Transition to IPv6 & Pros & Cons of IPv6

Transition to IPv6

Rome was not built in a day!! Hence, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will not be something that would be done overnight; it will take a number of years before IPv6 would have anywhere near 100 percent implementation. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is not child’ play. IPv6 Migration Assessment,  Gap Analysis and Calculation of Adoption Challenges would be a requisite during transition.

In these intervening years,  a number of mechanisms have been developed to make the transition as easy as possible.

       The first options is – dual stack wherein an organization essentially does not transition to IPv6 but simply builds a parallel IPv6 network next to their existing IPv4 network.

       The second of the available options is – tunnelling wherein  IPv6 will be tunneled over an existing IPv4 network.

       The third  is – translation wherein a translation process maps an IPv4 address to an IPv6 address (or vice versa) at a boundary router between an IPv4 and an IPv6 network.

 The Pros & Cons of IPv6

Interestingly, it is ironic, that in an industry full of “Next Big Things”, IPv6 is the biggest one that people don’t want!! The reason may be fear of  new challenges and the apprehensions that comes with new protocol IPv6 !!

Some unknown facts about IPv6 are –

       With every deprecated feature or address range comes an extra set of firewall rules that need to block the deprecated address block of shame. Hence every private IPv4 address in your IPv6 rules needs to be blocked  thereby making  securing an IPv6 network a challenge.

       Also IPv6 wreaks havoc on your command-line life because IPv6 addresses use colons and percent signs. This is not the best choice in a world where free punctuation is a scarce commodity.

It is also observed that  there is not much to do on the IPv6 internet. Why?

Answer is :  Because there are relatively few users, so it is a chicken / egg problem!!

There are other surprising facts of course, including that in 2008, IPv6 celebrated its 10th anniversary. Yet, until the last year or two it has lied in relative obscurity. Hopefully, my this documentation attempt to enlighten IPv6 and  its technicalities, you might get inspired to start exploring IPv6 today!!!

 It is important to realize that IPv6 is not only about exhaustion of IPv4, but about using new technology and getting the country to march on a more secure and scalable network, meeting the growing needs of an expanding Indian IT services and enabling their rollout in rural India to fulfill the objective of diminishing the digital divide that would benefit the billions of strong Indians irrespective of geographical and digital boundaries.

As Brian Fuller, Cadence, says, ‘the future’s in our hands; let’s not blow it!’ Hence, lets dive into the world of IPv6.