Transition to IPv6 - Essay Example

Transition to IPv6 Transition to IPv6 Part Every computer on the internet is usually identified with a unique address in order to differentiate it from others. This, therefore, calls for a mechanism or protocol of assigning the address in a way that there is avoidance of two devices having the similar address. This is meant to avoid deadlocks on the network. The protocol that is usually used for assigning the unique addresses to computers on the internet is known as internet protocol (IP). Assignment of IP addresses is done either permanently by configuring the device’s hardware or software or every time the device boots. The IP address which is issued permanently is referred to as a static IP address while that issued every time the device boots is referred to as a dynamic IP address. The static IP addresses are manually issued by the administrator and the procedure used usually varies across different platforms. (Wu, et al., 2012) Dynamic IP addresses on the other hand can be assigned by the computer interface, the host software or even by the server using DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Although IP addresses assigned through DCHP will stay the same for long periods of time, it is possible for them to generally change. An administrator may for instance implement static IP addresses dynamically. A DCHP server is used in this case but it is configured to always assign the same IP address to a given computer. This is advantageous in that it allows central configuration of static IP addresses without specifically configuring each computer on the network manually (Amoss & Minoli, 2007). In the case of the absence of static or DCHP address configurations or failure of the same, the operating system hence assigns an IP address to the network. This is done using stateless auto configuration methods. Frequently, IP addresses are assigned on broadband networks and LAN’s dynamically by the DCHP. This protocol is used because it does not require a specific assignment of each device on the network hence relieving the administrator of that burden. The protocol also allows sharing of IP addresses when they are limited, and this is done if some of the devices will be online at a given period of time (Carpenter, et al., 2013). Most recent operating systems have dynamic IP configuration enabled by default. This lessens the work for the user since they don’t have to set up the network settings manually whenever they are connecting to a network having a DCHP server. Apart from DCHP, there are other technologies used to assign IP addresses like point-to-point protocol whose dynamic address features are used by dial up and some broadband networks (CIO.GOV, 2012). The IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is a department of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN is a private American non-profit making corporation that oversees IP address allocation globally, root zone management in the DNS (Domain Name System), number allocation for autonomous systems and other IP related numbers and symbols. IANA globally allocates unique names and numbers used in different internet protocols. The names and numbers are published as request for comments documents, which describe the behaviours, methods and research, or even innovations which can be applied to the working of the internet or systems which have been connected to the internet. To fulfil this, IANA liaises with IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the RFC editorial team (Cisco, 2012). Allocation of IP address blocks is usually delegated to RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) by IANA. A regional internet registry just as the name suggests, is an organisation that is responsible for managing the registration and allocation of internet number resources in a given area or region of the world. The internet number resources are autonomous system numbers (AS) and the IP addresses. Evolution of the regional internet registry led to the division of the world into five regions: (Wu, et al., 2012) ANIC (African Network Information Centre) – this is for Africa ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) – this is for Canada, The United States, Antarctica and some parts of the Caribbean region. APNIC (Asia Pacific network Centre) – this is for Asia, New Zealand and its neighbouring countries and Australia. LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Network Information Centre) – this is for the Latin America and some regions of the Caribbean region. RIPE NCC (Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre) – this is for Russia, Middle East, Europe and the Central Asia. After the IANA has delegated internet resources to RIRs, RIRs in turn delegate the resources to their customers who are the end user organizations and the internet service providers (ISPs). ISPs are organizations that provide services for accessing and using the internet. Their role in address allocation varies depending on the type of ISP. ISPs who are access providers use several technologies in order to connect users to the internet. Such technologies include; modems with acoustic couplers, television cable, telephone lines, Wi-Fi and even fibre optics (Martellaro, 2012). There are other ISPs who are mailbox providers, as well. Mailbox providers provide services used for hosting email domains which have storage access for mail boxes. These ISPs provide email servers for sending, receiving, accepting and storing emails for users or organizations. Another type of ISPs is the hosting ISPs. These provide internet hosting services which are inclusive of email, cloud storage services and web hosting. ISPs themselves also pay other upstream ISPs for internet access just like the end users pay the ISPs for the same. Upstream ISPs have a large network and can provide the contracting ISPs with access to internet parts which the contracting ISPs can’t access by themselves. *************************************************************************** Part (2) Currently, there are two versions of internet protocol; internet protocol version 4 (ipv4) and internet protocol version 6 (ipv6). Ipv6 is