Deploying IPv6 in enterprise networks
The Internet is slowly moving towards IPv6. IPv6 traffic is now growing and more and more enterprise networks are migrating to IPv6. Migrating all enterprise networks to support IPv6 will be slow. One of the main difficulties faced by network administrators when migrating to IPv6 is that it is not sufficient to migrate the hosts (most operating systems already support IPv6) and configure the routers are dual-stack. All devices that process packets need to be verified or updated to support IPv6.
Network administrators who perform IPv6 migrations sometimes document their findings in articles. These articles are interesting for other networ administrators who might face similar problems.
In [BNC11], google engineers explain the issues that they faced when migrating the enterprise networks of google premisses to support IPv6. Surprisingly, one of the main bottleneck in this migration was the support of IPv6 on the transparent proxies that they use to accelerate web access.
In [TLB+12], researchers and network administrators from FutureWei report their experience in adding IPv6 connectivity to their network. The report is short on enabling IPv6, but discusses more recent solutions that are being developed within the IETF.
Another interesting viewpoint is the one discussed in RFC 6585. In this RFC, Jari Arkko and Ari Keranen report all the issues that they faced while running an IPv6 only network in their lab and using it on a daily basis to access the Internet which is still mainly IPv4.
| [BNC11] | H. Babiker, I. Nikolova, and K. Chittimaneni. Deploying ipv6 in the google enterprise network. lessons learned. In USENIX LISA 2011. 2011. URL: http://static.usenix.org/events/lisa11/tech/full_papers/Babiker.pdf. |
| [TLB+12] | T. Tsou, D. Lopez, J. Brzozowski, C. Popoviciu, C. Perkins, and D. Cheng. Exploring ipv6 deployment in the enterprise: experiences of the it department of futurewei technologies. IETF Journal, June 2012. URL: http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/exploring-ipv6-deployment-enterprise-experiences-it-department-futurewei-technologies. |