Are You Ready for IPv6?

A lot has happened in the world of IPv6. This article reviews the features of IPv6, examines the current state of IPv6 world-wide, the impact that it will have on businesses in Europe and most importantly, how its affects the key business decisions that you should be making now.

Firstly what is IPv6? The current Internet Protocol (IP) is version 4. It underpins everything that we do on the Internet. The vast majority of business network applications also use IP and associated protocols. IP is over twenty years old and it is showing its age. Designed for networks with thousands of nodes it only has 4 billion addresses of which maybe 500 million can realistically be used. Today the Internet has over 350 million hosts and this figure has been doubling every nine months. Given that the world has a population of over 6 billion people and everything from cars, to phones, to televisions to light switches is being IP enabled it is not surprising that there is a shortage of addresses. Indeed, had it not been for a number of fixes the Internet would have already run out of addresses. Additionally, IPv4 has no security, no mobility, limited quality of service and performance issues; there is clear room for improvement.

It is easy to think that the Internet has survived this far and that nothing really needs doing. Unfortunately, this ignores the stark reality of the situation. The Internet has been living on borrowed time for many years. Without the significant intervention that was taken with the introduction of CIDR (Classless Inter Domain Routing), NAT (Network Address Translation), the dynamic allocation of addresses and Proxy services, the Internet would have ceased to operate and grow years ago. It is only through these techniques that address depletion has been slowed down and the backbone routing table growth has been constrained.

The problem is that these techniques can only do so much. NAT is in fact a bodge that breaks the end-to-end connectivity of the Internet. NAT, whilst essential at present, stops you using very desirable functions and applications (e.g. IP Security, Mobile IP, Voice over IP - VoIP and IP Video on Demand), and NAT is an extra layer of complexity in the network. Organisations find the growing use of private addresses and NAT increasingly complex to manage. Even with these techniques address space is going to run out and routing tables are again exploding in size. In addition to this, attractive new applications cannot operate without global IP addresses and some of the features that IPv4 lacks.

Enter the solution - IPv6. IPv6 has 128 bit addresses, giving 3402823669209384624633744607431768211456 unique addresses. With IPv6 there is no need to use the address fixes bolted onto IPv4. Along with solving the address problem, IPv6 also includes significant enhancements such as, security, mobility, quality of service and improved performance.

Let’s look at the status of IPv6 world-wide

Address space has continued to be depleted. Some regions of the world were allocated fewer IPv4 addresses than others, so the most populous part of the world (Asia-Pacific) was allocated the smallest amount of the remaining IP addresses (2%, compared with 5% for the Americas and 4% for Europe). Some countries in Asia-Pacific have virtually run out of addresses already. Others are close. This year the European Union predicted that address space in Europe would become critical in 2005. This is despite the fact that the new applications demanding global IP addresses have not yet taken off.

One key IPv6 application is 3G mobile services. In Japan a high-bandwidth IP based mobile service called i-mode has turned out to be highly successful. In Europe 3G services began in 2002. Some will use the i-mode business model. As IPv6 is a standard component of 3G, IPv6 networks are being built to support 3G. Since these networks will need to communicate with the IPv4 Internet many IPv4 addresses will be required and this is likely to further the address depletion in Europe.

Over the recent years countries have made policy decisions mandating IPv6, specifically Korea and Japan. In these countries early deployment of IPv6 within large companies has now progressed to a general deployment to residential and business users. Japan and Korea have set a mandatory deadline for IPv6 adoption of 2004. There is a high level of awareness of the need to move to IPv6. Indeed, Sony president Nobuyuki Idei stated that "all Sony products hereafter will be made IPv6-compliant".

A couple of years ago network equipment vendors and operating system manufacturers were providing a mixture of development and commercial IPv6 products. Now almost all of them have released commercial IPv6 versions of their products. IPv6 now comes as standard with versions of Unix, Cisco IOS, Linux, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. And to save costs, IPv6 stacks can be added to many existing operating systems (including Windows 2000 and Windows 98). In the main this means that implementing IPv6 with new products or upgrades is a no-cost-option. It also means that IPv6 ready equipment and software is being installed by default.

Over recent months there has been a move from a pure research IPv6 Internet, based mainly around the 6Bone, to a live commercial network. This is reflected in the number of Top-Level-Aggregate prefixes assigned. In a short time the number of official TLAs overtook the 6Bone pTLAs. You can now go to RIPE and request IPv6 address space. Commercial use of IPv6 is increasing world-wide and in Europe. The 6bone is now considered redundant as the IPv6 is now a live, and therefore the 6bone is to be retired and decommissioned.

