IN FOCUS
Preparing for the Transition to IPv6 Addressing the Issues By Dirk Marichal, VP Europe, Infoblox
In February of this year, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) doled out the last remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses to the individual regional internet registries. This means it has no more addresses to hand out, so that once any regional registery has given out all its IPv4 addresses they won’t get any more. This is expected to happen this year in some cases, so a move to a next-generation networking protocol is needed. The IPv4 numbering system
IPv4 has been the backbone of Internet Protocol communication since the early days of the internet. Most people are familiar with its 12 digit addresses. But IPv4 addresses are running out, and a survey conducted by Infoblox suggests that most companies are not ready to make the transition to the next generation of IP addresses, IPv6. Companies must be ready to migrate, or get left behind.
allowed for up to four billion different addresses. Although this allowed for nearly everyone on the planet, it did not anticipate people having multiple devices – a PC, an SIP phone, a laptop, a smartphone, etc. – nor for the uptake of IT in worldwide developing countries. The adoption of IP based devices is booming. People never predicted that after 20 years, we would be running out of IP addresses, yet here we are. IPv6 is the next generation IP
technology, to scale the IP address space. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, meaning that it can support approximately 340 undecillion, or 3.4×10-
, addresses. A
considerable increase from 4 billion. So, IPv6 is the future. But is IPv4
just going to disappear? Not for some time. Internally, enterprises can keep running IPv4 for years. Everything that is related to the internal systems and the internal network can be kept on IPv4. The problem is that computers with IPv4 addresses cannot communicate with machines with IPv6 addresses. It’s bit like dialling the old phone number when the numbering system has been changed, except that the new addresses are very different in size and format, so the two addressing systems are incompatible. So when a company wants to face the internet, make connections and increase business volume, sooner or later it will need to make the move to IPv6.
Is IPv6 new?
IPv6 is not new. As early as 1994 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) saw the need for a better addressing system and started work on IPv6, publishing the basic protocol
46 NETCOMMS europe Volume I, Issue 6 2011
For a certain period of time, companies will face a hybrid situation, where everything facing the internet will be IPv6, and everything internal will use IPv4.
www.netcommseurope.com
in 1998. Since then they have been refining it and updating for things like mobile IPv6. Most operating systems – including
Apple Mac OS X, most versions of Microsoft Windows and most major Linux distributions – have already supported IPv6 addresses for a number of years. A lot of devices are already IPv6 ready to make them more future proof.
The transition
Although some enterprises may choose to migrate wholesale to IPv6 in one single move, for most, the transition will be far more gradual. As long as people are still using IPv4, it will be necessary to retain IPv4 functionality. Currently only around 5% of internet users are using IPv6, so people will be running IPv4 for a while; I assume it will be 3 to 6 years. But the steadily increasing pressure of the market to move to IPv6 for everything facing the internet will force companies to enter a hybrid world. For a certain period of time, they will
run both IP address bases in the same environment. For example, everything facing the internet will be IPv6, and everything internal will use IPv4. This means it will become imperative to look into solutions to manage this hybrid environment. Managing IPv4 is relatively easy, as addresses consist of only 12 digits. But IPv6 addresses are 32 digits long. Managing both systems in the same network is a much greater challenge, but an unavoidable one. It is unavoidable because it will
become a business need. Suppose, for example, you are a European company and one of your customers is based in Asia, and they decide to move to IPv6. If you want to make a connection with them, in order to do business – for example, connect to their CRM system or billing system – it will not be possible if they talk IPv6 and you talk IPv4. You need an intermediate layer of technology which will enable this communication. This technology comes in the form of a DNS 64 gateway, which translates DNS IPv4 to DNS IPv6. This forms part of what is
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