IPv6 with Sonic ONT

[richardjotter]

I actually cancelled my free trial because of the absence of native IPv6. (and the weird EERO router)
I'll probably come back once you have it running.

[dane]

I actually cancelled my free trial because of the absence of native IPv6. (and the weird EERO router)
I'll probably come back once you have it running.

Why? What would be the difference with IPv6?

[charles2]

I actually cancelled my free trial because of the absence of native IPv6. (and the weird EERO router) I'll probably come back once you have it running.

While you wait to come back to Sonic, you can research the router you want. Buy it, return the eero devices and amortize the price of your router from the end of the monthly eero rental fee. The process was quite smooth when I did it.

Aside: to return the eeros, Sonic emailed me a PDF of the label ready to go including the tracking number. I took my package to a UPS "access point," which turned out to be a nearby CVS store. UPS has provided the store a dedicated smart phone; the cashier just picks it up from the shelf under her terminal, scans your label, and you're done.

[remi.dufour]

I actually cancelled my free trial because of the absence of native IPv6. (and the weird EERO router)
I'll probably come back once you have it running.

There's other great things with Sonic (and fiber in general) like no caps and very low latencies. I assume you needed IPv6 for work?

[aanon4]

Somewhat depressingly I believe IPv6 has been coming soon since 2018 (if you read back in the forums). I understand; there's no financial value in offering this, only problems. Pity though.

[paulcoldren]

I actually cancelled my free trial because of the absence of native IPv6. (and the weird EERO router)
I'll probably come back once you have it running.

Why? What would be the difference with IPv6?

For me there are three main categories of reasons why I'm anxious to see Sonic support native IPv6.

First is practical / technical. There are use cases these days for which IPv6 is a requirement. More are popping up all the time. I work on networking software and infrastructure for a living. Modern software and modern infrastructure supports IPv6; I need to be able to test and develop in these environments. I'm the only member of my immediate team without an IPv6-capable ISP. I have to maintain IPv6 tunnels instead of getting it natively like everyone else.

There are also infrastructure solutions coming online which now charge extra for IPv4 addresses given their increasing scarcity / cost. For hobby projects, the fact that I don't have native IPv6 means I have to maintain a tunnel, or pay an extra monthly charge to rent an IPv4 address.

IPv6 also drastically simplifies the process of peer-to-peer communication. It's great for accessing resources without having to deal with NAT, port forwarding, hole punching, STUN, or other workarounds to traverse IPv4-specific roadblocks.

The cost of IPv4 addresses is continuing to rise. I can get my own IPv6 allocation for minimal administrative cost, but buying a /24 of IPv4 addresses currently costs about $14k on the open market. As long as eyeball networks like Sonic don't support IPv6, we're all stuck participating in this escalating / inflationary hellscape of artificial scarcity.

The second category is good net citizenship. For content providers to move to IPv6, eyeball networks (like Sonic) need to support it. For eyeball networks (like Sonic) to bother supporting it, there needs to be some compelling content that requires it. This chicken-and-egg problem means that we're all stuck with IPv4 until someone steps up to break the cycle. Other eyeball networks are stepping up, either via customer pressure, government mandate, or plain old good net citizenship.

We all want IPv6 to work; it just takes effort by infrastructure providers, even if there's no immediate payout, in order to get there. I'm a Sonic customer because I think Sonic is a good net citizen with regards to infrastructure, privacy, support, and business ethics. I know that Sonic spends extra time and attention vs. other ISPs in order to get this stuff right, and it shows. I feel the same way about IPv6 -- I'd love to support an ISP that is helping push the industry forward, and that includes proactively supporting next-gen features like IPv6 even when the immediate payback is not obvious.

The third and final category is peer benchmarking. Put simply -- "everyone else is doing it". Even if I can't make an argument that it's inherently good to support IPv6, the fact is that the majority of major content and eyeball networks now support it.

On the content side, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare, Fastly, Netflix, and Akamai all support and encourage IPv6 adoption.

On the ISP side, I support dozens of end user networks throughout the US, and Sonic is the only ISP I work with at this point that doesn't yet provide native IPv6. This includes a handful of residential and commercial ISPs. I support people on Comcast, Monkeybrains, Webpass, Charter, AT&T, Cogent, Lumen, and Verizon. Native IPv6 across the board! Except for Sonic.

