Fix6 – IPv6 News and info

This article is to explain what is IPv6, how does it differ from IPV4, what was the necessity to come up with IPv6, a basic IPv6 address and its compositions, some conventions of IPv6, some features of IPv6 and also the advantages of using IPv6 over IPv4.

What is IPv6 and what was the need for its introduction?

IPv6 is a new IP addressing scheme. It is set to replace the IPv4 IP addressing scheme that is currently in place. You should be familiar with 169.254.0.16 type of IP address which is essentially an IPv4 structure for an IP address with 32 bits (four sections of eight bits). The primary reason to bring in a new addressing scheme is because there is expected to be a shortage of the public IP addresses that is given to companies, web hosts and also individuals. While the current IPv4 address schemes can provide 17 million useful addresses (approximately), the new IPv6 format is expected to provide at least 18 trillion useful addresses.

More from excITingIP.com…

The European Commission recently set an IPv6 target adoption rate of 25 percent by 2010, and the chairman of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre predicted that all IPv4 addresses will be depleted by 2011, forcing wide-scale IPv6 adoption. In June 2008, the U.S. federal government requires that all its executive agencies add IPv6 to their network backbones. A number of Internet powerhouses, such as Google and Alta Vista, have now deployed IPv6 accessible websites. Operating systems, such as the latest versions of Microsoft Windows, include IPv6 support.

IPv6 boasts improved network reliability, lower costs and improved security in addition to its vastly expanded addressing and routing capabilities (achieved by increasing the address length from 32 to 128 bits). While the benefits of IPv6 are apparent, performance management will becomes inherently more difficult as a single IPv6 subnet is as large as the entire Internet today.

More from Security Park…

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has announced the publication of a special IPv6 edition of the Internet magazine, HotLINX, available for download now from the LINX website.

Current estimates are that there is as little as 11% remaining of the total number of IPv4 addresses, which could be exhausted in as little as two years. In contrast, IPv6 is an addressing scheme that uses 128 bits that allows for a total of 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses. However, while the advantages in making the transition from the current IPv4 infrastructure seem clear, it does require careful management to ensure that all elements of the move to IPv6 are transparent to end users. Key industry professional have beeen interviewed to offer their views on a range of IPv6 addressing issues and on what should be done to encourage a more rapid deployment of IPv6 in the future.

More from PR Log…

This week Command Information received the IPv6 Forum’s IPv6 Enabled/Ready WWW Logo!  Check out our IPv6 homepage to see it on our site, or take a look at the Validated List here: http://www.ipv6forum.com/ipv6_enabled/approval_list.php

From the IPv6 Forum, the purpose of the program is to “accelerate deployment of IPv6…” and to “increase user confidence by demonstrating that IPv6 is available now and is ready to be used.”

More from Command Information…

The first German IPv6 congress took place on May 28th & 29th in Frankfurt and was hosted by heise Netze, iX, and DE-CIX. Over 200 attendees, great presentations and tutorials made this congress a great success. The program included firsthand reports relevant to practical issues instead of marketing blurbs or general declarations of intent.

The keynote was given by Daniel Karrenberg who is the Chief Scientist at the RIPE NCC and ISOC Chairman. He explained that the most important reason to implement IPv6 now is not to increase security and to add features but it is all about solving the problem of the lack of remaining IPv4 address space.

For more, see DE-CIX News.

RIPE NCC is not allocating IPv4 addresses in the pace that I was anticipating. This has an interesting effect on the number of IPv4 addresses RIPE will have in their pool when the IANA pool gets depleted. If they continue to allocate in this low pace they will push their future allocations to IANA later and later. Soon they might overtake the questionable honor of being the last RIR to request an allocation from IANA. As we have an odd number of blocks in the IANA pool, the last allocations from IANA will only be 1 x /8. This will lower their pool at IANA depletion date and will in turn make RIPE the first region to run out of IPv4 addresses.

Furthermore, RIPE continues to allocate space from the 188/8 block. This block is in the various pool and was expected by everybody to be used by RIPE after the IANA pool gets depleted. The effect of the fact that they allocate from 188/8 is that RIPE will get depleted even earlier.

Consider this example. You are going on a hike with 4 friends and everybody gets a candy bar before they leave. An all you can eat buffet will be served the second day. After that the hikers will not get any more food until they reach the goal, three days away. When would you eat your candy bar? RIPE is eating their right now (on day one).

Google has begun preaching the wonders of IPv6 in the hope more awareness will help expedite the transition from the legacy IPv4 networks most people use today.

During a presentation at this year’s linux.conf.au in Hobart, senior Google software engineer Angus Lees recalled how Google’s IPv6 efforts started as a covert, hobbyist project about two years ago and has gained enough momentum that a AAAA record for google.com could be added to Google’s DNS in a year.

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[via NetworkWorld]

I wanted to post a few IPv6 updates since my last post.

The NTP pool project has been working to add IPv6 support for some time. This month, they’ve added partial IPv6 support. Hopefully by year’s end they’ll have full IPv6 support. Several OSes and NTP appliances already have IPv6 support, so there’s a fair bit of infrastructure that could support this now.

Speaking of NTP, the IETF’s NTP working group is working to define IPv6 NTP options for DHCPv6. The current draft of that spec has received some criticism, claiming that its redundant with the current SNTP option. I hope that is resolved at the next IETF meeting in a few months.

Speaking of DHCPv6, Microsoft has fixed several DHCPv6 bugs in the beta of Windows Server 2008 R2. This should significantly improve interoperability with Unix/Linux clients.

Several North American universities and R&E networks obtained IPv6 allocations in 2008. I pulled the list of allocations from ARIN and noticed some highlights:

* Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
* Bryant University
* Bucknell University
* CENIC
* California Institute of Technology
* California Polytechnic State University
* Florida LambdaRail
* Furman University
* George Mason University
* Louisiana State University
* Lousiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI)
* National Center for Supercomputing Applications
* New York University
* Oregon State University
* Rutgers University
* South Dakota Board of Regents
* Stanford University
* Tufts University
* University of Alaska
* University of California, Irvine
* University of California, Office of the President
* University of California, San Diego
* University of California, Santa Barbara
* University of California, Santa Cruz
* University of Illinois
* University of Iowa
* University of Nebraska-Lincoln
* University of Pennsylvania
* University of Pittsburgh
* University of South Florida
* University of Wisconsin Madison
* Wheaton College
* Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Several of these allocations are already in use.

Last week IANA processed a request to add AAAA records for one of the thirteen DNS root-servers.

L.root-servers.net, operated by ICANN, became the seventh of the root servers to have it’s IPv6 address records (AAAA) added into the DNS root-zone. The addition of IPv6 service is part of ICANN’s ongoing commitment to act as a leader in enabling IPv6 services throughout the DNS.

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[via ICANN Blog]

Hurricane Electric, an international IPv4 and IPv6 Internet backbone, has become the first network in the world to connect over 300 IPv6 networks. IPv4 addresses will run out by 2011. Hurricane Electric has been working diligently to move IPv6 into the forefront so this fact won’t become a crisis. As part of this forward thinking push, Hurricane Electric has been running dual-stack IPv6 and IPv4 at all its locations worldwide.

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[via MarketWatch]