We are two weeks away from the US IPv6 Summit 2004, which will be held December 7-10, 2004, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, in Reston, Virginia, just minutes east of Dulles Airport. We expect an outstanding group of IPv6 experts to be in attendance and networking vigorously to get ready to complete transition plans and start the Herculean effort to move the entire DoD, then the entire federal government, as well as the rest of US society and industry to IPv6. Attending the IPv6 Summit will get you up to speed on the people, the projects, the products, and the possibilities of using IPv6 to accomplish new breakthroughs in business, government and technology.

In this Special Edition, we are proud to present the first published summary by Dr. Charles (Chuck) Lynch, the Chief of the DoD IPv6 Transition Office of the seven papers that will be presented at the US IPv6 Summit, in cooperation with Dr. Osama Mowafi, CTO of SI International. We are also pleased to present three technical articles: The Challenges of Next Generation IP Address Management by Lucent Technologies; Managing the IPv6 Transition, Core Equipment for Merged IPv4/IPv6 Network Services by Foundry Networks; and  IPv6 Mobile Ad Hoc (MANETs) and Sensor Networks by Booz Allen Hamilton. In addition, for readers who want a higher level, less technical overview, we have Tom Myers on The New World of Media Using IPv6, and my summary of which organizations are participating in the US IPv6 Summit 2004 and four reasons that pre-registrations are at a record pace for US IPv6 Summits to date. Please write me at alex@usipv6.com if you have any comments or questions, and please do take a few minutes and register for the best IPv6 Summit ever, in terms of networking and knowledge possibilities, at www.usipv6.com. See you at the Hyatt Regency in two weeks!

Respectfully, Alex Lightman.

The Department of Defense (DoD) IPv6 Transition Office (TO) was established by direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in March 2004 to provide overall coordination, common engineering solutions, and technical guidance for the adoption of IPv6 across the DoD. The DoD communications infrastructure is a complex system of systems that will require reengineering from the network layer up to the application layer to support IPv6. Engineering guidance and coordination is needed to ensure that each component system follows a set of standards and common procedures to achieve overall system integration and interoperability. The DoD IPv6 TO is leading the engineering initiative to examine common technical solutions for IPv6 technology insertion to support an integrated and coherent transition.

Members of the DoD IPv6 TO and support staff will present the status of current efforts on December 9th at the 2004 IPv6 Summit in Reston, VA. Topics to be presented include:

• The DoD definition of IPv6 capable,

• DoD IPv6 standards analysis,

• DoD IPv6 Information Assurance (IA) risk management,

• DoD IPv6 test and evaluation planning,

• DoD IPv6 Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure planning,

• DoD IPv6 applications transition planning, and

• DoD IPv6 ad hoc networking.

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Attendance registration is ahead of the last three IPv6 Summits our team organized (in San Diego, June 2003, Arlington, Dec. 2003, and Santa Monica, June 2004) , despite reduced efforts from large hardware vendors, for four major reasons: the return of the Dept. of Defense to Internet leadership; the requirement to develop IPv6 transition plans by the individual services and other US government agencies; participation in the special meetings to be held Dec. 9; and the emergence of software and services companies as the core drivers of the IPv6 industry. Let's look more closely at each.

The Department of Defense has resumed its vital leadership role for the Internet, including appointing an agency (DISA) and a person (Dr. Charles Lynch) to be in charge and providing, for the first time, an actual budget for planning purposes. Authentic leadership energizes people, companies, and other government agencies. Leadership at the DoD, backed by $25 billion in IT spending and a mandate to include IPv6 in virtually all purchases, energizes dozens of companies and thousands of forward looking people. Many attendees, if not most, are attending the US IPv6 Summit 2004 in order to hear Dr. Lynch and nearly 20 speakers and panelists related to DoD make their presentations, and, if possible, meet them personally.

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Innovative, best-in-class management solutions like VitalQIP ® software from Lucent Technologies, provide the tools that are critical for the adoption of IPv6.

This white paper addresses how to:

• Properly allocate and manage your assigned IPv6 address space

• Manage IP address allocation and node configuration

• Manage, monitor, and audit access to IPv4 and IPv6 networks

• Address challenges associated with co-existing IPv4 and IPv6 networks

Introduction

The introduction of IPv6 into network environments will present significant challenges for even the most seasoned and experienced professionals and organizations. The technical differences between IPv4 and IPv6 networking are numerous. The size and format of IPv6 addresses are the most obvious example. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits in length whereas IPv6 addresses are 128 bits in length. As a result, the number of possible hosts in IPv4 is approximately 4 billion, whereas the number in IPv6 exceeds 340 undecillion (340 trillion trillion trillion or 340x10³⁶). Additionally, IPv4 addresses use a dotted-decimal notation (198.200.138.1) whereas IPv6 addresses use colon-hexadecimal (3ffe: 0302: 0011: 0002: 024c: 69ff: fe6e: 7579).

Complexities relating to how IPv6 networks must be allocated raise significant network management and planning concerns. From a user's perspective, the added complexity of IPv6 also increases concerns surrounding the usability of, and access to, IPv6 resources. For example, Is it possible or expected for the non-technical community, and even the technical community for that matter, to remember well-known IPv6 addresses and why? The advent of auto-configuration and the improvements to DHCP in IPv6 are both viable alternatives for address allocation. Which is the best for your organization? More importantly, which offers better control and auditing capabilities?

