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Community Fibre CGNat

doma2345

Casual Member
I dont know if it has been mentioned here, but the only package that community fibre offer now that isnt behind CGNat is their 3GB package.

It doesnt seem to be mentioned anywhere on their website that this is the case and you are unable to purchase a static IP from them, so after less than 24 hours being a customer and without any 2.5gb networking gear I will be upgrading to their 3GB package.... its still cheaper than VM!!!
 
Generally, and much to the annoyance of many enthusiasts, most ISPs don't really talk openly on their packages about the technical network setup under the hood (i.e. IPv6, CGNAT etc.).

The issue is at least partly mitigated by CF's adoption of IPv6, but of course that won't help for IPv4-only server connections. I'd point to CF's business broadband packages as an alternative, but they're quite a bit more expensive for FTTP based plans.

The reality of IPv4 exhaustion is that there's not always a lot that bigger networks can do, since buying lots of fresh IPv4's today is fairly expensive (unless you got a good chunk some years back on the cheap, like the bigger or older players have).
 
Thanks for the heads up, I guess those in the 1Gb service are OK for now? I wouldn't want the service if it didn't have public IPv4. IPv6 is not ready for prime time. Just last week I had to disable IPv6 on an my neighbour's Openreach router as otherwise all website would load slow in their devices (all devices had the same issue).

PS: We have a dedicated CF forum here: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/community-fibre.628/

I have reposted this thread for visibility.
 
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Looks like their terms were updated on the 29th June to this effect, previously CGNAT was only for services below 500Mbps.

I guess this is a side effect of moving the 1Gbps package to £25, at that price point the vast majority of their users will take it. Arguably it's a little clumsy not offering it as a £5-£10/month add on to 1Gbps, as the 'mass' console gaming market would pay that but probably not £49 for 3Gbps. I can see CF losing those customers to a £30-£35 Plusnet 500Mbps offer.
 
From speaking to them anyone who has it on an old package will retain, (i guess until they renew) but anyone taking out a new package will not get it.

I have no use for 3GB connection but will probably take it just to get rid of CGNat so all my port forwarding works again. The problem with upgrading is an engineer need to come out and fit the new modem ... (i am not sure why they cant trust us to plug in two cables ourselves)

I did ask if there was any possiblity to buy / pay for a static IP but they said no.
 
Looks like their terms were updated on the 29th June to this effect, previously CGNAT was only for services below 500Mbps.

I guess this is a side effect of moving the 1Gbps package to £25, at that price point the vast majority of their users will take it. Arguably it's a little clumsy not offering it as a £5-£10/month add on to 1Gbps, as the 'mass' console gaming market would pay that but probably not £49 for 3Gbps. I can see CF losing those customers to a £30-£35 Plusnet 500Mbps offer.
i can't find the terms you're referring to on their website...can you post a link to it...i'd like to have a read
 
IPv6 is not ready for prime time. Just last week I had to disable IPv6 on an my neighbour's Openreach router as otherwise all website would load slow in their devices (all devices had the same issue).

I'd say that's more of a problem with that particular kit or the ISPs flawed implementation, as there's nothing wrong with IPv6 itself and most ISPs that have deployed it do not cause such issues.

Side note - Openreach don't actually supply routers to consumers, so I assume you mean one of their older VDSL or G.fast modems? The VDSL kit is particularly archaic for modern networking needs.
 
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I am going to see if i can get it enabled as I signed up on the 28th and their terms and conditions were updated on the 29th... worth a try.
 
Thank you...seems like they've change their CGNAT tier's...i signed up to their 1gig package back in march this year...i hope they keep me on what im on right now and not switch me over to CGNAT.
 
Generally, and much to the annoyance of many enthusiasts, most ISPs don't really talk openly on their packages about the technical network setup under the hood (i.e. IPv6, CGNAT etc.).

The issue is at least partly mitigated by CF's adoption of IPv6, but of course that won't help for IPv4-only server connections. I'd point to CF's business broadband packages as an alternative, but they're quite a bit more expensive for FTTP based plans.