I hope this helps! I know it feels like a low priority because there's no immediate financial incentive, but a lot of really exciting stuff is just around the corner which relies on getting as many networks as possible upgraded. When the time is right, I'm an eager beta tester who will be happy to help you roll it out smoothly.

Thanks!

[espier]

Author (and Sonic customer) Robin Sloan wrote an interesting essay that partially hits at why he's interested in IPv6. He paints a picture of an internet that is much closer to the original decentralized ideals than the very centralized and corporatized internet of today. Worth a read.

https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/bad-hosts/

The lack of IPv6 on my Sonic fiber service hasn't affected me in my work or ability to access other services, but I have to say that I do find this compelling.

[charles2]

I work on networking software and infrastructure for a living. Modern software and modern infrastructure supports IPv6; I need to be able to test and develop in these environments.

It seems a bit much to ask Sonic to go to IPv6 now in order to support your highly advanced network occupation. Maybe government action is needed to get all players moving together to IPv6, since as you note, "there's no immediate payout."

One reason I went to Sonic is that AT&T required me to use their gateway router. Maybe it supports IPv6, but it isn't a good router for the wifi in our house.

Your current best solution might be to have both Sonic and AT&T fiber service, Sonic for your family and personal use and AT&T for your work.

[dane]

Thanks Paul for the comprehensive view on this.IPv6 has been delayed by a few items here, but is drawing close. Vendor interop was a key issue initially, and then as we launched our new 10 gigabit XGS-PON platform, integration into that as well as the legacy GPON setup added complexity. Customer premise equipment has also been an issue, particularly as we've now got more types of devices in the field. We're also focused on building network and deployment, with limited staffing resources that's taken priority.

All of that said, I'm hearing from the team that they have most of the components completed and are getting close to completing the roll-out.

[msiegen]

It's great to hear that this is getting closer. Thought I'd share a specific application, and why I chose IPv6 for it.

My family has a Blue Iris server for security cameras. Hosting this in-house rather than in a datacenter saves a ton of bandwidth, because the cameras continuously stream to the server for motion detection. In fact we chose this because it was the only viable option with 2 Mbps upstream DSL line, and we preferred to stay with Sonic rather than move to Comcast. Fortunately, Sonic fiber recently went up on the poles, and we're now just awaiting hookup to the houses.

Now because we aren't streaming to the cloud, we need a different remote access solution, and that's where IPv6 comes in. I ruled out a VPN because there are just too many different types devices to configure: Macbooks, Chromebooks, iPhones, Androids, iPads. A simple link for family members to click on and sign in with Google is much easier. To get a LetsEncrypt certificate, a public IP and open port 443 is required.

That's all doable with IPv4... but it's tricky to make port forwarding also work from inside the network (search hairpin NAT), and you can only host one application this way without some additional proxy to demux port 443. IPv6 is simple: 1 IP, 1 application, works from anywhere. Repeat as many times as you have applications.

Tunnels are a workable solution for the server side of things, but not ideal for clients: Netflix is often blocked, IP geolocation can be inaccurate, websites sometimes think you're a bot....

If you're doubtful about the viability of accessing a v6-only service while traveling, you're right! The WiFi at a random hotel or national park is very probably v4-only due to captive portal limitations. But cellular networks are almost universally dual-stack. Ditto for the popular privacy enhancing services like Mozilla VPN, Apple Private Relay, Google Fi VPN, Cloudflare WARP... even Sonic's OpenVPN ! And for clients that haven't been so configured, there are server-side v4-to-v6 proxies, either as a service or a tool you can run yourself on an inexpensive cloud VM. All of these add hops, latency, and failure modes. The server-side solutions do so only on the v4 path, so make a good transition tool.

No doubt moving from resold-AT&T DSL to Sonic-proper fiber is a huge upgrade, and I'd choose Sonic over AT&T even with the current limitations. I'll get our camera server working somehow, through some combination of tunnels and proxies TDB. But I'm looking forward to a world that doesn't require so many hacks!

So if Sonic needs any beta testers, I volunteer, and I'm well versed with packet captures and client side debugging