© 2013 Utilities Telecom Council

Delivering Your Future

Roadmap to the Next Generation IP Network: A Review of the Fundamentals

Brandon Ross

Chief Network Architect and CEO

Network Utility Force

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IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes – RFC 6540

Given the global lack of available IPv4 space, and limitations in IPv4 extension and transition technologies, this document advises that IPv6 support is no longer considered optional. It also cautions that there are places in existing IETF documents where the term "IP" is used in a way that could be misunderstood by implementers as the term "IP" becomes a generic that can mean IPv4 + IPv6, IPv6-only, or IPv4-only, depending on context and application.

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RFC 6540

• Are you aware of this requirement?• Are your nodes IPv6 capable?

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Background

• IPv4 depletion is already occurring• IPv6 adoption is accelerating• Most network hardware supports IPv6• For the most part, dual stack Just Works

http://www.potaroo.net/tools

IPv4 Free Pool Depletion

http://www.ipv6actnow.org/info/statistics/#alloc

IPv6 Routing Table Growth

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US Feds Lesson Learned

The US federal government had a mandate for all public facing web services to support IPv6 by September 30, 2012.287 of 1494 sites had IPv6 web support by the deadline.

Today 961 of 1355 sites support IPv6. That’s over 70%. Not 100%, but far ahead

of most other large organizations.Source: http://usgv6-deploymon.antd.nist.gov//

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What next?

“Okay, my organization is convinced it’s time to begin IPv6 deployment, what do I need to consider?”

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Consider the Fundamentals of Best Practice

The fundamentals haven’t changed a bit for IPv6, consider:

• Security• Maintainability• Scalability• Performance• Flexibility

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Apply the Fundamentals

What areas need the most attention?• Addressing plan• Interconnectivity• Bootstrapping/AAA• Security issues• Staff training• Transition

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IPv6 Address Space is VAST

“IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, allowing 2128, or approximately 3.4×1038 addresses, or more than 7.9×1028 times as many as IPv4, which uses 32-bit addresses.” (Wikipedia)

That’s 340 Undecillion!

Undecillion is a number with 36 zeros.

We must change our thinking about how to allocate address space to meet our best practice goals.

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State of Assignments

• All of the registries, for the most part, assign initial blocks for Service provider /32

Enterprise /48

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What makes up a good addressing plan?

• Depends on the type of network, the size of the network, and problem to be solved

• Points to consider Documentation

Ease of troubleshooting

Aggregation

Standards compliance

Growth

SLAAC

Existing IPv4 addressing plan

Human factors

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Algorithmic Approaches

• Interop took an algorithimic approach to IPv6 numbering

• Encode every IPv4 address in your network in an IPv6 address

10.10.10.10 (A0A0A0A)

2001:DB8:A0A:A0A::

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Interconnectivity

• Routing protocols have been updated, but the fundamental concepts remain the same– Run routing protocols such that they fail when the underlying transport

fails

• That means separate v4 and v6 protocols

– For ease of management, configure IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity to follow the same paths

– Also use the same routing policies whenever possible

• Ask your Internet traffic peers, suppliers, partners and clients to begin transporting IPv6 traffic

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Bootstrapping/AAA

• Some fundamental changes have been made to the bootstrap process to join an IPv6 network, all part of the Neighbor Discovery process– Router Advertisements (RA) – Tells potential clients about the routers

and prefixes available on the network

– StateLess Address Auto Configuration (SLAAC)

• New in IPv6, allows a device to generate it’s own address

• Supported universally

– Dynamic Host Configuration Procotol v6 (DHCPv6)

• Very similar to v4, can distribute address, DNS server, other information about the network

• Good support, but far from universal

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Security Issues

• Use the same diligence you used for IPv4• Ask equipment vendors to support specific protections in IPv6

– RA-Guard – prevents an attacker from sending rogue RAs into the network and becoming a man-in-the-middle

– DHCP-Shield – similar to RA-Guard in that it blocks fake DHCP servers from giving out false information

• Ensure equipment supports all IPv4 features you use in IPv6 as well such as ACLs, anti-spoof filtering (RPF), etc. Why should v6 be any different in these areas?

• Where firewalls are needed, ensure your choice of firewall supports v6 as well as v4.

• NAT is NOT a security feature and v6 doesn’t have it

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Staff Training

• Find an experienced organization to provide training• Service providers require a different level of scalability and

maintainability than enterprise, use a trainer that understands SP’s unique challenges

• Build a lab, get a tunnel to experiment with IPv6

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Transition

• 3 types of transition technologies– Dual Stack

• Hopefully will be the most common

• Simply means running both v4 and v6 at the same time

– Tunneling

• Putting either IPv4 packets inside IPv6 packets or vice versa, depending on the situation

• Can be useful to solve problems in certain areas, but in general, tunneling hurts performance and should be avoided when possible

• Examples: 6rd, 6in4, 4in6, DS-Lite, MAP

– Translation

• Converting an IPv4 packet into an IPv6 packet or vice versa

• Like in tunnels, can be useful in certain circumstances, especially for rapid deployment of IPv6 on public facing services such as web servers

• Example: NAT64

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Conclusions

• IPv6 works in the real world• There are challenges to implementing IPv6, but nothing

show-stopping• Much of the Internet’s content is reachable over IPv6 (and

growing fast) including all of Google, FaceBook and 3000 other sites

• A much smaller percentage of Internet users have IPv6 connectivity (though this may change quickly with IPv4 depletion)

Delivering Your Future

Questions?

Brandon Ross – bross@netuf.net - +1-404-635-6667

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