IPv6 ISPs are appearing not just in Japan but also here in Europe. Many ISPs are IPv6 enabled and are beginning to provide a service to end-users. Some are even going so far as to build large IPv6 networks. Skanova have built a large IPv6 network for Telia. The key reasons Telia gave for building an IPv6 network were the increased address space, new services (such as VoIP and IP Video) and the option to drop NAT.

In previous years Microsoft has been encouraging developers to use the IPv6 stack shipped with Windows XP to migrate their applications to IPv6. Microsoft includes with the stack core IPv6 applications, Internet Explorer, Network Monitor, Telnet client and server, FTP client, File and Print Sharing (SMB/CIFS), WebDAV client and IP based printing (LPR). Last year Microsoft released .NET with IPv6 support. Key applications such as IIS, Outlook, Terminal Server are now IPv6 enabled. Microsoft is encouraging the general installation and use of IPv6 on Windows XP ("Install IPv6 support in XP and begin using" - IPv6 Global Summit Madrid, March 2002).

What should your organisation be doing about IPv6 in 2003? Well the first and most obvious step is to ensure that you have some level of understanding of what IPv6 is and the impact it will have on your business. In order to do this you need someone within your business that is able to make that judgement. They will need an understanding of IPv6 or the help of an external consultancy such as Erion Ltd (www.erion.co.uk) knowledgeable in IPv6.

Once you have an understanding of how IPv6 will impinge on your business you need to prepare yourself. This will take many forms depending on the type of business. For example, if you are involved in 3G you will certainly need to implement IPv6. If you connect to countries where IPv6 is mandated then you need to look at implementing IPv6 now. For others, your priority will be to make sure that your purchasing decisions take IPv6 into consideration and do not preclude its implementation at a later date.

For many the next step will be to create an IPv6 pilot. This will allow your IT staff to check they have the necessary skills and it will help you evaluate how IPv6 will impact your systems and applications. A pilot may include one or more hosts converted to IPv6. Initially these will be connected to the IPv6 network via an IPv6 tunnel. Staff should then configure standard network services. Particular attention should be paid to areas which are new or changed with IPv6, for example new resource records and features in DNS. Once this is all working, business applications should be configured and tested over IPv6, or failing this, using one of the many compatibility features of IPv6.

One of the strengths of IPv6 is its large range of features designed to ease the migration from IPv4 to IPv6. These migration techniques allow for some level of inter-operability between the two protocols. Most importantly, they make it possible to implement IPv6 piece-meal, one host at a time. IPv4 applications can run on IPv6 hosts and IPv6 applications can run on IPv4 hosts. This flexibility greatly reduces the impact of migrating to IPv6. Unfortunately, this flexibility does mean that you have many complex options to choose from. You will need to choose the correct solutions for your environment.

If your business carries out software development, careful consideration will need to be given to making your code IPv6 compatible. The good news is that this process is well understood and does not preclude using IPv6 or IPv4. There are a number of tools that can be used to analyse IPv4 code and provide guidance on rewriting it for use with IPv6. Typically, the main changes that need to be made are to update any data structures containing addresses and to use a small number of new Socket (or WinSock) functions. It is good practice to begin using these new functions even if you are not migrating to IPv6. The key point to note here is that there is very little to stop software being migrated to IPv6 as it can still run on IPv4 platforms after it has been migrated.

Whilst IPv6 has been designed to be easy to implement and easy to migrate to, it is important to remember that it is different from IPv4 and that it does contain many complex new features. Therefore, there will be a real need for staff to be trained in the implementation and operation of IPv6. One of the few companies providing comprehensive IPv6 training, covering all aspects of the protocol across Windows, Cisco, Linux and UNIX is Erion Ltd (www.erion.co.uk).

In conclusion, a lot has happened with IPv6 in the last few years. The move from research to deployment has happened. Are you ready?

About The Author

Dr David Holder (MIEEE, AMIEE), is a Director of Erion Ltd, UK based IPv6 training and consultancy specialists. Erion have the widest range of IPv6 training currently available, covering Windows, Cisco, Linux and Unix (see www.erion.co.uk). He can be contacted through david.holder@erion.co.uk.