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Community Fibre CGNat

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.
You also need to take into account all the services that won't work in IPv6. For instance vulnerability scanners have been able to scan the whole IPv4 IP space for decades now. This will no longer be possible in IPv6 since the IP space is too big.
 
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where necessary, allocate you a phone numbers and IP addresses for use with the Services, which may be reallocated, withdrawn or changed by us at any time.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.

Previous T&Cs said, seems to have been changed on 1st July:

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 500Mbps 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 one of our faster than 500Mbps home broadband services, or any of our business broadband services.
 
It is quite a drastic change but I get why they’ve done in, what with the significant price reduction on the 1Gbps package and the rationalisation of speed offerings. It is such a shame that static IPs aren’t even offered as a cost option on the residential packages.

I’m not impacted at the moment but I’d resent paying a sizeable price jump to 3gbps with the only benefit to me being a dynamic IP.

I’m not a gamer, so the sorts of implications they face aren’t an issue for me. For me, it’s the inability to initiate a VPN and access my home CCTV. I considered using IPv6 with OpenVPN to initiate an IPv4 tunnel but that only works if the ISP I’m initiating the remote connection from supports IPv6. This certainly isn’t the case for 3 and I know most other mobile networks don't support v6.

It really is a shame that we’re actively starting to feel the implications of a lack of IPv6 maturity across service providers. I get that not all hosted services are IPv6 ready but it is a real blocker when the ISPs aren’t able to facilitate the connection in the first place.
 
Two Openreach "engineers" came and couldn't solve the problem. It took me two minutes to disable IPV6 in the router and to confirm all devices were now working properly.
Openreach engineers typically aren't asked by the ISP to look at the endusers equipment, only to look at the connection to the providers kit in the exchange.

The ISPs tech support staff should be aiding thier users is correctly configuring thier network. I think disabling IPv6 should be a last and not first resort, although I can see it being a useful debugging step
 
Openreach engineers typically aren't asked by the ISP to look at the endusers equipment, only to look at the connection to the providers kit in the exchange.

The ISPs tech support staff should be aiding thier users is correctly configuring thier network. I think disabling IPv6 should be a last and not first resort, although I can see it being a useful debugging step
The two Openreach engineers were on the phone with the tech support person and their supervisor. And while I agree that generally Openreach engineers don't know much about internet connectivity I don't really agree that's good. Customers pay for an internet connection to browse the internet, watch streaming services, play games, etc. If the connection can't do that then the person connecting the equipment should have basic troubleshooting skills to resolve these issues. However we all know how the world goes. Companies pay peanuts, don't train people enough, don't give them enough tools so customer service suffers. Among the two Openreach engineers neither of them had a laptop to test the connection nor they had a replacement router to test. Really poor. They did however tested using their own smartphone which displayed the same issues when connected to the house wifi. My neighbour also had my wifi details (as I accidentally cut his FTTP cable a month ago!) so he was able to show the engineers that on my wifi his laptops and phones could browse the internet fine but as soon as he switched to his BT wifi it wouldn't work. Disabling IPv6 might sound drastic but the two times I did it it solved the problem so I putting it at the top of my list.
 
FYI for anyone following this, I contacted their support on Wednesday 6th and although it took them till today and I had to chase up multiple times they did remove CGNat from my account, so it is possible if you are presistent and nice to their tech support team.
 
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FYI for anyone following this, I contacted their support on Wednesday 6th and although it took them till today and I had to chase up multiple times they did remove CGNat from my account, so it is possible if you are presistent and nice to their tech support team.
Nice to know, but it might not always end up like this as obviously they are limiting the number of IPv4s they use so they must have a limited supply...
 
Nice to know, but it might not always end up like this as obviously they are limiting the number of IPv4s they use so they must have a limited supply...
yes i agree, but I personally believe they will make all their packages CGNat and just make a public IP a service they charge extra for, this is the norm in other countries so i think they will follow this model.
 
You also need to take into account all the services that won't work in IPv6. For instance vulnerability scanners have been able to scan the whole IPv4 IP space for decades now. This will no longer be possible in IPv6 since the IP space is too big.
Which is also a security advantage, as its impossible to scan IPv6 looking for vulnerabilities or drive by looking for open ports. Plus client devices are using throw away IPv6 addresses which keep changing.

My firewall never logs any intrusion attempts over IPv6. IPv4 well that's another story, the address is constantly probed and pinged.