The reality of IPv4 exhaustion is that there's not always a lot that bigger networks can do, since buying lots of fresh IPv4's today is fairly expensive (unless you got a good chunk some years back on the cheap, like the bigger or older players have).
IPv6 support is great to have but for those using DDNS for remote connections, there's no guarantee that the remote site you're connecting from supports IPv6. I can setup my PfSense router to enable DDNS over IPV6 for OpenVPN, but it's useless if the ISP i'm connecting from is stuck on IPv4.
 
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If anyone ends up in this situation that your ISP won't provide/sell you a fixed IP there are a few workarounds.

The easiest is to signup for a VPN service that allows port forwarding. I won't mention any specifically but you can find some reputable ones on Google that allow for between 1 and 20 ports to be forwarded to you while connected to their VPN servers.

To make it more convenient you can connect to such VPN services through your router if it supports OpenVPN, IPSEC or Wireguard clients which will maintain the VPN tunnel for all your devices.

The main downside, VPN services rarely let you choose the ports you get and if you for example want to host a website from home on port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS) that will likely not be possible with this approach even if you use a CDN like CloudFlare in front as they will not redirect those ports to different numbers without paying a lot of money.

The way around that is to rent a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from a hosting provider such as Vultr, Digital Ocean, Hetzner, OVH, Contabo etc - This would cost around £4-£8 per month depending on the provider and let you forward any port you want from the VPS to your home via a VPN tunnel. This is much more complicated to set up, secure and maintain so it's really a last-ditch attempt for the desperate.

So what you should do in order from easiest to most difficult.

1. Contact your ISP, try to get a static IP from them first.
2. Turn to a commercial VPN service if you don't need a specific port (80, 443, 21, 22, 25 etc).
3. Set up your own VPS to forward all the ports you need to your home.

Also, one last thing to mention is IPv6. If your ISP offers you IPv6 connectivity (like Community Fibre does) then you can open ports on that. And if you want to host a website you can use a service like CloudFlare to provide IPv4 and IPv6 functionality for your website which they will forward to your IPv6 address.

That of course won't be useful for other protocols (SSH, FTP etc) but if the computer(s) you want to use to access remote resources at your home also support IPv6 then it's fine, this is only an issue for IPv4 only devices that you want to access your IPv6 resources remotely.

I hope this helps someone, there are options just some are so difficult people would rather host things remotely instead of locally than deal with the complexity and maintenance which I completely understand.
 
I wonder if we'll ever get a regulator stepping in re IPv4, it's hardly great for competition if the incumbents have a big stash of IPv4 and new entrants have none.

It's making the incumbenents less likely to take IPv6 seriously too, which has a knock on effect to websites and services
 
I can live with CGNAT and native IPv6. Use a reverse proxy (Azure Application Proxy, Cloudflare Tunnel) if you need inbound, the internet is too hostile to have services running on open ports.
 
There is something wrong when we have new isp's having to do this whilst Zen sells a /16 for a couple of million.

Ripe failures here.

DWP even reportedly have used millions of public IP's for internal networking. O_o
 
I don't think it's a RIPE failure as such, you're asking them to predict the growth of IP requirements and the invention of NAT and to made different decisions in the past to allocate fewer addresses to ISPs requesting them, with the intention of keeping some spare for later on.

The RIRs and IANA *did* see this coming, which is why IPv6 has been around for over two decades. IP exhaustion is a fact of life, if you're a content provider launching new services then you need to be IPv6 native from day 1 with IPv4 implemented only as a fallback, and if you're a new altnet with the opportunity to design your network from scratch and you decide to implement IPv4-only with CGNAT then you deserve to be publicly shamed. I assume anybody launching a new service without IPv6 (hello G.Network) doesn't have competent network teams.
 
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I'd say that's more of a problem with that particular kit or the ISPs flawed implementation, as there's nothing wrong with IPv6 itself and most ISPs that have deployed it do not cause such issues.

