IPV6

Do We Need
IPv6?
S

Why Do We Need IPv6?

There Are Many Legitimate
Reasons

Such as

Were running out of IPv4 addresses (this is the one reason

which everyone always thinks of)

IPv6 may allow us to regain end-to-end transparency (widely

overlooked but very important)

Long term, we need to contain route table bloat

IPv6 has been mandated in some environments (e.g.,

theoretically for federal government networks)

Some Real Reasons for NOT

Deploying IPv6
Some sites may NOT be in any particular rush to

deploy IPv6 because

Their site already has abundant IPv4 space

Anything thats available via IPv6, is also available via

IPv4 (at least for now)

Their network uses middleboxes (such as firewalls or

network load balancers) that are not fully IPv6 aware

Their network provider is still dragging their heels

when it comes to providing IPv6 connectivity.

Bogus Reasons for NOT

Deploying IPv6

There are also many, many bogus reasons why some

sites may NOT want to deploy IPv6, including:

Im too busy working on more important things.

This whole IPv4 exhaustion thing is a bunch of malarky

folks will figure out some way to stretch out what space
weve still got available.

IPv6 and those super long addresses are just too

weird/hard.

Bottom line, customers (except you!) just arent asking for

IPv6 support.

Whats wrong with IPv4 ?

"address space exhaustion by 2005" !?
-) billions of new devices, users
-) 'always-on' technologies
difficult (re-)configuration
sophisticated, structured header
no integrated end-to-end security solution
NAT is no longer adequate
-) no 'called' services (e.g. IP-phones)
-) performance, security, mgmt. issues

What can IPv6 do better ?

128 bit address

2128 = 3.4x1038 =
340.282.366.920.938.463.463.374.607.431.768.211.456

auto configuration / plug and play

simple header

mandatory end-to-end security (IPsec)

renumbering & multihoming

mobility features

Addressing

128 bit (64 for routing, 64 for interface ID)

unicast, anycast, multicast

addresses have scope and lifetime

address autoconfiguration rules

multiple addresses per interface

easy renumbering, reconfiguration

highly aggregatable

initially only 15% assigned by IANA

Routing

simplified header + extension header

path MTU discovery in end systems
simple source routing facilities

Routing Protocol Support

IPV4 and IPv6 coexistence is easy
in principle: no new routing architecture
==> but no magical solution for multihoming
routing protocols must be able to support different

"address families"

both for IGPs (e.g. OSPFv3) and EGPs (e.g. BGP4+)

more or less a simple extensio of existing concepts to
e.g. support multicast
Needs a bit more memory