World IPv6 Day is here, and with it many ISPs, websites and
manufacturers are now supporting IPv6, the next generation network
protocol of the internet.
For many users, though, the questions of what, when and why still await answers.
Everyone in networking knows that they should be switching to IPv6. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) realized that in 1994, when it predicted that IPv4’s 4.3 billion addresses wouldn’t be enough.
Its answer was IPv6. With its 128-bit address space it can have up to
2^128 addresses — that’s 40,282,366,920 billion billion billion usable
addresses. Even an interstellar internet won’t run out of numbers any
time soon.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the regional internet registries (RIRs) in charge of parceling out IP addresses are down to their last old-style IPv4 addresses. Indeed, the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) ran out of IPv4 addresses
in April 2011. RIPE NCC, Europe’s RIR, will be the next to run out
sometime in August. In North America, the last IPv4 address will be
assigned in June 2013.
That will be the end of the road for new IPv4 addresses. Technologies
like Network Address Translation (NAT) and Classless Inter-Domain
Routing (CIDR) that let us run multiple devices behind a single IP
address have won us some time, but while neither NAT nor CIDR will be
going away soon, they can’t delay the IPv4 famine any longer.
Not so straightforward
Yet a straightforward switchover can’t happen because IPv4 and IPv6
aren’t compatible protocols. Dual network stacks that support both
protocols will be necessary for the foreseeable future.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet and the man who takes responsibility for IPv4’s “inadequate” number of addresses, told CNET News’s Stephen Shankland in an interview
that he’d “hoped for much earlier implementation [of IPv6]. “It would
have been so much easier. But people had not run out of IPv4 and NAT
boxes were around (ugh), so the delay is understandable but inexcusable.
It is still going to take time to get everyone on board,” Cerf said.
Another reason why IPv6 adoption has been so slow is the classic
chicken-and-egg problem of which comes first, the technology or the
users.
As Bob Hinden, co-inventor of IPv6 and a fellow with Check Point,
the network security company, explains: “The problem that IPv6 solves
is it provides a larger IP address space than IPv4. However, no one gets
the full benefit of IPv6 deployment until everyone supports it. There
was little incentive for organizations to adopt IPv6 as long as they
could still get IPv4 addresses.
“In essence, organizations delayed investing in IPv6 until they
absolutely had to. However, the pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses is
close to being exhausted with the last block of free IPv4 addresses
assigned on January 2011. IPv4 addresses are now much harder to get for
most enterprises, and large blocks needed by ISPs are close to
impossible to obtain. So now, organizations are waking up to the need to
deploy IPv6, and we’re seeing wider acceptance.”
Who’s on board IPv6 today?
How much wider acceptance of IPv6 is there really? Craig Sprosts,
general manager of Fixed Broadband Solutions at Nominum, a network
services company in Redwood City, California, has these findings from a
survey of 67 ISPs, providing internet service to over 110 million US
households. Nominum’s survey “found that 97 percent of these companies
have implemented or plan to implement IPv6; 23 percent have already done
so, 35 percent plan to do so this year and 39 percent plan to do so in
2013 or later”.
That sounds good, and there has been growth in IPv6 traffic. Hurricane Electric,
an IPv6 ISP and backbone provider with a claimed 58.6 percent of the
world’s IPv6 networks, states that IPv6 internet traffic has grown over
150 percent since 2011’s Global IPv6 Day.
No one gets the full benefit of IPv6 deployment until everyone supports it. There was little incentive for organizations to adopt IPv6 as long as they could still get IPv4 addresses.
– Bob Hinden
On the other hand, Burt Kaliski, CTO of VeriSign (operator of the root DNS [Domain Name Service] servers and the .com and .net registries) says that while IPv6 DNS traffic has tripled over the last year, “we’re not seeing a significant increase in the percentage of transactions carried over IPv6 for .com and .net and it has been relatively flat over the last year”.
No matter how you measure it, IPv6 traffic is still a tiny fraction of the global internet traffic.
Indeed, Leslie Daigle, chief internet technology officer of the Internet Society,
confirms that the goal for World IPv6 Day was to provide only one
percent of users with IPv6 access. This “is enough traffic to
demonstrate that access providers are well advanced in their actual
deployment plans. With that, and the fact that content providers are
turning on IPv6 and leaving it on for this year’s challenge, we have the
basis for our statement that: this time it’s for real; after June 6
2012, IPv6 is the new normal for Internetworking”.
Why only one percent? It’s because the Internet Society knows most
people aren’t ready yet. Daigle explains: “The goal is to reach one
percent by June. In many cases, users may need to upgrade or replace
hardware and software, such as operating systems or home routers, to use
IPv6. Over time, as users upgrade, IPv6 adoption will increase without
any changes in the ISP’s service or equipment.”
So why should you upgrade?
With less than one percent of internet connectivity, you may not find the case for upgrading to IPV6 compelling.
Yet, while the traffic may not be there yet, major websites are
moving to dual-stack network solutions. Erik Nygren, chief architect for
Akamai, a content delivery network (CDN) company, says: “Akamai has
IPv6-enabled over 50 major websites belonging to over 20 of the world’s
largest web companies that participated in last year’s World IPv6 Day
event. The company anticipates traffic levels will continue to increase
as more customer sites dual-stack in the period following this year’s
World IPv6 Launch where over one-third of the top 30 registered sites by Aklexa rank will be using some of Akamai’s IPv6 services.”
Nygren continues: “As of May 18 of this year, over 700 US government
sites across 21 agencies were permanently dual-stacked using Akamai’s
services as the company continues to help their customers meet the US federal government mandate (PDF) requiring all public-facing government sites to be enabled for IPv6 by the end of September 2012.”
