IPv6: Revitalizing the Internet Revolution
Pages: 1, 2

Who Uses IPv6 Today?

I had planned to write a whole chapter on 6bone for IPv6 Essentials. (I do discuss 6bone in Chapter 1, "IPv6 Versus IPv4.") The 6bone is a global IPv6 test network that was started in 1996, which today has more than 1,000 participating hosts. This shows that IPv6 is alive and can be used. Anyone interested can hook up to the 6bone and get started. When I started working on the 6bone chapter, I suddenly realized how many commercial and production networks already used IPv6: NTT Communications in Japan and Telia in Sweden, to name only two. I called some of the companies and talked to the managers of those IPv6 networks. And their baseline was: yes, there are a few things still missing, but we have what we need to get started and make it work. So this call goes out to all application developers: What the market needs is for you to port your applications to IPv6.

Early adopters have already started using IPv6 commercially, and since 2000, most vendors ship production stacks. Market analysts see the following timelines for IPv6 deployment: ISP and enterprise adoption will start in late 2002. Gartner Group says that by 2006, 50 percent of ISPs will offer IPv6 services. It is expected that by 2005 or 2006, the number of IPv4 hosts will slowly start to decrease and the number of IPv6 hosts will grow substantially and be higher than the number of IPv4 hosts.

At conferences, many people have become accustomed to being able to plug in a wireless card, sit anywhere in the conference area, and surf the Web or check email. We also take for granted having wireless connectivity at hotels, airports, and even outside areas. Did you know that at IETF conferences and IPv6 summits, wireless is used with IPv6? Pretty cool.

Ongoing Research

6net is an interesting three-year research project that was started in January 2002. It will build the world's highest capacity IPv6 research network. The goal is to demonstrate that continued growth of the Internet can be met using new IPv6 technology. The total investment will be 25.6 million Euro (25 million USD). Sixty-five percent of the funds will be provided by the project partners and 35 percent by the European Commission (information taken from the 6net Web site). Partners include companies like Cisco Systems, IBM, Sony, NTT Communications, many national research networks, and a number of universities.

Another project is Euro6IX. It is funded by the European IST (Information Society Technologies) program, and the goal is to support the rapid introduction of IPv6 in Europe. The first objective is to research an appropriate architecture to design and deploy the first Pan- European, noncommercial IPv6 Internet Exchange (IX) Network. It will connect several regional, neutral IPv6 Internet Exchange points across Europe, and achieve the same level of robustness and service quality as is currently offered by IPv4 Internet Exchange networks. The next objective is to use the deployed IPv6 infrastructure to research, test, and validate IPv6-enabled applications and services.

Another interesting development was at the Global IPv6 summit in March 2002 in Madrid, the first large-scale distribution of a congress over IPv6. The summit included remote participation of speakers and other participants. This was done using ISABEL, an advanced piece of software for real-time videoconferencing that has been around for many years and has been ported to IPv6 in reasonable time. This is real-world validation that IPv6 transition scenarios work.

NTT Communications, an ISP in Japan that offers commercial IPv6 services, has over 100 paying IPv6 customers as of March 2002. Toshiba developed an IPv6-enabled refrigerator, Sony an IPv6-enabled PlayStation, and an IPv6-enabled car has been developed as part of the WIDE project. The government in Japan supported the national IPv6 promotion council with 80 million in USD (8 billion Yen) in 2001, and released a tax incentive program for ISPs that buy IPv6-ready routers in 2002.

There are a number of Internet Web servers that are IPv6-accessible. A list can be found at www.ipv6.org/v6-www.html. To get there, you need a configured IPv6 stack. If you don't know how to do this, read Chapter 11, "Get Your Hands Dirty," in IPv6 Essentials and you'll be ready to go. You can also visit my IPv6 Web site (Apache on Linux).

