In reply to a post by busterboy:

Thanks dect to be honest I found that link yesterday and it gives you some idea on the steps through but where do you get the addresses from for my particular usage.

The addresses are assigned by your ISP, and are handed out dynamically just like your IPv4 address. If you used the router supplied by BT then it would almost certainly have been preconfigured for IPv6.

In reply to a post by busterboy:

Reading what you guy's have already written I think it's best left alone as there are no advantages it seems by having IPv6.

Sure, there's almost nothing on IPv6 that isn't also accessible by IPv4, and will be the case for many many years. Web sites are not going to cut off their users.

For the large mobile operators, IPv6 has the advantage of reducing the load on their NAT boxes, and hence improving performance. Although the number of websites accessible by IPv6 is still small, the big ones like Google/Youtube/Facebook/Twitter are on there, and account for a large proportion of traffic volume between them.

For home networks, it can be useful to have IPv6 for accessing remote IPv6 networks, or allowing access to your own servers, without having to mess with VPNs or port forwarding. Some peer-to-peer games work better over IPv6.

You made my mind up.

Leave well alone.

Except that once you have configured it it just works. Most of the time you are not aware that you are looking at a site in ipv6 rather than ipv4. Had it here for 3 or 4 years.

In reply to a post by E300:

I find it hard to get my head around the numbers.

If you like silly comparisons... consider a lump of iron.

A very big lump of iron, a solid sphere of it ~1976 metres diameter, ie just 24 metres short of 2 kilometres.

Every atom of it could have its own IPv6 address



(edited for clarity and a stray apostrophe!)

Edited by billford (Thu 03-Dec-20 20:19:43)

In reply to a post by dsergeant:

Except that once you have configured it it just works. Most of the time you are not aware that you are looking at a site in ipv6 rather than ipv4. Had it here for 3 or 4 years.

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

In reply to a post by billford:

If you like silly comparisons... consider a lump of iron.

A very big lump of iron, a solid sphere of it just (~24 metres) under 2 kilometres across.

[puzzled]isn't a sphere of ~24 metres of any dimension usually under 25 metres across too?[/puzzled]

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

[puzzled]isn't a sphere of ~24 metres of any dimension usually under 25 metres across too?[/puzzled]

Poorly phrased on my part, sorry

Diameter of sphere is ~1976 metres... ie ~24 metres less than 2 kilometres.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

So did I, especially from the top 5, (Sky, BT, Plusnet, Virgin, talktalk). I think only Sky & BT have managed it. Virgin keep talking about it, but nothing has appeared, and Plusnet did a trial, but that ended and nothing happened.

Each of these providers seems to have enough IPv4 for their growth projections, so it will be when websites are only on IPv6 that they will lose customers to those than can provide connectivity. At the moment I don't think any popular english language websites are only on the 6 net.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I thought by now that more providers would be offering IPv6,

So did I, especially from the top 5, (Sky, BT, Plusnet, Virgin, talktalk). I think only Sky & BT have managed it. Virgin keep talking about it, but nothing has appeared, and Plusnet did a trial, but that ended and nothing happened.

Each of these providers seems to have enough IPv4 for their growth projections, so it will be when websites are only on IPv6 that they will lose customers to those than can provide connectivity. At the moment I don't think any popular english language websites are only on the 6 net.

Oh it's worse than that for Plusnet. They ran a trial but then decided to undertake a major network upgrade. That upgrade apparently broke the IPv6 servers so the trial was ended. But their parent company - BT - offer IPv6.

I'm with IDNet and they've been offering IPv6 for many years now.

In reply to a post by dect:

Whats the quickest way for anyone to check they have it? is there a good site to ping for example?

Launch the TBB speed tester. It will tell you immediately with a yellow label at the bottom left.

And of course it says on the results themselves: