We are announcing our plan to begin deploying IPv6 to our XFINITY INTERNET customers. Initially this is in a limited area of California (Pleasanton), but will soon expand to other areas of our network that have been part of our IPv6 technical trials.

No. We are continuing to provide an IPv4 address to each customer and are now additionally providing IPv6 addresses; this approach is referred to as Native Dual Stack. IPv4 will remain as-is while IPv6 is introduced. Based on our testing and industry best practices, this model will offer the greatest flexibility and seamlessness during the IPv6 transition.

In our first phase of deployment, we will enable IPv6 on selected standalone computers. This is the case when a customer has just one computer, and where that computer is plugged directly into a cable modem. We will begin with a small number of DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem models (see those modems noted as IPv6-ready at mydeviceinfo.comcast.net), which will expand over time. However, Comcast does not directly enable IPv6 functionality on end user systems as this depends upon the capabilities of that computer's operating system. The current major consumer operating systems capable of this are Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).

No. However, you can disable IPv6 on your system (see the next FAQ).

Yes, IPv6 can be disabled on your computer. Please refer to your operating system documentation for instructions on how to do this. Please note that operating system vendors typically do not recommended disabling IPv6.

We will allocate a single IPv6 address (/128), since we know that only a single device is connecting, with no additional need to sub-net. We plan to continue to assess address allocation policies as we deploy, particularly given how very new IPv6 is from an operational standpoint globally.

Comcast is planning to begin pilot market deployment of IPv6 home networking support in the near future.

No, not at this time. We are using Native Dual Stack, which means a customer gets both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses simultaneously. As a result no tunneling or Network Address Translation (NAT) is necessary. We believe this approach offers meaningful performance benefits to our customers compared to the alternatives.

This is the first phase of our IPv6 deployment. As with any pilot market deployment of new technology, it is possible that a technical issue may arise which causes us to delay our next steps or even to temporarily disable IPv6 in existing pilot markets. Assuming no issues are encountered, we will expand to additional CMTSs in our network. This will most likely happen first in those areas where we have already been conducting IPv6 trials. At the same time, we will be working to expand the number of eligible cable modem models that can support IPv6. In a subsequent phase we will enable customers with home gateway devices to use IPv6, but we are not yet prepared to commit to a date for doing so since this will, in part, depend upon how the first phase of our pilot market deployment proceeds.

 

Yes. Our DNS servers, both authoritative and caching, support IPv6 today in our network. The servers can send and receive queries for IPv6 records (AAAA) and can communicate over IPv6 to end-users. The IPv6 addresses for our DNS recursive resolvers (which customers use for DNS lookups) are 2001:558:FEED::1 and 2001:558:FEED::2.

 

It is possible that your computer or device operating system was created in such a way that some critical system information was duplicated via the computer manufacturer. This information is essential to how Comcast provisions IPv6 capable devices. Computers or devices where this information was incorrectly duplicated will be unable to complete the IPv6 provisioning process required to acquire an IPv6 address and configuration information. This is also known as DHCPv6, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6. The information that is duplicated is called DHCPv6 DHCP Unique Identifier (DUID) and is intended to uniquely identify individual computer systems or devices. Please refer to RFC3315 (www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3315.txt) for detailed technical information. Microsoft has published information that provides an explanation for this issue as well:

support.microsoft.com/kb/2711727

Microsoft has released updates in November 2012 for Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems, which automatically detects and corrects this condition. By default, these updates should already have been installed on your computer.

The following provides more details:
Windows 7 –
support.microsoft.com/kb/2763523

Windows 8 –
support.microsoft.com/kb/2770917

In order to use Tomato USB firmware with Comcast’s native IPv6 implementation, a few changes will be required.  There is currently a bug in the IPv6-capable builds from Toastman and Shibby that adds an erroneous default route for IPv6.

In order to use IPv6 with Comcast’s network, you need to enable the correct mode.  Go to Basics -> IPv6 in the left panel.  Then, selecet DHCPv6 with Prefix Delegation as the IPv6 Service Type.  Make sure Enable Router Advertisements and Accept RA from WAN are both checked.  Click Save.

The workaround for the IPv6 default route bug involves adding a custom script into the WAN Up section.  More information is available at www.dslreports.com/forum/r27239063-TomatoUSB-and-Comcast-IPv6-bugs-found  if you would like to read the details.  Thank you to koitsu from DSLReports for this fix.

 

Go to Administration -> Scripts from the left menu.  Select the WAN Up tab.  Copy and paste the following directly into the text box:

# Workaround for TomatoUSB bug where a spurious default IPv6 route is

# added for no justified reason, resulting in packets getting forwarded

# effectively to /dev/null.

#

# 1. Temporarily disable accepting IPv6 RAs on the WAN interface.  This

#    will stop the kernel from automatically adding a default IPv6 route

#    when such an RA is received via the WAN.

# 2. Delete ALL default IPv6 routes.  In effect this deletes the spurious

#    IPv6 default route, as well as any default IPv6 routes received via RA.

#    Sadly the "ip" command does not give you a way to differentiate between

#    the two, since the one we truly want to delete lacks "proto kernel".

# 3. Restore honouring IPv6 RAs via the WAN.  Within 60-120 seconds (often

#    within seconds on Comcast) a default IPv6 route should be added by the

#    kernel.  You can use "ip -6 route show default dev `nvram get wan_iface`"

#    to verify; you should have only one route ("default via fe80::xxx ...").

#

# www.dslreports.com/forum/r27234575-TomatoUSB-and-Comcast-IPv6-bugs-found

#

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/`nvram get wan_iface`/accept_ra

ip -6 route flush default dev `nvram get wan_iface`

echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/`nvram get wan_iface`/accept_ra 

 

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Click Save.  Go to Restart on the left panel and restart the device.