The most recent issue of the Cisco IPJ (Internet Protocol Journal), that is available for free on-line, has a number of very interesting articles on IPv6.
First Geoff Huston, APNIC updates us with his view of the big picture on IPv4 depletion, and the slow pace of IPv6 roll out. He is right to point out that a continued dual-stack strategy, that many seem to favour, will continue to require IPv4 addresses, and will thus become untenable when the IPv4 addresses themselves run out. There isn't much time to deploy IPv6 everywhere, within the IPv4 depletion timescale.
Then Iljitsch van Beijnum gives his views on IPv4 address consumption, trying to focus not just on the /8 block allocations from IANA to the RIRs, but on the subsequent allocation by the RIRs to ISPs and others.
Then Leo Vegoda talks about the use of unregistered IPv4 address space: "Many organizations have chosen to use unregistered IPv4 addresses in their internal networks and, in some cases, network equipment or software providers have chosen to use unregistered IPv4 addresses in their products or services." He discusses the potential problems that could ensue.
On a separate, but related theme, that of security for IP networks, Kunjal Trivedi, Cisco Systems and Damien Holloway, Juniper Networks discuss secure multivendor networks.
This issue of the IPJ could thus be seen as the definitive one in terms of summarising the key issues of IPv4 depletion, and IPv6 deployment. We have 2 years before the /8 IANA pool runs out, and a further 12-18 months before the RIRs then cannot comply with requests for new IPv4 addresses. I suggest everyone who is interested in the future of the Internet as it is now (not some abstract new network we haven't thought of yet) read these papers and become conversant with the arguments, and then start deploying IPv6 as quickly as possible.
Tweet Posted by mofoghlu at November 16, 2007 12:21 PM | TrackBack