Introduction
by
Alex Lightman, Publisher
|
 |
In this issue we introduce two IPv6 leaders, Dr.
Vinton Cerf and John Osterholz, who will be keynoting
at the US IPv6 Summit; get insights into the next
frontier of IPv6 routing from Spirent Federal; enumerate
and illustrate ten reasons for accelerated IPv6 adoption;
and link up to IPv6 transition strategies from one
of the world’s pioneering software outsourcing
firms.
There are just two months to go before the US IPv6
Summit 2004 (Dec. 7-10 at the Hyatt Regency, Reston,
VA. See www.usipv6.com.
The roster of sponsors indicates an expansion in the
companies most interested in IPv6 leadership, which
add software, service, training, and systems integration
companies. Spirent Federal is our grand sponsor (see
article by Bill Kine below). First
time sponsors of an IPv6 Summit include SI International,
Northrop Grumman, Lucent, Booz Allen Hamilton, and
WareOnEarth, while returning sponsors include Nortel,
Nokia, IP Infusion, Foundry Networks and Sunset Learning,
all of which have a focus on serving the US federal
government. Other companies are in process to formulating
their IPv6 strategy and will be added soon.
I highly recommend attending the IPv6 Summit: it’s
a chance to see an industry transformation as well
as a technology transition of historic and global
proportions with virtually of the leaders available
for questions and discussion, and an unprecedented
opportunity for executives, engineers, and administrators
from industry and government to meet up and discuss
teaming up for the DoD IPv6 Transition as well as
other, yet unannounced, government initiatives for
IPv6.
We have four great keynote speakers. I’ll summarize
the backgrounds of Dr. Vinton Cerf and John Osterholz
in this October issue, and the next two, including
Dr. Charles (Chuck) Lynch, in the November issue.
We are honored that Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, widely
known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,”
will be joining us again. Dr. Cerf gave an energizing
keynote at our IPv6 Summit in Santa Monica this past
June, and has a very unique perspective on the IPv6
transition as in leader in military, corporate, and
public service realms for over three decades.
Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and
the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997,
President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal
of Technology to Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn,
for founding and developing the Internet. Currently,
Vinton G. Cerf is Senior Vice President of Technology
Strategy for MCI. In this role, Cerf is helping to
guide corporate strategy development from the technical
perspective. Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf
was Vice President of the Corporation for National
Research Initiatives (CNRI). As Vice President of
MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he
led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial
email service to be connected to the Internet.
During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department
of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development
of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security
technologies. Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the
board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN).
We are very pleased that John Osterholz, who
was our insightful keynote speaker from the Dept.
of Defense at our IPv6 Summits in June and December
2003, will be able to join us again. Mr. Osterholz
recently joined BAE Systems as the Vice President,
C4ISR, after nearly 35 years of distinguished government
service, including close collaboration with John Stenbit,
former CIO of the Office of the Secretary of Defense
and participation in the decision to mandate a transition
to IPv6.
For the past four years, as Director - C4ISR Architecture
and Interoperability, John was the principal OSD staff
assistant for the development, oversight and integration
of DoD C4ISR policies and programs relating to the
strategy of information superiority for the Department
of Defense. He has also served as Director, C4ISR
Integration Support Activity, Director, Military Satellite
Office, Deputy Director - Defense Information Systems
Agency (DISA) and Assistant Director - White House
Military Office.
|
IPv6 Routing
The Next Frontier
by
Bill Kine
Product Manager, Spirent Communications
|
 |
IPv6 is here. The communications industry no longer
refers to IPv6 in the future tense, discussing how
wonderful it will be. IPv6 has arrived, and
it is fulfilling all of its promises. IPv6 products,
applications and solutions are available today. IPv6
networks are gradually increasing in size and popularity
worldwide. Hosts, servers and routers are routinely
using 128-bit addresses, neighbor discovery and auto-configuration.
Therefore it is now time to advance the discussions
of IPv6 to the next logical level - routing.
|
|
Routing is a fundamental part of the Internet Protocol,
regardless of the version number. In fact, IP was
built based upon the concepts of subnets and routing.
The same level of forethought and planning has gone
into IPv6. Subnets, aggregation and even multicast
routing can be easily denoted by the inherent IPv6
address and/or prefix.
The move to IPv6 was designed to be an evolutionary
process. Modern workstations, servers and routers
should now be upgradeable to the next generation of
the Internet Protocol. In fact, the whole upgrade
procedure should be painless for the users. However,
this migration will be a lengthy process and will
require both versions to peacefully coexist for many
years - perhaps an entire decade!
Routing protocols also need to adapt to the new version
of IP. The four most common protocols: BGP, IS-IS,
RIP and OSPF already have IPv6 extensions. In fact,
all four of these protocols can support IPv4 and IPv6
concurrently, facilitating multiprotocol transitional
networks. Most major router vendors have already implemented
these extensions, known as BGP4+, IS-ISv6, RIPng and
OSPFv3. These implementations build upon the vendors'
solid IPv4 protocol foundations.
IPv6 Routing - The Brave New World
Although all of the major router and switch vendors
have successfully implemented IPv6 routing protocols,
actual real-world experience with these solutions
is quite limited. IPv4 has had 20 years to shake-out
(or work around) all of its bugs, issues and limitations.
