinion is IPv6 not coming to FTTH at all? Per my understanding, the ONT I have is merely a Layer 2 equipment, so it's not like the ONTs themselves have to either be updated or replaced for IPv6, is it?

I've seen too many people call an iNID an "ONT" -- if it doesn't have a fiber running into it, it's not an ONT; just because it's delivered as an ethernet cable does not make it an ONT. FTTP is rare in the U-Verse world, so I'm just being clear...

FTTH Uverse is the "redheaded stepchild" of the UVerse world. AT&T tends to "deploy and run", so when they may light IPv6 for these few people is very likely to be the very last thing on the roadmap. And yes, the ONT should be an almost completely transparent bridge, however the other IP aware parts of the network may not like IPv6 (or any non-IPv4 type) traffic. (the same is true of cablemodem systems as well... the modem pretty much doesn't care what protocol is handed to it.)

(The small deployed footprint is why FTTH is still capped at insanely limited speeds.)

Even with how rare FTTU with AT&T is, I think FTTU is still much more common than the number of misinformed individuals referring to non-ONTs as ONTs. So, I would appreciate no "either-or", please. (Besides, I'm surprised you've missed all my other threads about my FTTP; I really don't know why we're even having this conversation here.)

Back on the topic: I may, of course, be overly optimistic, but I think that the supposed GPON deployment would make AT&T upgrade all the intermediate equipment to IPv6, including the BPON feeds... But then, it seems very unlikely that GPON from AT&T would come anytime this year at all... Still would be interested in knowing any details!

I'm sure all the infrastructure gear already is IPv6 capable -- and likely has been for years. The hang-up is getting that to the end user. They won't be worried about the fiber guys, because there just aren't enough of them to be a "cost effective" use of engineering. They have a great deal more work to do to get IPv6 out to all the VDSL gear -- that's a lot of different hardware to Get Right(tm). (and they've not been all that good with good old fashioned IPv4 firmwares. I don't want to think about how buggy the IPv6 firmware is going to be.)

Just as good a question is when they're going to start talking about IPv6 for the old PPPoE/ADSL customers -- we're the real redheads. That's an even larger (and much older) set of hardware to (not) update. I don't know that *any* of the current dsl modems can even be updated to support IPv6. (the "business" router(s), maybe.)

They can take their sweet time on those 2Wire firmware upgrades if you ask me. Mine has actually been behaving lately. The last thing I need is AT&T screwing with it.

Now, if they wanted to offer an actual business class router with IPv6 support for business customers then sign me up.

reply to ConstantineM
I would really like to know if any of the RGs will be able to operate in bridging mode. I've managed to cobble together a transparent filtering bridge on an OpenBSD Soekris as my actual router, fooling the RG as much as possible, but it's a royal pain. It would be very nice if AT&T finally gives us with home networks a usable service to go along with IPv6. Also, I hate to think what these RGs will do when they try to firewall and NAT my v6 traffic.

reply to ConstantineM
I just had a Motorola NVG510 installed at work yesterday when we upgraded from plain DSL. I was pretty surprised to see it had an IPv6 address assigned and was in fact handing v6 addresses out to the LAN.

As we have 2 networks, semi-public and private, and a /28 block of static v4 IPs with our own router managing everything, the single /64 the NVG was handing out was just not adequate. After poking a bit at the web interface of the NVG I realized it was not going to be of any help. After a bit more poking I realized AT&T is actually using 6RD and not dual stack! Hmmmmmm.... A quick kernel upgrade and the firewall now knows 6RD. Fortunately the NVG provides the tunnel endpoint v4 address and, with a bit of manual bitmasking, the v6 prefix. Now, the question is, will the 6RD endpoint accept my static IPs or is it locked to the address of the NVG? Only one way to find out! Punch everything in and... success! My firewall now has 4 bits worth of address space to hand out per static IP! (aka a /60 aka 16 /64's) This got me thinking - since all 32 bits of the v4 address are used in the 6RD prefix, can I punch in any old v4 address and use that 6RD endpoint? Sure enough, it seems that endpoint is open to anyone. Please, no one tell AT&T It very well may be possible for people with "unsupported" modems to get v6 addresses if you have a firewall that knows about 6RD and either have static IPs or have the modem in PPP passthrough mode...

So yeah, the prefix they're using is 2602:300::/28, but a whois on that block shows that they have all of 2602:300::/24 set aside for 6RD ("NetName ATT-6RD").

/M

I had IPDSL installed a few months ago when it was first available here. They told me I could only get 6Mbit/s on a static IP package. After they installed it I called again to check on it and they kept telling me that. I asked for L2 support and they quickly bumped the speed to 18mbit/s and gave me a /28 of IPv4 addys. While I was poking around in the NVG it said unavailable on IPv6.

Now it shows IPv6 is available and had addresses populated. I'm super excited but I have to do a lot of research on v6 before I can play too much. I'm trying to achieve this topology:
... I want the NVG to sit as a bridge (which is proving tricky) and for the pfSense to handle everything.

How many actual IPv6 addresses are we getting? Mine says /64. A v6 CIDR table says 18446744073709551616 addresses. Are they really handing out that many? I knew IPv6 has MANY more addresses than v4 but jeez.

They're giving you a /64 prefix because that's a small as a LAN segment can be for everything (read: address autoconfig) to work.

reply to afd168

reply to mackey

any guesstimates on whether one has 6rd?

Because it's a /28, the colons don't line up nice.

Say you're IP is 100.150.200.250. `printf` gives 6496:c8fa, so move the colon one place to the right and add another: 6:496c:8fa. Make sure the last part stays left-justified by padding with a 0: 6:496c:8fa0. Now, remove the last 0 off the prefix "2602:300::" and paste it all together: 2602:306:496c:8fa0:: You can now assign 2602:306:496c:8fa0::1/60 to the 6RD interface (heck, even assigning that to a 6to4 might work...) and it should work.

/M