IPv6 has been around now for a long, long time. I have a book on my shelf from 2002 on the subject (IPv6 Essentials - O'Reilly) - as yet unread I might add. 9 years in IT terms is a lifetime, and yet IPv6 is rarely seen or heard from. That will change very soon, when we run out of IPv4 IP addresses. This is predicted to happen before 2011 is out.
So what does this mean for the average Joe? Well quite a bit actually. If you have any level or responsibility over a computer network, you have some work to do. If you manage any kind of public network, then things are going to change for you in a big way. The crux of the problem is that the original IP addressing scheme - IPv4 - can only account for a little over 4 billion addresses. When the creators of the protocol devised the rules back in the late 70’s, the internet was still a closed system, open mostly to government agencies such as universities and the military. The idea of needing more than 4 billion addresses would have have seemed ridiculously large and never likely to be met or exceeded. But since then, the internet has taken over the world, with every man and his dog having a web site, large scale control operations, media publishing and all manner of other systems using it. Each and every device on the internet has an IP address, and the original 4 billion is almost gone.
And that brings us to IPv6. When it was first recognised that we would soon start running out of IP address, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) wrote up the spec for IPv6 and published it as RFC 2460 in 1998. IPv6 addressing will cater for 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses, a mind-bogglingly huge number. When the IPv4 addresses dry up, we’re all going to have to start talking in IPv6. At the very least this is going to take some learning and some strategic planning. Most likely it is going to mean a whole lot of spend on new networking hardware too.
Many routers and switches up the higher end of the scale will have the feature set to handle this change. You need to start looking at the impact of IPv6 in your network and work out which devices you will be able to keep and use and which ones you will have to either replace or re-purpose. It may be that parts of your network remain on IPv4 addressing and parts are migrated to IPv6. You need to start thinking about that soon and working out budgets, project plans, etc. Then you will also have to get your technical guys and girls up-skilled so they understand the new protocol so that they can re-program those routers and switches to maintain the status quo in your network.
You might want to sit on your hands and wait it out. Maybe something better will come along? Maybe somebody will find some more IPv4 addresses down the back of the sofa? If you do this, you will be in trouble. The exhaustion of IP addresses is akin to - and potentially far worse than - the Y2k problem. Remember the panic at the end of the last millennium and businesses spending large on protecting themselves from a problem that never eventuated? Well this problem is one that will eventuate but so far nobody is reacting (proacting?) and to ignore this issue is to create a digital disaster.
References:
IPv6 on Wikipedia
Is IPv6 part of your Risk Management Framework?
So what does this mean for the average Joe? Well quite a bit actually. If you have any level or responsibility over a computer network, you have some work to do. If you manage any kind of public network, then things are going to change for you in a big way. The crux of the problem is that the original IP addressing scheme - IPv4 - can only account for a little over 4 billion addresses. When the creators of the protocol devised the rules back in the late 70’s, the internet was still a closed system, open mostly to government agencies such as universities and the military. The idea of needing more than 4 billion addresses would have have seemed ridiculously large and never likely to be met or exceeded. But since then, the internet has taken over the world, with every man and his dog having a web site, large scale control operations, media publishing and all manner of other systems using it. Each and every device on the internet has an IP address, and the original 4 billion is almost gone.
And that brings us to IPv6. When it was first recognised that we would soon start running out of IP address, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) wrote up the spec for IPv6 and published it as RFC 2460 in 1998. IPv6 addressing will cater for 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses, a mind-bogglingly huge number. When the IPv4 addresses dry up, we’re all going to have to start talking in IPv6. At the very least this is going to take some learning and some strategic planning. Most likely it is going to mean a whole lot of spend on new networking hardware too.
Many routers and switches up the higher end of the scale will have the feature set to handle this change. You need to start looking at the impact of IPv6 in your network and work out which devices you will be able to keep and use and which ones you will have to either replace or re-purpose. It may be that parts of your network remain on IPv4 addressing and parts are migrated to IPv6. You need to start thinking about that soon and working out budgets, project plans, etc. Then you will also have to get your technical guys and girls up-skilled so they understand the new protocol so that they can re-program those routers and switches to maintain the status quo in your network.
You might want to sit on your hands and wait it out. Maybe something better will come along? Maybe somebody will find some more IPv4 addresses down the back of the sofa? If you do this, you will be in trouble. The exhaustion of IP addresses is akin to - and potentially far worse than - the Y2k problem. Remember the panic at the end of the last millennium and businesses spending large on protecting themselves from a problem that never eventuated? Well this problem is one that will eventuate but so far nobody is reacting (proacting?) and to ignore this issue is to create a digital disaster.
References:
IPv6 on Wikipedia
Is IPv6 part of your Risk Management Framework?
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