In Germany, there is an interesting pilot project in the works called Guardian Angel System (GANS). It was initiated by doctors, the University Hospital at Tübingen, and Stuttgart and Ericsson Telebit as part of the EU project 6WINIT. In emergency situations, remote medical teams that cannot solve a medical emergency problem are able to contact the Guardian Angel experts via IPv6-based transmission. They use a one-button activation of all necessary systems and transmission of all data (vital data, videostream, and voice) works over that IPv6- based connection. The system is currently being evaluated on a simulator to make sure that no patients are needlessly put in danger. At the end of 2002, a pilot with Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a new wireless protocol, is planned.

And last but not least, a goodie for the gamers among you: two guys from Canada have ported Quake to IPv6 in only two days. Go and get it at www.viagenie.qc.ca/en/ipv6/quake/ipv6-quake.shtml.

Conclusion

I hope this article has dispelled some of the myths about IPv6 and generated some interest on your part. Should you care about IPv6? Yes, you should. IPv6 is inevitable. Although different Internet pundits argue about the time it will take for adoption, they no longer question its inevitability. New applications and services are being developed that leverage the advanced features of IPv6. If you suddenly need these services for your business and have not at least planned and tested for IPv6, the cost of introducing the new service, along with IPv6 at the same time, will be a big hit on your budget, your team, and your network. So, the best course of action is to begin learning about IPv6 today and make it part of your IT strategy. You don't need to tear down your IPv4 networks -- the old saying, "Never touch a running system," is still true. But if you build new segments or if you need to extend existing IPv4 segments because they have hit the limits, consider using IPv6. The sooner you test and plan, the easier your migration will be.

My next article will cover the IPv6 business case and show you how an investment in IPv6 will pay off in the long term.

O'Reilly & Associates recently released (July 2002) IPv6 Essentials.

• Sample Chapter (2), "The Structure of the IPv6 Protocol," is available free online.

• You can also look at the Table of Contents, the Index, and a full description of the book.

• For more information, or to order the book, click here.

Silvia Hagen is CEO of Sunny Connection AG in Switzerland and works as a senior consultant and analyst for many mid-size and large sized companies.

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Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• If address shortage is the reason for IP6 why not...
  2002-10-09 23:51:10  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  "The government, universities, and organizations in the U.S. alone hold approximately 74 percent of the total IPv4 address space."
  
  As much of the article deals with the "address shortage" excuse why not work with (order?) some of these groups to give back some of the IP addresses? How many of these addresses are wasted anyway?
  
  I had a similar idea when working for a multinational telecom equipment supplier. Their network was firewall protected with non-private IP addresses. All public internet traffic was NATed at the firewall (except for a few public facing servers in several DMZ around the world). I thought it would have been a great "public service" action had they renumbered their network with private addresses and given back their million address to the internet community. They didn't agree.
  
  Yes it is a big job, but their network had grown into a unmanageable mess over time anyway. It would have been a clean start with enormous cost savings in future maintenance and it didn't have to be done over night.
  
  It can be only a matter of time until someone starts this.

• book? book? book?
  2002-10-03 20:57:22  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Was that an article or merely an infomercial. Solid info showing the author has something useful encourages me to look at/ buy books. Informercials have about the same effect on me as they do on TV

• Article
  2002-10-01 21:19:44  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I wouldn't buy the book if the article is anything to go on. 'TCP/IP is probably the most used protocol'. Probably? Protocols cannot be built on 'probably'.
  
  I don't like the montone way the article is written either, so I'd assume the book to be the same. I just know I'm going to lose credibility here but I guessed it was written by a woman while I was reading it (sorry.. but I did).
  
  Throw in some wit here and there.. just enough to make the reader want to read the next line. Geeks need that at 4am.

• I like the book however...
  2002-09-28 11:11:38  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I've browsed through the book and found it pretty interesting however the one thing I found lacking is information on how one would setup a private IPv6 space for testing a small network before throwing it up on the Internet. This might not seem to be a big thing however being able to setup a small private testbed to learn how IPv6 actually works when going to a routed environment will help alot in understanding how to deploy it on a much larger scale. From what I've seen there's tons of options for link local and site local but not really alot of documentation on how one can really take advantage of that.