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IPv6:What is it? Why does it matter?

GOETEC EventThursday 16th February 2012

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Martin DunmoreNetwork Infrastructure Development Team Manager,

Janetmartin.dunmore@ja.net

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Agenda

• IPv4 Address Exhaustion and Internet Growth• What is IPv6?• Why Deploy IPv6?• IPv6 and Janet• What Now?

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IPv4 Address Exhaustion

• In February 2011, IANA distributed the final five /8s– One to each RIR.

• Each RIR has a different amount of address space left– APNIC has less than a single /8– RIPE has 3.7 /8s

• Different policies apply when an RIR reaches its last /8– Each ISP is only able to get one more, fixed-sized

(i.e. not needs-based) allocation3

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IP Addressing Hierarchy

Local Internet Registries (LIRs)

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs)

IANA

RIPE (Europe & Middle

East)

JANET

UniversitiesFurther

Education Institutions

…

Other ISPs…

ARIN (North America)

APNIC (Asia Pacific)

AfriNIC (Africa)

LACNIC (Latin America)

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IPv4 Address Exhaustion

IANA Exhaustion03-Feb-11

Projected RIR Exhaustion

APNIC 19-Apr-2011RIPENCC 28-Jul-2012ARIN21-Jul-2013LACNIC 29-Jan-2014AFRINIC 28-Oct-2014

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Source: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html

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IPv4 Address Exhaustion

• What about JANET IPv4 address space?– Just started allocating out of 81.87.0.0/16– Could be the last allocation we get– If there is a land-grab in the community, it may not

last long

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Where are all the users coming from?

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But compare to penetration rates

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Internet Growth – Population

• Not enough IPv4 to feed the expansion of the Internet

• From here on, IPv6 deployment elsewhere in the world will grow– Or everybody moves to massive NATs, which brings

in other problems• Problems for sites with no IPv6 deployment!

– If your external services only support IPv4, then the only devices that can communicate with you will be those with IPv4 addresses. To a growing proportion of the world using pure IPv6 devices, you will be invisible.

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Anticipated Growth – IPv4 vs. IPv6

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IPv4

IPv6

Internet Growth

2012

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Is NAT the Answer?

• Carrier Grade NAT (CGN), RFC 6264– AKA Large-scale NAT (LSN)

• NAT444– Customer private → carrier private → public

Internet– Designed to aid v4-v6 transition, NOT to avoid v6

deployment• Lots of drawbacks

– Double transition costs, not scalable, law enforcement

• So…no, IPv6 is the answer– RFC 4864 may help convince NATers11

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What is IPv6?

• The new version of the Internet Protocol, Internet Protocol version 6– The ‘legacy’ version is IPv4

• IPv4 addressing contains 32 bits– 4.3 billion endpoints

• IPv6 addressing contains 128 bits– 3.4 x 1038 endpoints, that’s 340 ‘undecillion’

• IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible ‘on the wire’• IPv6 does not substitute IPv4

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IPv6 Timeline

1991:ROADFirst Studies

1994: SIPP is chosen

1995: 1st IPv6 RFC1883

1998: IPv6 RFC2460

1996:6Bone

2003: DHCPv6 RFC3315

2004: 1st MIPv6 RFC3775

2006: 6Bone ends

1991 2012

2011: IANA exhausts /8s

Janet IPv6 Experimental Service

IPv6 in Janet SLA

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Header Format

IPv4 HeaderFields in red are removed for

IPv6 IPv6 Header

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IPv6 Differences

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IPv4 IPv6

Address length 32 bits 128 bits

Default prefix length Varies, typically /24 /64

Address configuration DHCPv4 Stateless AutoconfigurationDHCPv6

Default addresses used Private or Global Link-local and Global

Address resolution ARP Neighbour Discovery (ND)

Minimum MTU 576 1280

Fragmentation By hosts or routers Only by hosts

Host Path MTU Discovery Optional Required

IPsec Optional ‘SHOULD’(draft-ietf-6man-node-req-bis-11 )

Private addressing RFC 1918 Unique Local Addresses (ULAs)(not for use with NAT)

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Some Useful Things to Know• IPv6 addresses are represented by hexadecimal

numbers.– Example: 2001:DB8:12FF:1231:FFB5::F9DA/64.

• There is no Network Mask, only a Prefix Length.• The IPv6 the header is always 40 bytes, any extensions

are listed as a “next header”.• In IPv6 there is no Broadcast, only Multicast.• In IPv6 there is no ARP or IGMP, ICMPv6 replaces these.• In IPv6 routers never fragment packets, only hosts do.

– Path MTU Discovery is mandatory.

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Transition Tools and Techniques• Dual Stack

– Routers, servers, clients run both protocol versions• Tunnelling (connecting IPv6 islands)

– Manual– Broker– 6to4– Teredo– 6rd

• Translation (IPv4-only to IPv6-only)– NAT64, DNS64– TRT– Application Layer Gateway

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Why Deploy IPv6?

• Often quoted: There is no ‘killer app’ for IPv6• But how about…

– Open, free, sharing and learning via any-to-any connectivity, thus encouraging research and education?

