TCPmag.com
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June 5, 2007
Editor: Gladys Rama (grama 1105media.com)
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IN THIS ISSUE OF TCPmag.com:
1. Q&A: IPv6: What's the Rush?
2. What's New on TCPmag.com
3. Interesting Employment in California, Washington
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1. Q&A: IPv6: What's the Rush?
Send your toughest Cisco technical questions to editortcpmag.com
with the subject line "Attn: Scott."
Scott,
I saw a recent article about IP version 6 and how everybody
needed
to start changing their addresses over in order for the
Internet to
continue working. My boss started asking me questions about
this,
and I don't know what kind of answer to give.
None of my friends seem to be concerned or interested in
changing,
though, so is it really a problem?
-- Shaun
------------------------------
Shaun,
If you look hard enough, the sky really is falling. Or
perhaps the
Earth is rising. I haven't figured out which one yet.
The bottom line is, "it depends" -- which is a
standard Cisco answer
for things, but it seems to apply to everyone in the case of
IPv6.
So let's look at a few things.
What problems are we having with IPv4 that may require us to
change?
Namely, there are not enough addresses. Part of this
problem, of
course, was that in the beginning, people were handing out
IP
addresses like they were candy and in class-full boundaries.
So
absolutely there weren't enough!
I have clients who have /16 address space that they honestly
use
perhaps 50 to 100 devices on. But there isn't any incentive
for them
to give things back, so they aren't giving them up. And
regional
Internet registries (RIRs), like the American Registry for
Internet
Numbers (ARIN), have made things incredibly complicated and
convoluted for transferring these older portable addresses,
so
selling them is hardly worthwhile. Consequently, people just
hang on
to them for no good reason while others struggle.
Even with the advent of Variable Length Subnet Masking
(VLSM) and the
ability to assign addresses in smaller allocations, we still
saw the
writing on the wall: The number of people and businesses on
the
Internet will increase all the time. That was just a way to
delay
the inevitable.
IPv6 offers us significantly more addresses than before. We
would move
from a 32-bit addressing scheme (4.2 billion varieties) to a
128-bit
addressing scheme (lots of varieties!). IPv6 promises us
somewhere in
the neighborhood of 340 dodecillion usable addresses, in
case you
really cared there. Google that one!
But we have other things that are staving off a mass exodus,
the first
one being humankind's resistance to change. Oh, yeah, and
the money
thing. We won't spend money unless we have to.
The other big thing is Network Address Translation (NAT).
There's
actually a large debate these days about the viability and
proximity
of IPv6 usage because more and more people are using private
addressing (RFC1918), and the quality of NAT devices and
firewalls
is much better today than it ever has been before.
Newer items also cropping up are Application Layer Gateways
(ALGs),
Layer 7 Firewalls or super proxy servers. Each of these
things,
though, does not obviate the need for more addresses; it
just delays
our need to change.
After we get past the desire, motivation and money
allocation, we get
into the technical aspects. Is all of your networking
equipment
capable of IPv6 configuration? How about your security
equipment? How
about your operating systems and applications? How much of a
deployment you will want to explore will depend on many of
these.
There are many ways to do NAT between IPv4 and IPv6, so that
your
internal systems may not need to migrate (or at least not as
quickly) and your outside-facing configuration changes
over.
How about your IT and networking staff? Has everyone been
trained
on IPv6? There's a lot more involved than just extra bits.
There
are many nuances and differences in protocol and particulars
along
the way. DNS changes, DHCP changes...the world is a
different place!
All of those things are important to think about. Now may be
a good
time to start evaluating your readiness. But in the end, as
a
normal enterprise (small to medium business), you likely
aren't
going to change any faster than what your upstream provider
is doing
or requires. So what I would do is ask them.
A couple of smaller ISPs I've talked to aren't even in the
planning
phases for IPv6 yet. Many are fairly well along in testing,
and
some even have implementations underway. IPv6 does not need
to
eliminate IPv4 initially, so it makes things nicer for
planning an
implementation. But it's still something that takes a lot of
detailed planning before jumping into it.
