Posted on 06/04/2012 11:47:05 AM PDT by ShadowAce
The World IPv6 Launch is set for next week on June 6th. On that day, website operators around the world will switch on IPv6 connectivity and keep it on. The event is a follow up to World IPv6 Day in 2011 in which over 300 websites switched on IPv6 for the day to see what would happen.
VeriSign, operator of root DNS servers and the .com and .net registries, has a unique role to play when it comes to IPv6. VeriSign sees traffic coming in as DNS queries and as record updates for domains. While many World IPv6 Day participants switched IPv6 off after the event in 2011, VeriSign has maintained IPv6 service on their site over the past year.
In an interview with Enterprise Networking Planet.com, VeriSign CTO, Burt Kaliski noted that the company has two perspectives when it comes to IPv6. The first is as a service-provider infrastructure vendor for the Internet, as an enabler for others to connect over IPv6 DNS. The other is as an enterprise that needs to enable IPv6 for its own use. In both cases, VeriSign is taking a dual-stack transition model that supports both IPv6 and IPv4.
"We're tending to see a co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6 when registrations occur and when traffic comes in we'll often see both an IPv4 and an IPv6 request due to the propagation of the dual-stack," Kaliski said.
From a DNS perspective, IPv6 is registered as a "AAAA" record in a domain registry, in contrast IPv4 DNS is stored in an "A" record. VeriSign is now seeing more AAAA records in DNS. As measured by queries coming into VeriSign's DNS resolution systems, IPv6 traffic is gradually increasing in root server traffic, as well. There are 13 root DNS servers that power the Internet and VeriSign manages the core A and J servers.
"We've seen an increase in the past year or so in the percentage of traffic to the DNS root servers carried over IPv6 from somewhere around one percent to between three and four percent," Kaliski said. "That means of all the queries we receive on a daily basis about three times as many are carried over IPv6 than a year ago and that's an encouraging sign."
Growth in IPv6 DNS traffic is a leading indicator of IPv6 adoption. But, while DNS traffic over IPv6 has grown, that doesn't necessarily translate into a growth of IPv6 traffic for .com and .net top level domains.
"We're not seeing a significant increase in the percentage of transactions carried over IPv6 for .com and .net and it has been relatively flat over the last year," Kaliski said. "
The fact that IPv6 DNS query volume is growing while IPv6 domain traffic is flat is not a contradiction. Kaliski explained that DNS queries proceed with a certain logic from the resolution system and it would be natural to start with the root servers sending out IPv6 requests. Once a user gets get back an address for a name server than the user speaks to the name server over whatever version of IP that works for the user.
"The starting point demonstrates the availability of IPv6," Kaliski said.
The complexity of the Internet and DNS resolution means that there are actually at least four options by which traffic can be delivered. A DNS query today can come over IPv4 or IPv6 and the item being queried can be either an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.
While June 6 is being promoted as the launch day for IPv6, the reality of widespread IPv6 usage is somewhat different. The world launch day is not a cutoff point or a switch over from IPv4, it's merely an open declaration from website operators that they will run IPv6 on a daily basis.
As to whether there should have been some kind of arbitrary cutoff and switch over to IPv6 from IPv4, Kaliski's view is that it's not possible. He sees a gradual deployment and co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6 over a long span of time. As opposed the say the recent U.S. switchover from analog to digital TV signal broadcasts, IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist and use the same connectivity. With digital and analog TV there was no way to sustain both systems simultaneously and that's why a formal switchover had to occur.
"There will probably be IPv4 traffic somewhere for a very long time," Kaliski said.
For how many years did we have to write code that was reverse compatible with 7 bit gateways? All that b64’ing and uuencode’ing.
bump
With LANs/WANs so geared toward IPv4 and NAT (not to mention the standard network guy’s ability to rattle off IP addresses from memory—try that with IPv6), I can’t imagine widespread adoption (exclusive) any time soon.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2891350/posts?page=10#10So I won't repeat myself here. I'll just say I'm not holding my breath on IPv6 adoption.
IPv6 is easy to remember, at least for addresses IT folks will be using a lot. Take loopback, commonly 127.0.0.1 (okay technically through 127.255.255.255, but people usually stick with that). IPv6 is even easier, ::1. And router configuration will get a whole lot easier.
We'll get used to it eventually, but it's gonna take a while. One of the biggest problems I see is address allocation. If we're not somewhat smart about how addresses are allocated, the vast majority of address space will be wasted (as is the case today already with IPv4).
What about gateways, DNS servers, your Exchange server, the Active Directory servers, your intranet server, etc...
These are all IP addresses that I can rattle off the top of my head after a day or two of troubleshooting. IPv6 will make that quite a bit more difficult. Not to say it should be a showstopper, but it is a consideration.
Most of the time you'll be dealing with subnets, so you won't have to remember that much. But yes, there are more numbers available, so the number field will be larger. It's taking some getting used to for me. And don't forget multicast, ff02::1.
If we're not somewhat smart about how addresses are allocated, the vast majority of address space will be wasted
Every person in the world could get his own /64 subnet and we'd barely put a scratch in the address space. I don't think we're going to have a problem in the next few hundred years, unless we start getting injected with billions of nanomachines, each with their own IP address. Actually, even that doesn't come close to hitting 2^64.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.