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Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

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Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#191

Post by nulbyte »

kjellsbells wrote: post #168
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, no IPv6 = no business. I don't think it's acceptable to build a network on IPv4 only at this point, it speaks to being willing to cut corners and not do things the right way just because it's easier.

I worked in this space for a while, in the US. Outside of the major cities, Internet service falls off extremely quickly. Like, shockingly so: you can be as close as fifty miles from, say Philly or Flagstaff and have zero fiber, zero cell coverage, just nothing. The people who attempt to fill these gaps are commonly rural telephone companies, electric cooperatives, tribal entities, or mom and pop shops where the owne…

> Outside of the major cities, Internet service falls off extremely quickly.

Saline is less than 10 miles from Ann Arbor.

> The people who attempt to fill these gaps are commonly rural telephone companies, electric cooperatives, tribal entities, or mom and pop shops...

That's fair, but at some point, you need to recognize you are competing with a major ISP. No one appreciates it when you come in, tear up the roads, and then pull out once the incumbent ISPs bump up their speeds ever so slightly. (Looking at you, Google.)

> They are very, very unlikely to decide to run an IPv6 network just because.

No one deploys IPv6 "just because," and yet more than half of the traffic to major sites is IPv6.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#192

Post by rendaw »

bcrl wrote: post #100
mrweasel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had less than 0.5% of customers ask for IPv6 from my fibre ISP How many ask for IPv4? I understand your situation, it's a lot of work, for something that many won't notice. It's just that saying there's no demand because your average consumer, who also doesn't know what IPv4 is, isn't asking for it, is the mentality that keeps IPv6 from being implemented. On the funnier side of things, we've also sometimes run…

Static IPv4 addresses are closer to around 5% of customers. Nobody asks for IPv4, but some customers bring their existing or own wireless routers along and occasionally choose devices that are not IPv6 capable. Maybe in another 10 years those devices will finally be fully removed from service. The worst stragglers right now are the old combo DSL modems that effectively have no modern replacements -- it's just not wor…

So when you said `ask for IPv6` you meant `ask for a static IPv6 prefix` or something else similar to a static IPv4 address? Or is this an apples to oranges comparison?

And then you say `Nobody asks for IPv4` - so nobody asks for IPv4 and 0.5% ask for IPv6?

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#193

Post by nulbyte »

yuvadam wrote: post #116
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm one of their customers. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat This sounds like mine. I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't. For the router, I already build firewalls so that. I pay $10/mo to escape their cgnat. I've also alerted them to expect regular haranguing from me about deploying IPv6. Especially since bgp.he.net shows t…

since tailscale exists, why would you care about cgnat or even pay to escape it?

Tailscale uses the same range as CGNAT.

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/12829

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#195

Post by Lu2025 »

kjellsbells wrote: post #168
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, no IPv6 = no business. I don't think it's acceptable to build a network on IPv4 only at this point, it speaks to being willing to cut corners and not do things the right way just because it's easier.

I worked in this space for a while, in the US. Outside of the major cities, Internet service falls off extremely quickly. Like, shockingly so: you can be as close as fifty miles from, say Philly or Flagstaff and have zero fiber, zero cell coverage, just nothing. The people who attempt to fill these gaps are commonly rural telephone companies, electric cooperatives, tribal entities, or mom and pop shops where the owne…

> Outside of the major cities, Internet service falls off extremely quickly

I live half an hour from a state capital and my only option is cable... the coaxial cable they laid bare on my flower bed decades ago. I dig it up about every other year when planting. It's not even in a conduit!

