EE Makes Progress on IPv6 Upgrade for their UK Mobile Network

Mobile operator EE has revealed that they’ve “switched on” IPv6 Internet addresses for new subscribers during 2016 H2 (a mix of dual-stack with IPv4 and some IPv6-only), at least for those with supporting devices (legacy devices remain on IPv4). Work will now begin to migrate their existing users.

Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are how you identify your connection online and without them you can’t use Internet services. At present most mobile operators still make use of IPv4 and often adopt a form of CGNAT (IP address sharing) in order to make their addresses last longer, partly because new IPv4s are no longer being distributed (they’ve run out).

As such the whole system will eventually need to be moved over to the new IPv6 standard, which are significantly longer and shouldn’t run out any time soon (example address: 2001:cdba::2257:9652). But in the meantime a dual-stack system is usually adopted so that IPv4 and IPv6 can continue to run side-by-side until everybody is ready to switch off IPv4 (that won’t happen for many years).

The setup at EE also supports an IPv6-only Single Stack Bearer solution for more modern devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy 6 + 7, HTC M10 and Sony’s Z5 series etc. However this still allows a connection to IPv4 servers, but that translation from IPv6 happens at a later stage.

At present EE notes that they already have around 50,000 PostPay mobile subscribers on their IPv6 supporting network and the plan is to start upgrading around 100,000 users per day (other subs will remain on IPv4 for the time being). The operator has around 15+ million postpaid mobile subscribers in the United Kingdom.

However EE also noted that there had been some problems, not least with IPv6 based international mobile roaming where the connections were “inconsistent” and would often fall back to IPv4 addresses. This is perhaps understandable since many operators in other countries will have different local networks.

The details were revealed by BT’s Network Architect, Nick Heatley, during this week’s UK IPv6 Council meeting, which among other things also confirmed that the total of IPv6 enabled users in the United Kingdom had increased from 2.58% last year to 16.2% now (largely due to the well documented and praise worthy efforts of some big networks, such as Sky Broadband). You can see Sky’s presentation slides here, although we’ve already reported on those details before.