The issue with IPv6 addresses changing is a reason I think some websites haven't turned on IPv6 as they lose the ability to track the fairly static or completely static IPv4 address. For example the domain bbc.co.uk is IPv6 up and running and has been for some time, but www.bbc.co.uk isn't.
 
I don't think that's
The issue with IPv6 addresses changing is a reason I think some websites haven't turned on IPv6 as they lose the ability to track the fairly static or completely static IPv4 address.
I don't think that's the reason.

For tracking purposes, the first 64 bits of your IPv6 address maps pretty closely to your (single) IPv4 address. It identifies your home network.

IPv6 reveals more details about you: different IPv6 addresses are likely different devices, at least over short periods of time, whereas with IPv4 all they see are different TCP/UDP port numbers for every connection (each of which could be from any device on your LAN)
 
Previous T&Cs said, seems to have been changed on 1st July:

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 500Mbps 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 one of our faster than 500Mbps home broadband services, or any of our business broadband services.
Hi,

Would it be possible to leave a link to that updated condition? Cannot find it!

Thanks
Fabio
 
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I'm on the 1GB package and port forwarding was working for me until they did an upgrade last night which I'm guessing was to enable the CGNAT in my area. I do rate CF's customer service but this was very poorly communicated, I didn't receive any emails or similar indicating that this change was happening and I'm quite reliant on the port forwarding for multiple services I have running at my home.
 
I'm on the 1GB package and port forwarding was working for me until they did an upgrade last night which I'm guessing was to enable the CGNAT in my area. I do rate CF's customer service but this was very poorly communicated, I didn't receive any emails or similar indicating that this change was happening and I'm quite reliant on the port forwarding for multiple services I have running at my home.
Oh this is very bad news. I'll be very unhappy if this happens to me. They've been an excellent company so far, forcing a 100% price rise for a public IP is a really horrible thing to do.
 
@UnhappiestCustomer

On the assumption you are in a contract period that started before 1st July I would phone up and complain.

It's a significant change to the service you contracted and breaks things you do.

If they don't budge, my question to Community Fibre would be "how much would they like to take off my monthly bill to reflect the reduced functionality?".

It is useful to all if people make a fuss over the public IP address question.

Personally I would be prepared to pay something for a public IP address option but having to buy the 3Gb/s package exceeds what I consider a reasonable premium.

Edit:

One other thought, I assume it isn't just that your public IP address that has changed, and your router now gets a 100.xxx.xxx.xxx address.
 
Quick update on this.
I called Community Fibre yesterday morning and said I was unhappy with the lack of communication around the change. They called me back today and confirmed that they've moved me back over to a proper public IP and gave me next month free as a goodwill gesture!
So, I'm glad to report that their customer service is still top notch!
 
Quick update on this.
I called Community Fibre yesterday morning and said I was unhappy with the lack of communication around the change. They called me back today and confirmed that they've moved me back over to a proper public IP and gave me next month free as a goodwill gesture!
So, I'm glad to report that their customer service is still top notch!
You got lucky. Others have not been so fortunate. I guess it depends on the willingness of the customer rep.
 
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@UnhappiestCustomer

A positive outcome (for now at least).

Accepting that you should get the service you contracted for (at least for the period of the contract) is the correct response.

The potential problem comes at the end of the contract but Community Fibre's offers have been subject to considerable change so it's hard to know what the position will be in the future.
 
I do wonder what percentage of their customer base would be affected by this. I'd guess less than 5% of customers use portforwarding so I'm guessing the vast majority don't notice. I wouldn't be surprised if they rectify the issue for anyone who complains.
 
I've just switched from Virgin Media (I was happy with them, apart from the price) to Community Fibre 1Gb yesterday (18/10/2023) - Today i have discovered that the VPN service i run off my own router isnt working.

This is really frustrating as i didn't know moving to CF would bring such a downgrade!

Like others have mentioned, i have no need for 3Gb (nor do i want to pay the extra for it), but i'll trying giving their support a call in the morning. I'm still well within the 60day satisfaction period, so might be heading back to Virgin Media if this can't be resolved.
 
I put a call into CF this morning, the initial tech support rep wasn't too helpful and basically said all i can do is put you through to cancellations. I spoke with the cancellations and they have a dedicated team for CGNAT / Dynamic IP issues.

A few hours pass and i get an email from CF confirming they've moved me onto a Dynamic IP and my VPN is up and running again! Happy to report i'll be staying with CF and not switching back to VM.
 
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