• And…– “Internet of things”

• consumer devices, IP in everything, any-to-any connections

– Vehicle based networks• Vehicle-to-vehicle, Vehicle-to-road, Vehicle-to-Internet• Telematics

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Why Deploy IPv6?

• Business Case?– Not for revenue/income increase– Not targeted for CAPEX/OPEX reduction

• But, for strategic benefits:– Continuation of service and interoperability– Support for new applications/services, future

growth– Better OPEX environment once IPv6 is in place

• e.g. reduced network admin costs• IPv6 is being pushed by the UK Government

and European Commission19

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Why Deploy IPv6?

• Less expensive and less problematic to achieve IT staff familiarity with IPv6 in an organic way, via timely deployment, rather than wait until problems arise– Without IPv6 deployment and training, IPv6 related

security threats can bypass existing IPv4 mechanisms.

– IPv6 is already on your network!• Lack of IPv6 deployment may result in stunted

ICT growth– Stifling learning in an environment that uses the

Internet heavily for teaching and research!20

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Janet IPv6 Deployment History

• 1997 Connection to the 6bone• 1999 Received IPv6 prefix from RIPE NCC

– 2001:630::/32• 2002 Participation in 6NET project

– Pan-European IPv6 network• 2003 Experimental IPv6 service enabled• 2007 IPv6 introduced into the JANET Service

Level Agreement

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Where are we now?

• All the JANET backbone is dual-stack.– Transit

• Mandatory part of the procurement– GEANT

• Access to other R&E networks worldwide– Commercial peerings

• London Internet Exchange, Private Peerings• Regional Networks

– All connected dual-stack– Must provide IPv6 to the campus entry on request

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What Janet Provides

• IPv6 Prefix Allocations– Default is /48, equivalent to a /8 or ‘Class A’ in IPv4

• Native IPv6 national network• IPv6 routing• IPv6 nameservers• Tunnel broker service• IPv6 Training• Help and advice

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Getting IPv6 Addresses

• Same process as IPv4 … contact the JANET Registry– Via the JANET Service Desk– http://www.ja.net/services/connections/ip-address-

application.html– Receive a /48 (65,536 x /64 LANs) by default

• If you need more than that, you will have to tell us why!

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JANET Services

• Listed (clumsily)– http://www.ja.net/services/service-listing.html– Predominantly DNS, Mail, NTP

• Trying to get other services– Videoconferencing would be a big one

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Typical (pre 8/6/11) IPv6 Usage on Janet

• Peak of around 30Mbit/s at a time when our overall external traffic is about 70Gbit/s,  or 0.04%.

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World IPv6 Day

• June 8th 2011• Major content providers published IPv6

addresses for their services• Google, YouTube, Facebook, &c• Measure the amounts of ‘broken’ connectivity

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Janet and World IPv6 Day

• Peak of over 220Mbit/s, 0.3% of total traffic

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Long-term effects?

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What Now?

• Prepare and plan– Engage with all IT-related disciplines in your

organisation• Encourage technical staff to gain experience

– Training, experimentation• Include IPv6 capability in all future ICT

procurement– Example procurement text on JANET website

• Enable public facing services– E.g. website

• Enable internal services30

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Deployment Strategy - Managerial

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Deployment Strategy - Technical

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Janet IPv6 Training

• IPv6 Fundamentals Course:– http://www.ja.net/services/training/cour

ses/ipv6.html

• Janet IPv6 Technical Guide:– http://www.ja.net/documents/publicatio

ns/

technical-guides/ipv6-tech-guide-for-web.pdf

• Edlab Learning Objects– http://www.ja.net/services/training/edla

b.html

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Community Help and Advice

• IPv6 Deployment Workshop– 7th December, Loughborough University– http://www.ja.net/services/events/2011/ipv6/index.h

tml

• IPv6 users list– https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ip

v6-users

• JANET IPv6 Webpage– http://www.ja.net/ipv6

• Community IPv6 Website– http://www.ipv6.ac.uk/

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Other Useful Sources

• 6Deploy website– http://www.6deploy.org/

• RIPE Act Now website– http://www.ipv6actnow.org/

• 6UK Website– http://www.6uk.org/

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World IPv6 Launch

• 6th June 2012• Builds on World IPv6 Day last year• Major ISPs and web companies to permanently

enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6th June– Akamai, AT&T, Comcast, Cisco, Facebook, Google,

Microsoft, Yahoo and others• Hopefully Janet connected sites will participate

– E.g. enable web servers and other public facing services

• See www.worldipv6launch.org for more info36

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Summary / Key Messages• IPv4 Addresses are running out globally• IPv6 is the future proof answer, NAT isn’t!• There are solid strategic reasons to deploy IPv6• Start deploying it – don’t ignore it!

– You probably already have IPv6 on your Network, e.g. Teredo tunnels

– Useful to develop a deployment strategy– IPv6 is well supported at the network and O/S level (mostly)

• Often more of a problem at the application level• Plenty of information and help out there• Maybe use World IPv6 Launch as a target

– E.g. enable your webservers for World IPv6 Launch

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Questions?

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