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#196

Post by dilyevsky »

simoncion wrote: post #132
dilyevsky wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For regular folks there isn't much benefit tbh. Mainly I think it simplifies ISP architecture and offers slightly faster (like 10%) performance but ISPs have to support IPv4 stack for foreseeable future anyway so kinda moot point. If you game a lot p2p (i don't) you should, in theory, see lower lag. For me personally, I work on networking startup so I'd like to be able to run IPv6 stack from my home network to test t…

If you don't currently have IPv6 service, have you looked into something like Hurricane Electric's IPv6 tunnel broker? [0] It's how I got my first IPv6 subnet, and worked really well for me. I stopped using it when Comcast finally got around to providing IPv6 for non-business accounts. [0] https://tunnelbroker.net/

It’s been like two decades since i last used this but at the time HE 6in4 tunnel required static ipv4

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#197

Post by Sanzig »

kjellsbells wrote: post #168
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, no IPv6 = no business. I don't think it's acceptable to build a network on IPv4 only at this point, it speaks to being willing to cut corners and not do things the right way just because it's easier.

I worked in this space for a while, in the US. Outside of the major cities, Internet service falls off extremely quickly. Like, shockingly so: you can be as close as fifty miles from, say Philly or Flagstaff and have zero fiber, zero cell coverage, just nothing. The people who attempt to fill these gaps are commonly rural telephone companies, electric cooperatives, tribal entities, or mom and pop shops where the owne…

In principle, IPv6 core networks can actually be very beneficial for small providers just starting out if they're not able to get IPv4 addresses for their customers and are forced to use CGNAT.

In an IPv4-only CGNAT setup, all the traffic has to flow through the CGNAT gateways, and that gear is stupidly expensive. Having IPv6 in the mix means that anything that supports IPv6 (such as most streaming services) won't hit the CGNAT gateway and can just be routed natively. This can really save money on CGNAT hardware.

For implementation, you can use NAT64/DNS64 for your CGNAT setup and implement 464XLAT on the CPE. This keeps your whole edge network IPv6-only so you don't have the complication of maintaining two parallel configurations on the edge.

There is also MAP-T, which is even lighter on infrastructure since it pushes all the state into the CPE and avoids the complication of stateful CGNAT. But unfortunately CPE support for it is pretty limited at the moment.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#198

Post by simoncion »

dilyevsky wrote: post #196
simoncion wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't currently have IPv6 service, have you looked into something like Hurricane Electric's IPv6 tunnel broker? [0] It's how I got my first IPv6 subnet, and worked really well for me. I stopped using it when Comcast finally got around to providing IPv6 for non-business accounts. [0] https://tunnelbroker.net/

It’s been like two decades since i last used this but at the time HE 6in4 tunnel required static ipv4

It has also been about that long since I used the service. According to my very, very distant memory this requirement was implemented by having you punch in your IPv4 address into a form to configure their end of the tunnel. I know for an absolute fact that Comcast was not providing me with a static IPv4 address, and the HE.net tunnel worked just fine.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#199

Post by Sanzig »

bcrl wrote: post #95
Sanzig wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you already have to do CGNAT, why not IPv6 as your core network with NAT64 at the border and 464XLAT on the CPE? It gives you best of both worlds.

I'm not doing CGNAT. We were able to get enough IPv4 addresses directly from ARIN a few years ago after being on the waiting list for a couple of years. It's a pity that widespread fraud depleted that pool faster than it should have been. CPE support for IPv6 has generally been garbage with it taking 15-20 years before the bare minimum was supported by mainstream router vendors. Even today there are still vendors tha…

Ah, okay, well if you already have the IPv4 address space available for all your customers that's a different story. I can understand why you want to wait to dual-stack in that case.

I do think NAT64/464XLAT is a pretty good architecture for new ISPs that can't get their hands on IPv4 space, though. Or even MAP-T, but CPE support isn't really there yet.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#200

Post by Lu2025 »

babypuncher wrote: post #45
nancyminusone wrote: post #19

I'm one of their customers. I often see that one green car parked down the road. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat, but not having to deal with Comcast's 1.2tb data cap is well worth it. Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. ~100 customers seems too small for the amount of eff…

Comcast similarly removed their 1.2TB cap in my neighborhood within months of us getting fiber. It's almost like the only reason for the cap was because they could get away with it when there wasn't any competition.

> the only reason for the cap

Correct. It was a very calculated decision. They were squeezing out profits by trying to move heavy users to the next tier of service. But this only works if they have a monopoly.

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