actually an advancement and an upgrade of the Ipv4. Although the design of Ipv6 was heavily based on Ipv4, there are some significant differences between them. The major difference between the two is their address lengths. Ipv4 has an address length of 32 bits while Ipv6 has an address length of 128 bits. Ipv4 hence has an address space of 232 (around 4.3 billion) while Ipv6 has an address space of 2128 (around 340 trillion, trillion, trillion). The increase of the address length from 32 bits to 128 bits also sees to the doubling of the packet header size (adds additional 20 bytes overhead on each packet). Another difference between Ipv4 and Ipv6 is their external data representation. Ipv4 uses dotted decimal (e.g. 172.16.63.3) while Ipv6 uses coloned-hex (e.g. 2010:520:30::1). Externally, Ipv4 addresses are usually represented with four fields each of 8 bits and using up to three decimal digits per field. Ipv6 addresses, on the other hand, are usually externally represented with up to eight fields each of 16 bits and using up to four hexadecimal digits per field. *************************************************************************** Part (3) There are several transition methods that can be used to move from an Ipv4 address to an Ipv6 address. The standard mechanisms used are 4 in 6, 6 in 4, 6over4, DS-lite, 6rd, 6 to 4 ISATAP, Nat64/DNS64, teredo and SIIT (Monte, et al., 2012). The 4 in 6 mechanism refers to the tunnelling of Ipv4 in to Ipv6. This mechanism, therefore, allows the usage of Ipv4 protocol in an Ipv6 protocol network. It uses tunnelling for the encapsulation of Ipv4 traffic over Ipv6 tunnels which have been configured manually. The 6 in 4 mechanism also uses tunnelling for the encapsulation. In this case, however, Ipv6 traffic is explicitly configured to be sent over Ipv4 links. The 6 over 4 mechanism is usually meant for Ipv6 packet transmission between dual stack nodes on top of an Ipv4 network which is multicast enabled. The Ipv4 is used as a data link layer virtually on which the Ipv6 can be run. The 6over4 mechanism defines a trivial link local Ipv6 address generating method from an Ipv4 address as well as a mechanism for performing neighbour discovery on top of Ipv4. *************************************************************************** Part (4) Exhaustion of IPv4 address has resulted to creation of (Dual Stack Lite) to allow an ISP omit the deployment of any Ipv4 address to a customer’s CPE (Customer Premises Equipment). Only Ipv6 addresses which are global are provided instead. The CPE is the one responsible for the distribution of private Ipv4 addresses for LAN clients. Another Ipv6 transmission mechanism is the 6rd which facilitates rapid Ipv6 deployment across Ipv4 infrastructures of ISPs. This mechanism has been derived from 6to4 only that it operates within the ISP’s network entirely thus eliminating the architectural issues associated with the 6to4 design. ISATAP (intra site automatic tunnel addressing protocol) is another Ipv6 transition mechanism which is similar to 6over4 in that it transmits Ipv6 packets on top of an Ipv4 network between dual stack nodes. The difference between ISATAP and 6over4 is that, in ISATAP, Ipv4 is used as a virtual NMBA (non-broadcast multiple access network) data link layer. This, therefore, means that it doesn’t need the underlying Ipv4 infrastructure in order to support multicast. Teredo is also a transition mechanism which provides complete Ipv6 connectivity to hosts which are Ipv6 capable, but are on the Ipv4 internet and lacks direct connection to Ipv6 network. An outstanding feature for Teredo tunnelling is that it is capable of performing its functions even from behind a NAT (network address translation) device like a home router. The operation of teredo tunnelling protocol is platform independent and it provides Ipv6 connectivity through encapsulation of Ipv6 datagram packets within Ipv4 datagram packets (Radley & Punithavathan, 2013). Stateless IP/ICMP Translation (SIIT) – this protocol translates between the formats of the packet header in Ipv4 and Ipv6. This method defines an Ipv6 addresses class known as Ipv4-translated addresses. These addresses have usually had a prefix: ffff: 0:0:0/96 and they can be written as ::ffff:0:1.2.3.4 where 1.2.3.4 which is Ipv4 formatted refers to a node which is Ipv6 enabled (Siil, 2008). Since the Ipv4 addresses have a 32 bit field address space, it means that there are 4,294,967,296 values which are unique. Considering a sequence of 256 “/8s” and knowing that each “/8” has a correspondence of 16,777,216 values of unique addresses. Some Ipv4 address blocks have however been reserved in accordance to RFC 5735. The reserved addresses amount to 35.078 /8 address blocks. These reserved addresses are composed of sixteen /8 blocks which are reserved for multicast use cases. Other sixteen /8 blocks have been reserved for future use which is unspecified. A /8 (0.0.0.0/8) address block has been reserved for local identification, a /8 (127.0.0.0/8) address block for loopback and a /8 (10.0.0.0 /8) for private use. There are other smaller address blocks which have also been reserved for some special uses. The other remaining 220.922 /8 address blocks have been made available for use in the Ipv4 internet publicly. The IANA allocates the address blocks to RIRs who in turn manage the address blocks to the specific regions. There are five states in which every IP address can be in: Reserved for special use Part of the pool which has not been assigned and is still held by RIRs Part of the addresses which have not been assigned and are still held by IANA The exhaustion of Ipv4 addresses is the depletion of the Ipv4 unallocated pool of addresses. This depletion was anticipated since the 1980s and it was until 31st January 2011 when the exhaustion of the top level occurred. The RIR APNIC’s addresses were exhausted on 15th January 2011. Some parts of the world have also exhausted their Ipv4 addresses and it is expected that in the next few years, the remaining RIRs will deplete their pools (Monte, et al., 2012). *************************************************************************** Part (5) The deployment of Ipv6 protocol is anticipated as the saviour of the internet in terms of IP address depletion. Ipv6 was designed to replace the current Ipv4 protocol which has been in existence since 1982. In March of 2000, Microsoft released a preview version for the Ipv6 technology to be used in windows 2000. It was the same year that Sun Solaris started supporting Ipv6 in Solaris 8. 