Carrier Grade NAT

There are reports on the BT forums that look like BT is implementing CGN by stealth

In reference to community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/IPv6-CGN/m-p/849912/highlight/true#...:

on 01-05-2013 11h47

I switched to infinity a few days ago and it seems that they have put me on CG-NAT. My external ip reported by my hub is different to the ip reported by whatsmyip.org. Port forwarding is impossible inside the CG-NAT so I have to use a VPN tunnel that supports port forwarding every time I want to get around it.

yeah and I forewarned those guys that the plusnet tests may have led to a BT rollout.

This country always seems its profit first.

CGN before ipv6? regulation looks needed to correct the attitude.

I seen in a recent news article about how the government wants every connected device to have its own internet ip, not viable on ipv4 but a reason to regulate ipv6.

I am not on CGN here, but it looks like I may be accelerating my move away from BT, or pushing up to BT business infinity.

Having a read of the BT comunity forums as per link, and from whats been said if all is correct then theres going to be a lot of complaints from unhappy customers, many sofware applications need ports to be fowarded as do nearley all online games (in particular if you want to host )
Without the ability to port forward then no or little point in even having a internet connection as it would render it pretty much useless for a lot of things Perhaps unhappy customers should complain en mass to ofcom( that useless quango)

Edited by tommy45 (Thu 02-May-13 18:32:52)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

There are reports on the BT forums that look like BT is implementing CGN by stealth

Yikes, lets hope not. I hope (IANAL) that such a technical change would give rise to a termination clause, so I could MAC out to someone else (Probably Sky given I'm using 80+ GB a month).

I would support this being a major change and being a very bad thing to do, without the end-user being fully aware of the implications.

You, me and a lot of other people, just looked at the Business pricing and it's £9/m more, but I know that other providers are a lot more expensive if you use a lot of data in Peak times

I miss my Be fixed IP, I only need one so that I can access my system whilst abroad, which at the moment is okay using DynDNS, but Carrrier Grade NAT will totally mess that up.

Waiting on response from BT.

Will do in news and a sticky in forums if anything is happening that is major, or if a support foo bar will report back too.

I have seen something similar on Sky Broadband in the past.

Given that in at least all the examples I've seen BT Retail don't manage their own IP space it'd be quite impressive if they could use CGNAT without a corresponding BT Wholesale product.

whatismyip.org has been unreliable for me for several months now, it never returns the correct IP for my connection - and that's with a static IP on an O2 connection.

I just noticed - type 'what is my ip' into a google.co.uk search now gives an answer direct from google at the top of the search results

The FAQ that you link to in the news item has a link so you can get off of it or opt-out so you don't get thrown onto it.

Poor show from BT as if something went wrong with my connection I wouldn't even think of this as a cause of the problem.

just looked at the Business pricing and it's £9/m more

Is that including VAT? I haven't checked, but don't forget non-business prices do, and business prices don't.

Good point, I just checked again and it is actually quite a bit more, £30 for 40/10 or £35 for 80/20 plus £5 for static IP then PLUS VAT so for me that would add £22/m [26 v 48] not sure I would want to pay that.

What annoys me is that there is no option for a static IP on their Home service, I wouldn't mind paying an extra £5+VAT for it.

and all because they don't want the hassle/cost of introducing IPv6. GRRRRR!!

IPv6 is on its way, but even then it will be dual stack for sometime.

if an Option 1 customer you can opt out

Note that my link was to Infinity customers finding they're on CG NAT

Plusnet unlimited can have a static IP address for a one-off £5.

I realise that, my router can handle both native and tunneled. Looking at the BT Forum it seems that only newer connects are reporting the problem with CGN at the moment, but if they roll it out to everyone, I will have to seriously think very carefully about going somewhere else like AAISP.

Thanks, I'll have another look at them when the time comes

If an Infinity customer can supply a screenshot showing the CG-NAT IP and whois then will pester

Andrew something isnt adding up, BT told you its bt total option 1 only.

Thats bt infinity 1? or some other package?

On BT care a infinity customer says he has CGN.

in the same boat.

Maybe for all the business features its good value.

But I only want it for the static ip address (uk support might be nice addition also). But for a static ip thats one hell of a price bump.

Plus its possible the business packages have not had the throttling removed either, notice the lack of true or total unlimited but just unlimited wording. Then of course the 2 year contract even longer than the consumer product and does it need a business landline?

You can have Business Infinity on a 12 month contract.

It can be delivered over either business or residential lines. If over a residential line the the business level repair time-scales apply to the voice side too!

how to get on 12 month contract? I guess its phone order only and probably with higher monthly price?

A few good points there, that I hadn't thought of, throttling has never affected me as I use P2P very rarely, so not too worried about that.

As I still have another six months left on my Infinity2 contractt, I'll wait and see what happens before I decide what to do.

The quote in the news is a full copy/paste.

The key is that if they are on the CG-NAT a call to support should get them off it again.

We are looking at adding a note to the speed test if we detect you on the BT CG-NAT solution.

Nice little piece just cropped up on the Main site:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5818-bt-retail-in...


Update: if you click on the FAQ link, there is an option to register to opt out of the trial, I've just registered mine

Edited by The_Voyager (Fri 03-May-13 19:20:12)

the traffic shaping document on the business site shows p2p still throttled.

Currently I think I may be going to plusnet. I have asked the guys on there to do some tests for me.

