Supporting IPv6

Will Zevvle support IPv6, providing devices with an IPv6 address etc?

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Unfortunately not, at least for now… it’s something we’d love to do, but don’t have access to that part of the network (yet). :confused:

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If you’ve got the resources for it you can offer a VPN service that would provide an IPv6 address (and since you’ve got an app, configuring it takes one click without having to fiddle around with hostnames, credentials, etc). You’d need access to IPv6 address space and infrastructure (don’t even think of running the VPN gateways on cloud providers, you’d go bankrupt because of the bandwidth bills) but nothing impossible.

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Hadn’t thought of that; great idea! But yes… the bandwidth costs, I’m sure we could figure something out. :slight_smile:

Perhaps Zevvle could approach ripe for their own ASN, thus Zevvle gets their own ipv4/6 range :thinking:

The problem isn’t the lack of an ASN, it’s how to get the raw data traffic from the SIMs. I’m assuming there’s tons of paperwork and possibly setup fees involved, not to mention the infrastructure to actually terminate the data sessions from the SIMs.

I’m pretty sure aaisp or their director revk did a blog post on how they do it :thinking: goes googling…

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Yeah they have a FireBrick product that can act as a GGSN (and convert GTP to L2TP). That piece of kit would still be expensive (they have the advantage that they built it so it’s essentiallt free for them) and frankly I’m not sure how it would scale. Honestly that’s the easy part - GTP is not an extremely complicated protocol so I’m sure that can be done in house if needed.

The issue of the physical infrastructure remains though. They’d need to be in a PoP with suitable bandwidth to both EE and then to major ISPs & transit providers.

Not impossible, but not cheap to build in a scalable way either.

Also specifically speaking about IPv6, there’s also the issue of the actual carrier network being configured right - I’ve got the AAISP SIMs you speak of and the infrastructure to terminate the data sessions, however any IPv6 PDP context just gets swallowed by the carrier (seems like they redirect anything IPv6-only to the ims APN) so I don’t even get to see it on my equipment (and AA doesn’t either).

So after some quick googling I found this
https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/data-sims/

Although aaisp use aql/three and Zevvle use ?/EE I’m sure EE have a way to split mvno traffic off and send it somewhere under Zevvle’s control.

I’m sure there would be paperwork and costing for a LNS & colo fees to factor in, perhaps this is one for the future when there is a large enough customer base. Although I would love to hear @nick view on this.

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Yes, to the above. The first barrier is that we’re 1-step removed from the MNO (EE), which to start with has been great – it meant a quicker & cheaper launch, but we have none of the finer network control and co-located equipment is out of the question for the time-being.

To get there, we need a) an in-house engineering team and b) scale – EE would laugh at us right now. Those alone won’t be a walk in the park, but if we get there (and I’d love to), then yes – the sky’s the limit.

EE, considering the scale involved, do a great job, so we’ll tread carefully after Virgin’s fiasco… :sweat_smile:

As for timeframe, :man_shrugging: … we need to stay alive and grow!

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