Over that time period, IPv4 and all of its ancillary
protocols have been revised, optimized and enhanced
many times. Furthermore, a great deal of collective
and individual expertise has been accumulated regarding
IPv4 networks.
The current suite of routing protocols was constructed
specifically for IPv4 networks. Its associated options,
methodologies and algorithms have been refined over
many years to accommodate all of the nuances of IPv4.
These protocols were all completed long before IPv6
was even conceived. In fact, although this may seem
rather harsh, it is fair to say that IPv6 was an afterthought
for these protocols.
There is a severe shortage of real-world experience
with large IPv6 networks. The largest contemporary
IPv6 network contains fewer than 1,000 routes - by
contrast, the IPv4 Internet has 140,000 routes. Many
of the fundamental principles of the IPv4 routing
protocols remain unproven in the emerging IPv6 world.
Maximum quantities of peer routers, route table sizes,
convergence times and filter capacities all vary considerably
as the users migrate to IPv6; in fact, many of these
metrics are entirely unknown. Furthermore, the performance
and scalability of routers and protocols in a mixed
IPv4/IPv6 environment is even more unpredictable;
and transitional networks are expected to exist for
many years to come.
IPv6 Routing - The Next Phase of Testing
Over the past few years, users have successfully tested
the basic performance and functionality of their workstations
and applications over IPv6. These have typically been
small-scale "proof of concept" tests in
controlled laboratory environments. It is now time
to expand these tests to large-scale Internet operations.
Network architects should fully stress test their
equipment and protocols in order to understand their
performance and functional characteristics and limitations.
Testing will help determine how a modified IPv4 routing
protocol operates in an IPv6 environment. Comprehensive
functional testing will further validate that all
of the IPv4 attributes have been adequately adapted
for IPv6. However, additional routing protocol modifications
may be necessary as new IPv6 features are developed.
Scalability tests are even more critical. Routing
protocols have been designed to propagate 32-bit IPv4
addresses. Therefore their performance and scalability
will be different for the new 128-bit addresses. Furthermore,
IPv6 has been designed to overcome the address depletion
problems currently associated with IPv4. And IPv6
fixes this issue in a big way! Routing tables could
potentially contain millions of prefixes. (Or even
billions or trillions or more!) This will directly
impact the routing and protocol performance, and may
even overload some systems. Emulating and testing
the limits and the performance of the modified routing
protocols such as OSPFv3 in huge IPv6 networks will
help users design and optimize their IPv6 infrastructures.
Crystal Ball - What Will the Future Bring?
The current popular sets of IPv4 routing protocols
have enjoyed many years of success. They have been
modified to accommodate the new demands of IPv6, and
they will probably successfully support this evolution
of the Internet for several years. However, as the
IPv6 Internet continues to expand and new features
are developed, it is likely that the world will outgrow
these legacy protocols. It is also likely that entirely
new routing protocols will be developed specifically
for IPv6. In the mean time, it is critical that equipment
manufacturers, network architects and even end users
fully recognize the limits associated with the current
protocols and devices. In the past, users have tested
the basic IPv6 functionality. Now is the time to take
the next step and test the routing protocols of tomorrow's
Internet.
LINK
TO THIS ARTICLE
|
Ten Reasons to Advocate Accelerated Adoption of IPv6
by
Alex Lightman
|
|
1
2
3
4
5
|
Mobility
Security
Ad Hoc Networking
Spectrum Utilization
Battery Life
|
6
7
8
9
10
|
Identity
Ease of Use
Connectivity
Interoperability
Adaptability
|
If you indicate expertise or even interest in IPv6,
you will sooner or latter be asked to give a PowerPoint
presentation and why your colleagues should care.
You might also want to be pro-active, and offer to
give talks on how IPv6 will potentially impact and
enhance your specific industry. As we move towards
the US IPv6 Summit 2004 we see new presenters coming
to into prominence who are focused on new and novel
applications, services, network design, systems, and
training, especially related to the Dept. of Defense
IPv6 Transition.
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas
Adams posits that we go through three stages: Survival
(How do we eat?), Inquiry (Why do we eat?), and Sophistication
(Where do we eat?). In the IPv6 realm, we seem to
be beginning the shift from the first to the second
stages, from "How do we connect everyone through
the Internet, including all the cars, mobile phones,
and billions of other devices?" - the answer
is, in part, to deploy IPv6 - to "Why do we need
to accelerate adoption of IPv6?"
READ
ENTIRE ARTICLE
|
IPv6 Transition Strategies
by
Saisree Subramanian
Wipro Technologies
|
 |
Next Generation IP or IPv6 is a technology which
is gaining a lot of momentum. This proposes a major
change in the basic network infrastructure of the
internet and is poised to have far-reaching effects
due to the ubiquity of the internet today. In this
paper, basic issues on the transition from the current
IPv4 networks towards IPv6 are addressed giving a
brief overview of how the transition can happen and
an introduction to the relevant technical issues in
this area.
DOWNLOAD
WHITE PAPER [PDF]
|
|
|
GRAND
SPONSOR:
|
|
|
|
GOLD
SPONSORS:
|
|
|
|
SILVER
SPONSOR:
|
|
|
|
BRONZE
SPONSOR:
|
|
|
|