Zen seems to have quite unfavourable t&c's. aaisp short contract but is going to requrie a huge budget of me, but I am defenitly favouring aaisp over zen as I know the sort of service I get of aaisp to justify the cost, whilst zen is the higher cost whilst a complete unknown.

Have a look at my comment further down:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/t/4235430-re-car...

You can opt out of the trial, and hopefully the whole damned thing if they introduce it.

Just saw a post on BT Forum that it is not only affecting Option 1 customers.

I know but I need to be on a static ip, dynamic is causing me too many headaches so I still need to change anyway.

Ah! sorry misunderstood, thought it was CGN problem

well was both.

Although now with the news CGN can be opted out its reverted to just static ip issue.

Of course in future BT may change their stance on CGN. As now its early days.

Have enquired about it affecting more than Option 1 ADSL2+ customers, but in the meantime if someone thinks they are, and their public IP tracks back to an IP block that shows CG-NAT in the organisation I would like to see a screenshot.

We are also checking with BT what IP blocks are used, then we can add a message to the speed tester to give a very simple way for people to identify if on the pilot or not. Plus also look at whether speeds are any different compared to the standard userbase.

It would be interesting to hear BT's take on IP address sharing and identifying copyright infringement too.

They will still have records your external WAN IP and the locally provided 100.64.0.xxx against time and could still identify users from that.

In reply to a post by MHC:

They will still have records your external WAN IP and the locally provided 100.64.0.xxx against time and could still identify users from that.

The company claiming copyright infringement would just have an IP address. When they present that to BT, how would BT know which customer was file sharing? BT would literally have to log every single TCP and UDP connection, and the company would have to provide the IP address the customer is alledged to have uploaded to.

Well, if it is going to be as difficult as you say to ID the real user of any down/up load streams at any one moment then rather than customers being outraged by the imposition of GCNAT we will find that everyone will be pleading to be put ON GCNAT as it will make their internet activities illegal and otherwise totally impossible to pin on them.

I suspect the reality is rather different.

In reply to a post by zom22:

Well, if it is going to be as difficult as you say to ID the real user of any down/up load streams at any one moment then rather than customers being outraged by the imposition of GCNAT we will find that everyone will be pleading to be put ON GCNAT as it will make their internet activities illegal and otherwise totally impossible to pin on them.

Quite possibly. There are already users who prefer to be on dynamic IP addresses in the hope it will make their activities less identifiable. That of course isn't going to help because ISPs log which customer uses which WAN IP at any given time.

Under CG-NAT they might desire the same, but as BT would have 10 users using a given WAN IP at any given time, in this case it would indeed make them less identifiable.

that could happen, we already get people who are unhappy with VM's sticky ip's who post on VM's forums trying to get a new dynamic ip because I assume they have done something naughty.

Although with the recent attention brought to copyright infringement it wouldnt surprise me if BT have got a way of tracking these sort of things to users.

logging established connection points but not the content's probably isnt that hard to do.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

logging established connection points but not the content's probably isnt that hard to do.

Would be interesting to know if any ISP logs every single TCP and UDP connection for every single customer. That's a significant amount of data to store, and considering how long it takes for court orders to go through, they'd have to store it for several months.

Probably a silly question, but how would I know whether this is affecting me or not - also how would I check it?

I'm only very recently transferred to BT (ADSL2+, not Infinity), but I appear to be having more than a reasonable amount of "Unable to find Sites"!

The best way to make BT feel pain is to vote with your wallet and go elsewhere but unless you go to Virgin Media BT will still get a slice of what you pay.

All the talk about Retail, Wholesale and Openreach is really academic as in truth they are one company (try looking on the companies register for these separate entities, you won't find them) which is why retail does not have it's own IP blocks.

If memory serves me correctly if you run a BT Broadband IP against the RIPE database at www.ripe.net it just comes up as BT Broadband.

Edited by techguy (Sat 04-May-13 18:22:10)

See the FAQ

In reference to btsupport.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/44044/c/6433:

Is my IP address being shared?

You can check if your IP address is being translated/shared by visiting this website www.whatismyipaddress.com

If your IP address is being shared, it will be listed under 'Organisation' as 'BT-CGNAT'.

Another thing to try is to change your DNS settings to Google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in your PC network settings, as BT's DNS servers have been useless for as long as I remember.

Edited by deleted (Sat 04-May-13 18:26:02)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

See the FAQ

In reference to btsupport.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/44044/c/6433:

Is my IP address being shared?

You can check if your IP address is being translated/shared by visiting this website www.whatismyipaddress.com

If your IP address is being shared, it will be listed under 'Organisation' as 'BT-CGNAT'.

Another thing to try is to change your DNS settings to Google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in your PC network settings, as BT's DNS servers have been useless for as long as I remember.

Hi Batboy, Thanks for that!

It is showing up as "British Telecommunications", so I should be in the clear.

So is mine, plus I opted-out - although BT haven't confirmed the opt-out yet

correct although they already dealing with that mess now to store things like email records.

My guess is they dont store connection endpoints now as there isnt a need to, they can probably track who has what ip at any given time, but it may be something they could do on CGN to aid copyright infringement claims.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

My guess is they dont store connection endpoints now as there isnt a need to, they can probably track who has what ip at any given time, but it may be something they could do on CGN to aid copyright infringement claims.

I would think ISPs would be required to log TCP/UDP connection if the police gained a court order on suspected terrorist activity and the like, so they could monitor what websites are being visited etc. But as for monitoring everyone's connection routinely in this way, I don't think that's done, yet.