The IPv6 Challenges: Part 1
Part 1: The Journey
IPv6 is finally a reality.
The adoption is growing and the last barrier seems to be falling.
Our fears and doubts were the walls that delayed the protocol from taking over the world. And I think that this barrier is about to be no more.
In this series about IPv6, we will look at the challenges that IPv6 is facing in Corporations, Internet Providers and mainly with Network Professionals.
Good old habits are keeping us from embracing the future. We want it, but we are afraid to let go of what we held dear for decades. We grew up with IPv4 and it’s part of our identity as network professionals.
What is holding us back from boarding in the IPv6 ship?
- We are afraid to change
192.168.0.1 says a lot for itself. It belongs to the most used subnet around the globe and most likely that even your mother has, at least once, typed it in a browser to access a router configuration. We grew, professionally and personally, with IPv4. We learned Network alongside IPv4. We came here holding hands and it feels weird to replace it, even if we knew all along that this day would come. - We can’t bring the IPv4 concepts to IPv6
Most of the network analysts want to bring IPv4 concepts to IPv6.
It’s our comfort food. We know what to expect and that makes us confident, but we are making a huge mistake. We should understand what the protocol is trying to do and push as hard as we can.
Now let’s dive in on a few features and see the way that IPv6 tackles the challenges and how it approaches the same issues that IPv4 did back in its days. Let’s look at a few.
a) Stateful DHCP.
One of the main concepts of IPv6 is auto-configuration. Making the good and old DHCP kind obsolete. But we now use Stateless DHCP providing a DNS server and letting the host figure out its IP address on its own. No need to keep records of leases and renewing it from time to time.
b) NAT
Nat is giving IPv4 a slow death and many of us are not ready to let go. Its concepts are too deep within us. We think about network design and NAT is there in the boundary of our LAN. It’s there between the inside and the outside world. So let me ask you…
c) Public IP’s for every host?
Are we willing to do it? Are they secure enough? Do we feel comfortable?
Does the network analyst knows how to deal with hosts with multiple addresses? But this was essential when IPv4(and the Internet) was born, but the size (and impact) of the Internet were miscalculated.
IPv6 is giving us a second chance. And this time we have to do it right.
c) Subnetting for hosts
We don’t need to be cheap. Not anymore! Don’t go beyond the bit 64. Stop there and do your subnetting in the network part. A /64 network holds 2 to the power of 64 hosts in a single network. Even if we are using 5 hosts in a SOHO. This is how an IPv6 network should be and it preserves concepts like, (as previously mentioned) auto-configuration, neighbour discovery, privacy extensions and many more that is very important to the “Internet of Things”.
And since we are on the subject. ISP’s shouldn’t provide corporations with /64. Common sense is that every corporation should receive a /48. This way we can respect IPv6 ideas and use public addresses without translations.
Let us wrap things up for now and take just a few moments to imagine a future. Predictions usually turn out very far from reality. But just hang in there for a few more lines.
Picture a high-tech world in a few hundred years from now, and a museum of Internet history having a functional network running an ancient Cisco Catalyst switch with 10Mbps Ethernet ports and IPv4. I hope someone curious enough will be there to glimpse of how this revolution was born.
We might not fully understand how the Internet will shape the world of our children, but IPv4 is an essential part of how this amazing thing called the INTERNET began.
Embracing the new is good, but not always easy the old things go.
Maybe there will never be another place like 127.0.0.1
In Part 2 we will take a look at specific ways to implement IPv6 in our Networks.
