IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

After years of testing in a couple of limited areas of Virginia, along with Waltham MA, it appears that Verizon may finally be starting to roll out IPv6 support to more areas. Over the past couple of weeks on another community site, there have been six reports from users in five Maryland areas near Baltimore that IPv6 is now working for them. In Virginia, reports have come from two users in the Yorktown/Newport News area, as well as Sterling in Northern VA. 

Verizon had sent emails to Fios business accounts late last year about IPv6 rolling out this year (an account in MD had received a January date, and an account in NJ had received a February date). Obviously those dates were missed, but there are also reports of new emails being sent (a NY business customer recently received an email with a date in June).

The implementation is done on a per-CO (central office) basis, so it's relatively localized (large cities often have multiple CO's serving them), though they could upgrade multiple nearby CO's at the same time. There does seem to be a pattern of at least one momentary overnight outage in the days leading up to it being enabled. Based on the original emails sent to businesses, it looks like they're starting in Virginia/MD and moving north.

Additionally, areas receiving IPv6 seem to be seeing a fix for the 2-hop ICMP Traceroute issue that's been plaguing the network for a few years. So if you notice your traceroutes returning complete results now, try enabling IPv6 and see if you have it.

I don't believe Verizon routers have IPv6 enabled by default, so if you want to see if you have IPv6 in your area, you'll probably need to enable it in your router's settings first. It's possible that Verizon could enable IPv6 in their routers in the future. A note that some older routers may not perform at full speed with IPv6 enabled because of hardware acceleration that only works for IPv4. 

If you don't use a Verizon router, here are links for info on setting up pfSense and Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. If you use something else, the general requirement is to send a DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation request for a /56 prefix. Then allocate /64 prefixes from the /56 received for the local network(s) you have. Using DHCPv6 to get a WAN address is not necessary, Verizon does not provide a separate global WAN IPv6 address. Link-local on the WAN interface is more than sufficient for IPv6 to function. Also make sure to set your firewall to allow IPv6 connections from your local network(s) to the internet.

I've been fortunate enough to be in a test area, so if there are questions, I'll do my best to answer them.  I don't use a Verizon router though (just pfSense), so I may not be able to answer router-specific questions.

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

Just an update on the past two weeks... 

Between RIPE Atlas probes and reports from users of the other community site, there's been continued expansion of IPv6 availability around the immediate DC area, including a CO within DC. APNIC's IPv6 statistics tracker shows that over the past two weeks, Verizon's network has gone from 3% IPv6 capable to 9% IPv6 capable.

The issue with relying on user reports is that users need to know how to check for or enable the functionality, or there may not be community members in some areas at all. So it may be available in more areas than have been reported. But with that said, here are the new CO's reported as being enabled for IPv6 over the past two weeks:

DC:

- "Dupont"

Maryland:

- Silver Spring

- Gaithersburg

- Bethesda "Wood Acres"

- Hyattsville "Chillum"

Virginia:

- Arcola

- Herndon (north of Dulles toll road)

- Herndon "Dulles Corner" (south of Dulles toll road)

- Springfield

- Arlington (Ballston and surrounding areas)

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

Much of Fios-served Northern VA and MD around the DC and Baltimore areas look to be complete. There are still a small number of CO's in MD and VA that may not be there yet, but they'll probably be completed very soon. There have been few reports from elsewhere in Virginia (Richmond and Newport News areas). I've only seen reports from two or three CO's in DC itself (there are 15 CO's within DC limits), so not sure if they're all done or if there's more to come. 

Yesterday I noticed a possible sign of progress in Pennsylvania, as two RIPE Atlas probes in the Harrisburg area began showing full ICMP traceroutes. Today, a DSLR user has reported IPv6 in Pittsburgh, but they didn't get more specific than that (Pittsburgh and suburbs have like 30 CO's providing service to them).

Progress!!!

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

Yes. PA is added to the IPv6 expansion list.

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

Continued progress in PA... A number of confirmed reports from the Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia areas. Still plenty to be done in at least Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but progress is being made!

A couple of additional reports from previously unreported CO's in MD and VA... but I think most of the work in DC, MD and VA is complete at this point.

I think there are some issues that need to be fixed in some of the original testing areas. Leesburg VA and a couple of CO's west of Richmond don't have the full ICMP traceroute yet, and Ashburn seems like it might have exhausted its IPv6 prefix delegation range, as some are reporting DHCPv6 issues (non-Verizon routers, so they can see logs indicating the problem).

What's next???

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

PA IPv6 expansion is continuing, both in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas... and a couple of reports have been received in NJ, and one in DE so far.

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
SoNic671
Enthusiast - Level 2

I am a Fios customer in Newport News, with G1100, firmware 02.03.00.13.

I just enabled IPv6 today (7/31/2022) and.. it works! It was disabled by default.

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
Anonymous
Not applicable

And to close out the month of July, more reports from PA and NJ!  Most of the NJ reports have been from Southern NJ, though one of the first NJ reports (part of the previous post) was across the Hudson from Manhattan. 

Also, here's a graph from APNIC (The Asia-Pacific Network Information Center; they give out the IP addresses for the Asia/Pacific part of the world) showing Verizon's growth in IPv6 rollout over the past few months!

imageAPNIC Labs graph of Verizon IPv6 growth

Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
SoNic671
Enthusiast - Level 2

Today I had all kinds of hiccups in my network, WhatsApp not linking big uploaded on my desktop, YT stuttering.

For now I turned off the IPv6... maybe next year will be better?

0 Likes
Re: IPv6 expanding! FINALLY!
bobbytables
Enthusiast - Level 1

IPv6 is not the problem; it is the solution. Please turn IPv6 back on.

0 Likes