Live trial

[#1]

Well that topic subject will have got a few people excited
Joanne wrote:

Quote from: Joanne

...we do plan on starting a live service trial soon, where we'll open it up to a lot more people.

Don't worry, I'm not asking when - I know you'll be ready when you're ready and there's a lot of work involved.
Do you know if this is planned to be using trialist's own accounts ? Having to use a different account has been one of the issues I've faced with the trial as switching account interrupts other things (mail, access to work, etc).

[#2]

Hi SimonHobson,
No, you won't have to switch accounts, as we'll be adding IPv6 capability to your current account. That's one of the reasons why there is only a limited number of spaces on this trial.
Jojo

[#3]

[#4]

if possible i would be up for the trial now I am on 21cn and a very stable connection

[#5]

Hi Joanne. Is this likely to weeks, months, Q4? I'm thinking of installing a reverse proxy but hopefully ipv6 would mean I wouldn't have to.

[#6]

Quote from: millsdon

I'm thinking of installing a reverse proxy but hopefully ipv6 would mean I wouldn't have to.

PN will allocate blocks of IPv4 addresses on some accounts. See http://www.plus.net/support/service/policies/IP_block_allocation.shtml
Leaves me with a question as to whether PN's IPv6 allocation to customers will be static as standard?

[#7]

I'm on FTTC extra so it's no go with the block of IPv4. Interesting question with regards to dynamic or static assignment. I'd certainly want to go static with no NAT etc
I can't imagine how you would secure a LAN etc if you were getting dynamically assigned public IPv6 addresses (from the ISP) to each client on your network.
From what I can gather, the ISP offers you an IPv6 address which identifies your site or network. From there your router can assign IP addresses within the subnets that you are allowed. or you can use static ip's within that range.
I can only think that if your routers IPv6 address changed (due to it being dynamic) , the router would also have to adjust its DHCP server to lease out a completely different range of IP's unless you were using NAT and private IP's which kind of defeats one of the advantages of IPv6.
I'm not 100% sure as I'm just starting to look into this now to get one step ahead before it truly hits. I'm sure somebody could put us right on here.

[#8]

The way Plusnet are handling it is that they will assign you a /56 range. That means you can have up to 256 /64 networks. They issue the /56 to you via DHCP, and from my experiments that issuing of address block by DHCP triggers the routing setup on their side - if you don't use DHCP to get your block, then you don't get any routing, so you can't statically configure your end (I've tried).
In the trial, the address blocks were static, and I can't see any reason that can't be the case for live operations. Though I'm sure some other ISPs will find a justification why a fixed assignment should cost more, just the same as IPv4 static addresses do

[#9]

In a world where people had a single PC with a USB modem (or in the days of dial-in) I could see the rationale for dynamic IP addresses to conserve the use. However these days where such a high proportion of ADSL customers have their router on 24/365 there can hardly be any address conservation to be had.
Looking at PN's graph of collated users on-line the daily rise and fall appears to be <5%. A few years ago it was 2:1
So, I'm not sure the reasoning behind charging a setup fee on some accounts for a fixed address. (Other ISP's actually increase the monthly charge). I can see there is admin for a block as that is less usual. Since everyone needs an address to receive the service why can't they all be fixed?  IP addresses are not supposed to be a chargeable resource.

[#10]

Quote from: SimonHobson

The way Plusnet are handling it is that they will assign you a /56 range. That means you can have up to 256 /64 networks. They issue the /56 to you via DHCP, and from my experiments that issuing of address block by DHCP triggers the routing setup on their side - if you don't use DHCP to get your block, then you don't get any routing, so you can't statically configure your end (I've tried). In the trial, the address blocks were static, and I can't see any reason that can't be the case for live operations. Though I'm sure some other ISPs will find a justification why a fixed assignment should cost more, just the same as IPv4 static addresses do

That could be interesting with regards to mail servers as the majority of spam filters can filter out dynamic IP ranges and therefore will discard mail coming from that address.

[#11]

Quote from: MrToast

So, I'm not sure the reasoning behind charging a setup fee on some accounts for a fixed address. (Other ISP's actually increase the monthly charge).

Indeed, there is no reason other than the bean counters see it as another way of charging more while keeping the headline price low - important since most ISPs seem engaged in a fight to be first to the bottom of the pond amongst the slime. At work we have some customers with BT who charge an extra £5/month for a fixed address

Quote from: millsdon

That could be interesting with regards to mail servers as the majority of spam filters can filter out dynamic IP ranges and therefore will discard mail coming from that address.

It is indeed an issue - but it's not a case of them filtering dynamic ranges, just ranges belonging to the wrong sort of ISP. AOL for example default to rejecting mail from "residential" ISPs and that caused me problems for a long time as I was in a group run by someone with an AOL address.
Off topic for here, but I'm inclined to agree with those who think SMTP has had it's day, and no amount of sticking plasters (many of which, such as SPF, actually break stuff) will fix it's fundamental flaws - there are other proposals, but they face a bigger adoption hurdle than IPv6 !

[#12]

And if they do assign it via DHCP, how do you map your servers to A, CNAME & MX records? Surely, it's got to be static with no chance of changing or otherwise some form of dynamic DNS is going to have to be used for any server to work.

[#13]

I would hope that assignments will be static, even though they are 'handed out' with DHCP. That would be much the same as IPv4 works now - even though I have a static assignment, my end of the PPP link is still configured via PPP.
Once allocated, there's no reason they should change unless Plusnet itself find it's allocation being changed. Given the pain renumbering an ISP would cause, I would think it would be rare, if it ever happens at all with IPv6. I have seen it happen with IPv4 (usually after some merger/consolidation), but then IPv4 is somewhat different ...
EDIT: Certainly on the initial trial, I was just using DHCP to 'activate' Plusnet's end, but configuring my own stuff statically.