Side note - Openreach don't actually supply routers to consumers, so I assume you mean one of their older VDSL or G.fast modems? The VDSL kit is particularly archaic for modern networking needs.
Yes most likely ISP kit issue but what chance does the average Joe has to prove that it's an ISP problem? My neighbour is with BT and had a Smart Hub 2 fitted 2 weeks ago. All working excellent until the day it started to have issues. Two Openreach "engineers" came and couldn't solve the problem. It took me two mniutes to disable IPV6 in the router and to confirm all devices were now working properly. This is not the first time I solved an issue like this. Last my a colleague at work had been unable to use some apps on Samsung phones but everything else worked fine. He was on Sky. Turned IPV6 on router and all apps now working. This is what the IPv6 fanatics don't get, this stuff is not ready for prime time at the consumer level and neither the ISPs nor the average consumer have the knowledge to troubleshoot these issues and solve or workaround them. I have turned IPv6 on my router as well, I don't really have time to deal with this nonsense. I will be very happy to switch to IPv6 if we all did a switch over to it and all the bugs got solved. As we stand it's a minefield of issues nobody takes care. Finally as said on this thread a lot of server services are IPv4 only so yeah very nice having so many public IPv6 addresses to hide from hackers but a bit pointless if I can't use them for the services I want to host!
 
if you're a content provider launching new services then you need to be IPv6 native from day 1 with IPv4 implemented only as a fallback
Sadly that's not true. There's 100% commercial reason to have your content accessible on IPv4, and almost none to have it accessible on IPv6.

Just look at major websites like the BBC - an organization known for its technical leadership for 100 years, but still not accessible via IPv6. They don't care. IPv6 isn't necessary to reach their audience.

Content providers pay millions for a cool domain name - they'll certainly pay a few dollars for IPv4 reachability, since that's where all the eyeballs/customers are.

In any case, if your content is behind a CDN like Cloudflare or Akamai, then you're simply sharing their IPv4 addresses - which is what CDNs and web hosting companies have been doing for decades, with name-based virtual hosting and reverse proxies. There's no shortage of IPv4 at that side.
 
Another reason against IPv6/the reason I believe many large social media platforms, payment processors (e.g stripe/paypal) and more don't support IPv6 is the huge decrease in cost of IPv6 proxies vs IPv4 proxies.

A proxy, or more in these terms a "residential proxy" is pretty much a VPN but you get someone else's real IP, so to any website or service you look like your a real user connecting without a VPN.

People sell proxies through mobile sim farms, and some platforms run a "sell your bandwidth" service, and route users traffic through a pool of users computers (obviously a bad idea to be on the exit-node end of this)

The best (and really, the only legal way/not against tos) to resell an IP your owned/assigned is to lease the IP directly from a provider as a business.

Some of the biggest proxy providers lease IP's directly from USA's AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and RCN, UK's O2 and host them in a datacenter, where they are re-sold to users at about $1.50/IP/Month. This is still cheap, but, with IPv6 you can purchase IPs at just $0.06/IP/Week (If your buying a substantial amount of IPs you can get it at around $0.03), which makes it much cheaper to run a bot farm on any website that supports IPv6.
 
https://communityfibre.co.uk/legal-stuff#consumer

3.11 We will, where necessary, allocate you a phone numbers and IP addresses for use with the Services, which may be reallocated, withdrawn or changed by us at any time. If we are required to reallocate, withdraw or change any number allocated to you, we shall use our reasonable endeavours to notify you with as much notice as is practicable. For all our home broadband services below 3000Mbps speed we use Carrier Grade Nat (CGN) technology to make efficient use of IPv4 addresses. Port forwarding is not possible through CGN and there are a tiny number of specialist use cases that might require this, typically to enable a direct connection from outside your home LAN to a service that you are running on it. If you want to make use of port forwarding then you will need to purchase or upgrade to our 3000Mbps home broadband services or any of our business broadband services.
 
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