2001 – Compaq shipped Ipv6 with OpenVMS on January, Cisco Systems introduced support for Ipv6 on L3 routers and Cisco IOS routers, HP introduced Ipv6 with HP-UX 11i v1 2002 – Windows XP supports Ipv6 for development, IBM starts to support Ipv6 from version 1.4 2003 – Apple Mac OS enables Ipv6 by default 2005 – Linux stops using Ipv6 for experimental services and implements it fully. 2007 – Windows Vista enables Ipv6 by default. 2008 – IANA added AAAA records for Ipv6 addresses of 6 root name servers and this made it possible to resolve a domain name with Ipv6 only. 2011- The world Ipv6 day was held by the internet society and big companies with the aim of testing Ipv6 globally for 24 hours. 2012 – A world Ipv6 launch day was held by the internet society together with other big companies and Ipv6 was globally deployed permanently. *************************************************************************** Part (6) One of the group facing problems due to exhaustion of Ipv4 addresses is the internet service providers (ISPs). The rapid growth of the internet and communications media has led to plentiful resources for addressing devices hence making their technology itself a challenge. Currently, the internet industry is in the verge of running out of Ipv4 addresses used for numbering the devices on the internet. It is therefore everybodys interest to work together and ensure continuous growth of the internet. ISPs play a major role in making this a success. There are a number of strategies that ISPs can apply or should apply in order to avoid or manage this problem. Firstly, they can avoid the problem by doing nothing about it especially if they are not expecting any growth of their business. ISPs can also extend the life of their Ipv4 network. This extension can be done by attempting to buy themselves out of the immediate issue via markets for address transfers. They can also share among their customers their existing Ipv4 address space. Another option available for ISPs is deployment of Ipv6 for their new customers. This can be done by using transition techniques that allow access to Ipv4 addresses or by allowing their customers to access Ipv6 content via an Ipv6 network. Due to the Ipv4 address depletion, the ISPs have decided to do something about it. Currently, some ISPs have started migration to Ipv6 network. Most ISPs however are opting to extend their Ipv4 network lifetime (Carpenter, et al., 2013). Other ISPs are solving this problem by using Dual-stack networks. A dual-stack network involves the deployment of both Ipv4 and Ipv6 networks across the infrastructure. In this technique, configuration and routing protocols are capable of handling both Ipv4 and Ipv6 adjacencies. This means that the contents of the network are available in both Ipv4 and Ipv6 and by default, Ipv6 protocol is used if it is available otherwise Ipv4 technology is used. *************************************************************************** Part (7) With the influx of mobile devices in the past three years, it is expected that the Ipv4 addresses should be exhausted by now. However, that is not the case. There are still some Ipv4 addresses available. One technique which is usually used to regulate the exhaustion of Ipv4 addresses is the use of carrier-grade network (CGN) address translation (NAT). This technique translates private IP addresses in a carrier’s network to a smaller number of IP addresses (public) in the same way an ordinary NAT allows individuals to use multiple internal IP addresses (Cisco, 2012). ISPs also consider the address availability and decide how shared addresses are issued and to whom they are issued to as well as how unique public addresses are issued. To decide on the assignment of the addresses, ISPs consider several parameters: a. The eligibility of shared addresses – it cannot be possible to for an ISP to provide a shared address to all its customers. b. Multiplicative factor – ISPs have to decide on how many customers will be issued with the same address. c. Service differentiation – a premium service can be granted a unique Ipv4 address while a standard service can be granted a shared Ipv4 address. *************************************************************************** Part (8) In conclusion, it is evident that the Ipv4 protocol is being phased out and exhausted. Technically, almost 90% of the Ipv4 addresses have been exhausted. The time range for continued existence of Ipv4 addresses is very small hence it is advisable for all ISPs, individuals and organizations connecting to the internet to acquire an Ipv6 address. The rapid increase in the number of devices connecting to the internet poses even a bigger threat to the exhaustion of Ipv4 addresses due to the small bandwidth range of Ipv4 addresses compared to Ipv6 addresses. It was estimated that by the year 2010, all Ipv4 addresses would be exhausted. This was however prevented by the adoption of the Ipv6 technology. The Network Utility Force (an organisation that trains about Ipv6 network design and implementation) released an infographic about challenges facing Ipv4 addresses this year. According to this infographic, Ipv4 addresses will be depleted by December 2014. References Amoss, J. J. & Minoli, D., 2007. Handbook of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition: Methodologies for Institutional and Corporate Networks. 1st ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Carpenter, B. E., Moore, K. & Fink, B., 2013. Routing IPv6 over IPv4. The Internet Protocol Journal, Volume 3. CIO.GOV, 2012. Transition to IPv6. 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M. & M., J. G., 2013. Convergence Through All-IP Networks. 1st ed. s.l.:CRC Press. Wikipedia, 2014. IPv4 address exhaustion. [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion [Accessed 9 April 2014]. Read More