[ale] AT&T fiber and IPv6?

Fri Nov 4 10:59:14 EDT 2022

HI,

I can't answer about Earthlink; I use AT&T fiber directly.  But I can tell
you that AT&T *WILL* give you a /60 if you ask for it.

-derek

On Fri, November 4, 2022 10:38 am, James Sumners via Ale wrote:
> Your reply had me re-investigate. First, I discovered that I had at some
> point "broke" IPv6 assignment from upstream to my internal devices. It
> turns out that the only prefix delegation (PD) hint that AT&T supports
> is /64 (see [1]). That's disappointing, and will cause me some headache
> figuring out how to get this playing nicely on my VLANs (if I even care
> about those anymore).
>
> Second, I learned that you should stay far, _FAR_, away from Earthlink.
> I signed up through Earthlink because I assumed I'd be able to get
> better technical support out of them, and let them run interference with
> AT&T if I ever need it. But holy hell are they bad now! Calling their
> tech support to figure out what PD hints they support was a complete
> waste of time. Their frontline support is clearly an India call center
> and kept thinking I was asking for something to do with "IPBB". Their
> online chat support, and _anyone_ I ever got on a phone call, kept
> thinking I was asking for a static IP. Performing the public Twitter
> shaming[2] got me a little further, and in touch with someone who had at
> least hear the term "IPv6" before. But they insisted that 1. they don't
> offer IPv6 to residential, 2. didn't know what to say when I told them I
> have an assigned /128 on my gateway and can use it to talk with remote
> service, and 3. insisted they wouldn't know where to get the information
> on what PD hints they support.
>
> To drive home just how upset I am with Earthlink: I am strongly
> considering eating the contract termination cost to switch to someone
> else. At the moment, that looks like either AtlanticNexus (but their
> site nowadays gives me strong "stay away" vibes) or Toast.net. I'll
> definitely be calling first to get a feel for what they know and what
> kind of support to expect.
>
> Anyway, back to the topic at hand:
>
> Finding a remote service to test the IPv6 bandwidth seems to be a bit
> tricky. The best one I have found is "ionius.net". Their test seems to
> be very limited on the other end in terms of the maximum throughput, but
> they run the same test on both IPv6 and IPv6. My results are consistent
> on each stack -- https://inonius.net/results/?userId=18443091afa0.
> Others are showing maybe less down than up, but I don't know that I
> trust them.
>
> [1] --
> https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-fiber-account/ipv6-prefix-delegation/5e6309f2c17a0663de2c0532
> [2] -- https://twitter.com/jsumners79/status/1588258761189494784
>
> On 2022-11-03 13:02, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> My experience (NB: I have not tested recently, so probably a year+ out
>> of
>> date) is that their IPv6 "throughput" is much worse than their IPv4.
>> As a
>> result, when I turned on IPv6 through them, I saw much less throughput
>> than using v4 -- so I turned it off.
>>
>> I also had an issue that using IPv6 caused FaceTime to stop working --
>> but
>> I *suspect* that was a firewall issue.  I did not spend enough time to
>> try
>> to track that one down.
>>
>> Obviously YMMV, but you might want to try some tests (if you care).
>>
>> -derek
>>
>> On Thu, November 3, 2022 12:58 pm, James Sumners via Ale wrote:
>>> A follow up on this thread. AT&T finally activated the lines in mid
>>> September. I signed up (through Earthlink) and have been on 1Gb
>>> symmetric since September 30. I haven't noticed any issues with the
>>> IPv6
>>> implementation. I do wish they would give me an SFP+ card to stick
>>> into
>>> my Ubiquiti UDM-PRO instead of the huge gateway device they mandate,
>>> but
>>> everything has been quite good for the first month.
>>>
>>> On 2022-02-11 17:06, James Sumners (ALE) via Ale wrote:
>>>> Earlier today AT&T attached some fiber to the pole directly across
>>>> the
>>>> street from my driveway. I’m sure it will take them another month or
>>>> two to activate the line, but I want to go ahead and solicit some
>>>> knowledge from you folks.
>>>>
>>>> Currently, I’m on Comcast (plain residential). I despise the
>>>> business, but their network people are top notch and have rolled out
>>>> a
>>>> nice stable IPv6 network. They assign my WAN interface a `/128` and
>>>> allow network assignments via a `/64` or `/60` prefix delegation over
>>>> DHCPv6. The `/60` allows me to create multiple VLANs in my house for
>>>> things like IoT devices separate from my primary devices.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone have experience with AT&T’s IPv6 implementation? Would
>>>> switching to them be mostly transparent in this regard? Are there any
>>>> “gotchas” that I should be aware of?
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-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant