Withdrawl of IPv6 Technical Trial

[#1]

It is with unfortunate regret that the Technical Trial of IPv6 has been withdrawn from service.
Over the course of the last few months, we have been performing upgrade work to our core infrastructure, which has involved us building a new core infrastructure. This has been done to facilitate our network expansion needs, but also to support future services, which does in-fact include IPv6 at its heart.
As with any such work, we have not taken the steps to include the technical trials. Unlike previous trials of services, this is the first time that any such work has resulted in a trial being withdrawn.
Our intent is to move to full service trials in the near future, though we do not have a date for this as of yet.
This trial forum will remain in place for the service trials, as it will form an integral part of initial support, much the same as it has been for the technical trial.
What does this mean for my current trial connection
General IPv4 connectivity will remain active on the trial logins and as such, you can continue to use these in the short term. We do however intend to withdraw these, so it is important that you return to your normal broadband login credentials at some point.
We will do our best to work with you and avoid action that results in no service.
Will I notice any problems due to this
Trialists will note that you continue to receive your IPv6 prefix when authentication, however there is no external IPv6 routing.
Due to this, symptoms will be as followins
IPv6 only sites: You will be unable to access these sites using the trial.
IPv4 only sites: These sites will work as normal without degradation.
Dual IPv6 & IPv4 hosted sites: You may notice delays when initially connecting to such sites, whilst an attempted IPv6 connection times out. The attempt should then revert to the IPv4 address of the system host. This note: this action may depend on your setup and software in use.
You can resolve this type of problem by returning to your normal login credentials, which will use IPv4 only connections.

[#2]

Do you want to be informed when the trial login is no longer being used?
PeteB

[#3]

Thanks for keeping us informed Phil.
Back on normal login (have been for a while except for brief testing).
Looking forward to the future 'live testing' in due course.

[#4]

Hi PeteB,
No, that is fine. When we work to look at withdrawing them, we will verify who has returned to normal and who if anybody we need to contact.
Saves me a few mins too

[#5]

Sorry to poke my nose in here but is this likely to mean that there won't be any live trial soon? I know the above says "near future & no date" but is this likely to mean this year?

[#6]

Hi Millsdon,
Service trials are absolutely planned for this year, we have near certainty (we obviously don't know the future, so holding back a tiny bit there) that it will be in 2012.
We should know more over the course of the next month on how we will be shaping that, so will share that detail as we know it.

[#7]

I'm worried that there's a cat going hungry!

[#8]

Fear not; it is dual stacked... 

[#9]

I assumed it would be a tunnel!

[#10]

Ah, well, yes the offsite connectivity is via a tunnel but the feeder itself is dual stacked but you're right.
Edit: Oops - didn't spot your image so missed that joke entirely!    
Out of interest, is anyone else moving back/on to using a tunnel or just waiting for an eventual rollout?
Mathew

[#11]

MJN, I decided to experiment a bit so I got a /48 from Bytemark (my VPS host) and decided to see if I could tunnel my own /64 through said VPS.
Needless to say it was a Great Success!

fxp0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=4219b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWTSO>
        ether 00:02:b3:eb:24:48
        inet6 2001:xxx:128:beef::1 prefixlen 64
        inet6 fe80::202:b3ff:feeb:2448%fxp0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x7
        inet 10.0.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
        inet 84.92.17.xxx netmask 0xffffffff broadcast 84.92.17.xxx
        inet 84.92.17.xxx netmask 0xffffffff broadcast 84.92.17.xxx
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
        status: active
gif0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1280
        tunnel inet 84.92.17.xxx --> 212.110.185.xxx
        inet6 fe80::225:22ff:fe34:9330%gif0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xa
        inet6 2001:xxx:128:bee::2 --> 2001:xxx:128:bee::1 prefixlen 128
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
        options=1<ACCEPT_REV_ETHIP_VER>

[#12]

I must say apart from some initial work playing around with my IPv6-capable router and verifying it all worked I didn't spend as much time participating in this trial as I would have liked.  Mostly due to commitments on my 'real' login.
Very much looking forward to live IPv6 trials starting on our standard logins!
In the meantime, I continue to use my IPv6 tunnels..

[#13]

Bit of a late reply, I've been doing some Real Life. 
I think this is good news. Of course it would be nice if the trials could have morphed directly into live service. But having IPv6 baked-in to the core systems has to make for a better design, so it is worth a bit of delay. I also can understand why it is best to stop the trial while the systems are changed. So my take is that this is good systems management.
In the meantime I can get my IPv6 fix using a trusty tunnel, so it is not a great hardship.
I'm also waiting for FTTC (my first ready-for-service date was in 2010, but that's a different topic). Perhaps I'll get both for Christmas. 
I look forward to the new trials in due course.
Regards,
Stephen

[#14]

Will the "service trial" begin before world IPv6 adoption reaches 1% (as measured by Google) I wonder?
http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html
... that way, plusnet could say that they're ahead of 99% of ISPs? 
Tim.

[#15]

It would be nice to be part of the 1% for once