IPv6 at NCAR 8/28/2002

Overview What is IPv6? What’s wrong with IPv4? Features of IPv6 IPv6 will soon be available at NCAR How to use IPv6

What is IPv6? IPv6 is the next generation of the Internet Protocol. It will eventually replace IPv4, the protocol that we use today. IPv6 design started in 1993 A standard was created in 1998.

What’s wrong with IPv4? Address exhaustion Routing tables getting too large Security Dynamic addresses are inconvenient Mobile IP not well supported

IPv4 Address Exhaustion 4 billion addresses, but not really CIDR helps, but not enough NAT helps, but not enough New smart devices will need network addresses

Routing Tables Too Big 110,000 routes today, and growing Need more memory Need more CPU Have to handle more routing changes

Dynamic Addressing is Inconvenient NAT is a band-aid –breaks some applications –debugging nightmare DHCP helps Static addresses are really nice

Mobile IPv4 isn’t good Hard to manage Clunky roaming

Features of IPv6 128-bit addresses Hierarchical addressing More efficient packet headers Security Auto configuration of end hosts Anycast Mobility IPv6 co-exists with IPv4

128-bit addresses Sample IPv4 address: Sample IPv6 address: 3FFE:0000:0000:0001:0200:F8FF:Fe75:50DF or 3FFE:0:0:1:200:F8FF:Fe75:50DF or 3FFE::1:200:F8FF:Fe75:50DF

Security 56-bit DES is supported by all IPv6 stacks New extended packet headers allow various encryption algorithms

Autoconfiguration IPv6 stateless autoconfiguration: the router and the host create an IPv6 address and a default route IPv6 stateful autoconfiguration: uses DHCP like IPv4

Anycast IPv4 has unicast, broadcast, multicast IPv6 has no broadcast (uses multicast) But there’s the new anycast Sends a packet to the nearest of a set of hosts Like, “send this packet to the nearest router that has a connection to the Internet”

Mobility Mobile IPv4 exists in small deployments IPv6 has extended headers and Anycasting, which make Mobile IP easier Mobile IPv6 allows more efficient routing of packets to mobile nodes

NETS plans for IPv6 at NCAR FRGP now has native IPv6 to Abilene Establish native IPv6 from NCAR to FRGP Connect NCAR Juniper to a VLAN Experiment with IPv6 DNS Consider the security implications Offer IPv6 on production VLANs Consider an internal IPv6 routing protocol

How to use IPv6 Ask NETS about enabling IPv6 on your network Get an operating system that supports IPv6 Let the router assign your IPv6 addresses Use IPv6-aware applications to communicate with other IPv6 machines

Questions?