The co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6 is expected into the foreseeable future. The concept of managing two parallel IP spaces and the interaction between them is somewhat foreign and comes with its own set of complexities and challenges. These are just a few of the issues that will face those responsible for keeping the networks of today running, as well as for those responsible for building the networks of tomorrow.

DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER [PDF]

As service providers and enterprises add IPv6 applications to their networks, it is imperative that the networks be designed and built to efficiently support the simultaneous use of both IPv4 and IPv6. To do this, Foundry Networks NetIron products have been designed with embedded support for the high-speed processing of both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, as well as the IPv6 transition mechanisms that have become popular in the industry. In addition, two pieces that are frequently overlooked in the design of dual-protocol networks, security and management, have been embedded in the NetIron products. The first is a set of extensions to provide IPv6-aware VLANs and access control lists. The second is a high-speed implementation of the sFlow RFC. This article discusses the features necessary to provide highly functional, dual-protocol networks that provide instrumentation for network-wide visibility and extended support for security.

Dual-Protocol Network Transition Methodologies
 
Many of the early discussions on IPv6 focused on the benefits versus IPv4, and recently on the applications that will drive the adoption of IPv6. However, events have shifted the discussion, since the DoD and other worldwide governmental agencies have made public statements not only endorsing IPv6, but mandating that equipment be IPv6-ready. Because of these events, and market forces (especially in Asia), it is now clear that IPv6 will become the dominant protocol over time. The question is how do we build and instrument networks to effectively allow for the support of both IPv4 and IPv6 applications and infrastructure when we know that IPv4 will still be around for some time?

Clearly there must be a transition that allows for IPv6 to co-exist with IPv4 network equipment and applications. There are many options to implement this transition. One option is for IPv6 application islands to be tunneled over IPv4 networks. This allows IPv6 applications to talk to other IPv6 applications, but given there are so many existing IPv4 applications, this option has its limitations. The other option is to use a gateway to interconnect IPv4 and IPv6 applications. There are a number of methods for providing this gateway service. All have performance limitations and are difficult to manage. There are also methods for providing services for the coexistence of IPv6 applications and nodes on actual IPv4 networks. For example, ISATAP allows an IPv6 node to operate on an IPv4 network.

Regardless of which of these technologies and methodologies one chooses, given the sudden push for IPv6, many of the operators are now looking for core networking equipment that provides scalable, high-performance, highly reliable IPv4 and IPv6 support. As they upgrade their networks, operators must be able to support both IPv4 and IPv6 switching and routing in high-speed hardware, they must have embedded support for IPv6 transition technology, and they must have underlying support for the security and manageability services needed to ensure the operational viability of their networks.

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Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) and sensor networks are emerging as technologies that will enhance and revolutionize existing commercial and defense networks. Both, wireless MANET and sensor networks dynamically form ad hoc mesh topologies in which each node acts as both a host and router. This enables a set of logically reachable nodes to communicate without the support of a fixed infrastructure. While MANET nodes are designed to handle broadband throughput and a range of different applications, wireless sensor network nodes are usually simple, small, affordable, embedded devices whose primary design goal is scalability and power efficiency. This article provides an overview of technologies, impacts, and challenges of deploying emerging IPv6 MANET and wireless sensor networks.

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We have come to expect the parameters of "Moore's Law" to rule our advances, when in fact Moore's Law is a myth based on the advances of semiconductors and does not predict the flow of technology advancement whatsoever. Successful new products are most often being put together by technology mining, as opposed to new inventions. Although emerging technologies become part of many new products, their complete usage is often discovered in second and third generation products.

This is important to realize when working with new technology developments and ideas such as IPv6. The technology prophets of from the past, such as Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell are actually being replaced by modern-day prophets such as Chester Gould, Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas. This group represents the multitude of visionaries that look at the future through the lens of comic books and science fiction, two fictional genres that have in the past and will continue in the future to set the pace for many of the world's technological advancements.

Imagine a world where Chester Gould's idea of a Dick Tracy "video watch" dons the wrists of people on the street, or a place in which people use three dimensional holographs to interface in real-time. These breakthroughs in communications actually will get a lot closer with the confluence of fiction-reading innovators and new technologies such as IPv6.

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Publisher's Intro

DoD IPv6 Technology Insertion Program
Dr. Charles Lynch, Chief DoD IPv6 Transition Office and
Dr. Osama Mowafi, VP and CTO Networks, SI International Inc.

A Sneak Preview of the US IPv6 Summit 2004: Who’s Coming to Town, and Why
Alex Lightman, Chairman, US IPv6 Summit 2004

The Challenges of Next Generation IP Address Management
Lucent Technologies

Managing the IPv6 Transition:
Core Equipment for Merged IPv4/IPv6 Network Services
Foundry Networks

IPv6 Mobile Ad Hoc (MANETs) and Sensor Networks
Booz Allen Hamilton

The New World Media Using IPv6
Tom Myers

Federal Computer Week

InfoWorld

United States IPv6 Summit
December 7-10
Reston, Virginia
Military and Industry Technology Leaders Gather for New Internet Summit in Reston, VA.

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