Jeff Doyle wrote a blog entry not long ago about this
(h
ttp://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/15040)
where he
pointed out a similar idea: Much of the deployment depends
on what
people are ready for. There is no magic to making it happen.
Eventually, yes, we will run out of IPv4 addresses, but the
question
is when.
ARIN (and other RIRs) are recommending people to push for
IPv6 going
forward (http:
//www.arin.net/announcements/20070521.html). Most will
stop handing out IPv4 allocations in 2009 (get 'em while you
can!).
But who knows what trends in reallocation or security and
NAT will
change in the next couple of years, which may push things
off further.
The bottom line is that, most likely, there isn't any dire
or
immediate need to change everything out. On the other hand,
if your
upper management is interested and/or concerned, now may be
a great
time for any budget approval you need to change things! But
you
should at least consider your five-year planning phase. How
many
addresses will you need for your entire company network? Can
you get
those now? Do you need to get those now?
In planning for IPv6, don't forget the human part. After all
of the
pieces (network, applications, OS, etc.) are done, do you
have
enough people with enough knowledge to manage and design
things?
Now may be a good time for some training!
There are various vendor-based training courses out there on
IPv6.
There are also different presentations at meetings like the
North
America Network Operators Group (NANOG) regarding important
topics
like this. I would advise you to take the time to research
things
with regard to your organization and what it would take to
migrate
over. No rush, but having the time to plan is good!
Hope that helps,
-- Scott
Scott Morris, quadruple CCIE, JNCIE and all-around
Uber-Geek, can often
be seen traveling around the world consulting and delivering
CCIE
training. He has recently stepped up as VP of Curriculum
Development
for IPexpert and will oversee a new consulting practice. For
more
information on him check out http://www.ipexpert.com.
Send your questions for this column to editortcpmag.com
with the subject line "Attn: Scott."
Miss a Q&A? Go online to http://tcpmag.com/qanda/
To comment on this Q&A, go to:
http://tcpmag.com/qanda/article.asp?editorialsid=380
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2. What's New on TCPmag.com
NEWS: "Cisco Patches Spate of Security Flaws"
Just when you thought it was safe to start planning your
summer
vacation, Cisco Systems Inc. recently alerted customers to a
spate of
new vulnerabilities in its Internetwork Operating System
(IOS).
http://tcpmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=1222
NEWS: "From Boom to Bust in Optical Networking
Sector"
While other networking categories are notching record growth
rates,
the optical networking segment recently suffered a reversal.
http://tcpmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=1223
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3. Interesting Employment in California, Washington
Job postings courtesy of Monster.com.
CISCO, SOFTWARE/QA ENGINEER
Position Type: Full time
Location: San Jose, Calif.
Salary: Not specified
Experience: At least 5 years
Desired Education: CCIE, CCNA
The software/QA engineer will lead a team responsible for
testing and
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participating in beta coordination, developing test
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coordinating with development engineers to fix problems.
Must have
knowledge of IPsec and firewalls.
To learn more, visit:
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VERIZON, NETWORK ENGINEER
Position Type: Full time
Location: Seattle, Wash.
Salary: Not specified
Experience: 4 to 6 years
Desired Education: Bachelor's degree, CCNA
Responsibilities include supporting the company's managed
service
customer network, helping users meet their internetworking
requirements, designing and implementing logical and
physical IP
networks, and supervising upgrades and intergrations.
To learn more, visit:
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AT&T, SENIOR SECURITY ENGINEER
Position Type: Full time
Location: San Diego, Calif.
Salary: Not specified
Experience: At least 4 years
Desired Education: CCIE, CCSP, CISSP
The senior security engineer will be responsible for
monitoring users'
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procedures. Other duties include providing technical support
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engineers.
To learn more, visit:
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