With Facebook, Google and Yahoo also moving to IPv6 there will be
sites that IPv6-enabled users can reach. Of course, they’ll still be
able to reach them by IPv4 as well. As Sampa Choudhuri, a Cisco small
business marketing manager, recently blogged, “Your current network running IPv4-based devices won’t be obsolete for some time.”
However, as John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry
for Internet Numbers (ARIN), North America’s RIR, explains: “World IPv6
Launch Day is a lot larger than people understand. IPv6 is the single
largest upgrade in the history of the internet. It’s not a small
decision for the major content providers to turn on IPv6 and leave it
on. Going forward, internet users will be forced to go through
transition gateways to reach businesses that do not similarly upgrade by
adding IPv6 connectivity, with the result being slower connections and
services for their customers.”
Those transaction gateways, which slow down traffic, already exist.
Alain Fiocco, Cisco’s Senior Pv6 Program Director, says, “For a
real-world example of IPv6’s impact on business-to-consumer services,
look to online banking. While a common web service, online banking is
actually a complex application that, delivered through IPv4, is bogged
down jumping translation hurdles to reach an IPv6 household. Therefore,
an IPv4 bank risks losing customers [that] consider a speedy, complex
and rich online experience an integral part of the business
relationship.”
For businesses working with other businesses, Fiocco thinks the need
is even greater. “Other industries — particularly in B2B — don’t have a
choice. Manufacturing companies with partners in IPv4-exhausted regions
(eg, China, Vietnam) have already made the switch,” he says.
Tom Coffeen, IPv6 evangelist for InfoBlox, a US network services
company, agrees. “Given the exhaustion of IPv4 in Asia (with Europe to
follow in a few weeks) many newly connected (and all future) internet
users will be requesting content from IPv6-enabled devices,” he says.
“Companies are becoming more aware of the risk to competitive advantage
brought on by failing to make their public-facing (ie, internet
available) content over IPv6. As a result, the logical scope of IPv6
adoption for most companies will be to get their content online via
IPv6.
Increased customer loyalty, higher network efficiency and reduced costs can all be powerful byproducts of the IPv6 transition.
– Craig Sprosts, Nominum
“Specifically, for many organizations this will mean configuring one
or more web servers with IPv6,” Coffeen continues. “In most cases this
will be done on the same servers that currently support IPv4, leading to
a ‘dual-stack’ configuration. Of course, the supporting network
segment, router and/or firewall will need to support IPv6 as well.
Companies that rely on web hosting or a CDN will need to make sure those
service providers support IPv6.”
Besides, as Nominum’s Sprosts notes, since “the transition from IPv4
to IPv6 is a necessity to keep the internet running and growing” you
might as well make the best of it. “Operators, content providers and
enterprises should not ignore the powerful business benefits associated
with the ‘new’ internet. Things like increased customer loyalty, higher
network efficiency and reduced costs can all be powerful byproducts of
the IPv6 transition,” Sprosts says.
In short, there are business reasons for starting your IPv6 move.
When should you upgrade?
“When? That’s the 2^128-address question,” says Cisco’s Fiocco. “As
more and more consumers switch to IPv6 — AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner
and other service providers now bring new households online via IPv6 as a
matter of course — it would make sense for businesses to provide
services and content via IPv6 sooner rather than later.”
Owen DeLong, Hurricane Electric’s IPv6 evangelist, agrees. “The
sooner you start, the better you can plan/prepare. Plan on adding IPv6
to your existing capabilities and maintaining dual-stack for several
years.” He also warns, “Expect to have to touch everything in your
network.” That isn’t easy.
Security in particular needs careful consideration, with IPv6 adding a
whole new interface to the internet to manage and monitor.
As Chris Smithee, Strategic Solutions Architect with Lancope, a
network performance and security company, explains: “For those looking
to transition from IPv4 to IPv6, it is important to know that it does
not happen with a flip of a switch. There are certain steps that need to be taken to guarantee success during the switch.”
Smithee continues: “To start the transition, many may decide to run
dual-stack networks, which allow for the operation of both IPv4 and IPv6
environments across the same hardware, ensuring no disruption to
service delivery. During this process, it is paramount that
organizations implement network monitoring technologies.
“Technologies like flow-based monitoring and other network monitoring
tools allow IT professionals to gain visibility into upgrade points and
observe application behavior. Though many organizations may not see the
IPv6 light, it has never been more important to make the switch, in
tandem with using available technologies, to preserve the integrity and
security of today’s computing infrastructure.”
That also means making sure your network equipment vendors can
deliver the goods. Chris Crotteau, senior technical engineer at Network
Hardware Resale, US-based sellers of second-hand network gear, warns:
“Describing a device as IPv6 capable does not necessarily imply that the
unit has the needed IPv6 features called for by any particular
deployment; that a device can process IPv6 traffic at the same rate as
IPv4 traffic; or that the system has sufficient resources available to
simultaneously process IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.”
Though many organizations may not see the IPv6 light, it has never been more important to make the switch.
– Chris Smithee, Lancope
Fiocco, however, suggests that your equipment may be up to the job.
“If you bought edge routers or security devices within the last
three-four years, saddling up for IPv6 is probably as easy as a software
update.” Otherwise, you’re looking at a refresh of your IT
infrastructure.
So, according to Fiocco, “The bottom line: if your client is on IPv6,
it’s in your business’s best interest to switch. And with AT&T
alone projecting five million [US] households [on IPv6] by the end of
2012, alongside explosive 4G growth, chances are many clients and
consumers are getting there, if they are not already.”
While IPv6 may still be a trickle today, it’s soon going to be a flood, and the sooner you start making the change the better.
Remember, we really are almost out of IPv4 addresses, and by 2013,
most new internet services and websites in Asia, Europe and North
America will be only reachable by IPv6.
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