Preparing for an IPv6 Deployment

IPv6 is the talk of the Internet, there are varying degrees of urgency stating that we will run out of existing IPv4 space within 2 years, with some saying there is enough IPv4 space left for 10 years. No matter which prediction is correct, eventually, IPv4 space will be exhausted and companies will have to begin migrating to IPv6 to ensure the availability of publicly routable IP space. Few companies have begun to evaluate the problem in detail; the sooner companies begin to evaluate their infrastructure, the more smoothly they can plan a migration from IPv4 to IPv6 and the longer period of time they can amortize the costs over.

IPv6 is an upgrade to the most basic elements of the internet and the networks that connect companies, individuals and the devices we have become so accustomed to using like our Blackberrys, iPhones and laptops. Making changes to the basis of all connectivity is not an easy thing to accomplish, or even begin planning for. The dependencies are unique and well established over many years of additions, improvements and research around IP connectivity. In this paper I intend to break down the process for companies to begin evaluating this upgrade to there infrastructure so that a strategic plan for IPv6 deployment can be developed.

Deployment Options
When deploying IPv6 there are a variety of options to ensure that no services will be interrupted during the time that both IPv4 and IPv6 are operational; both at your company, and across the global internet. Both options are important to consider because they each can work for specific cases to provide a bridge to IPv6 enable a system or application.

Parallel Stacks
When evaluating options for implementing IPv6 without impacting existing IPv4 traffic, most companies are looking to vendors to provide parallel stack capability, also called dual stack in some cases. By utilizing a parallel stack solution, companies can bring up IPv6 capability in parallel to their existing IPv4 deployments. This ensures that services can be migrated as they are fully tested and validated on IPv6. This parallel stack solution does come at a cost because of the overhead of administering two separate logical networks within a single physical network.

IPv6 NAT-PT
Todays modern routers are also offering capabilities to do NAT for traffic between IPv4 and IPv6, and vice-versa. IPv6 NAT-PT is a capability to have devices in your network with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses assigned to them, these devices can then used as gateways for devices to use as a connection point to newer IPv6 devices. IPv6 NAT-PT was designed to provide a step from IPv4 to IPv6. IPv6 NAT-PT is a very specific use of the above mentioned parallel stack; ensuring that devices that only speak one protocol, can access devices speaking the alternate protocol.

Assessment

Overall Questions
The first step to evaluating the impact of an IPv6 update is by reviewing the high level components of your Information Technology (IT) systems. This evaluation is to begin looking at vendor commitments, capability and simplicity of system upgrades and regulatory impacts:
1)Inventory all vendors you currently use, document what there current and future support plans are for IPv6? What assistance can they provide either through documentation or consulting services to assist with a migration?
2)Review all applications, which ones are developed in house and which are commercial software? Are all the commercial software vendors still in business?
3)Do you have any legacy systems that no longer are covered by support agreements?
4)Do you have any systems that are covered by federal laws for data consistency? What legal rules are in place governing how these systems are tested and maintained?

Infrastructure Tiers
The next step is to systematically evaluate each component that contributes to the operational capability of your IT systems:

Network – Todays networks are complex sets of routers, switches, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and physical links between sites. To properly assess this portion for an IPv6 upgrade, an audit must be done for each device. It should assess what types of Deployment Options the device supports, how the vendor plans to support IPv6 on this platform and, what upgrades, either software or hardware will be required for IPv6 support.

VPN Infrastructure – Enterprises are increasingly reliant on VPNs to secure traffic in todays mobile workforce. The software and hardware supporting these VPN sessions needs to be tested and evaluated to ensure it will support future IPv6 connections and traffic as well as a mix of traffic during any transition periods.

Applications – Applications will be the most complex and time consuming component of the evaluation process. Most companies have many dozens of applications in place, if not more, that must be evaluated to ensure that they will properly migrate to IPv6. This assessment for each application will need to include outside dependencies like license servers, database servers or client software on users individual machines.

Monitoring Tools – Todays enterprises have a diverse collection of tools used for monitoring network usage, network performance, application usage, application availability, users connection. All this information is critical to both developing and ensuring compliance with SLAs. As part of a complete IPv6 assessment all monitoring tools, both performance and availably, should be evaluated to ensure they can provide the same level of detail in monitoring, as well as properly store and report data that could be IPv6 or IPv4 specific.

Core services – Core services, including DNS, DHCP, and file sharing are some of the most critical components to an IPv6 migration. These services form the basis for all user experiences and if implemented correctly, will ensure that a transition to IPv6 is seamless to the users.

Mobile Devices – Mobile devices are becoming a standard for doing business in todays mobile workforce. As you begin to develop your IPv6 transition plan, it is important to include these as part of the assessment to ensure they will continue to operate through the transition and when the transition is complete. You should begin by speaking with your mobile device vendors to understand if the carriers network will support your IPv6 plans, as well as your employees handheld devices. This assessment will allow you to develop a cost associated with upgrading or replacing units in the field.

End Users Systems – Todays mobile workforce means that many staff have a laptop and a desktop system at a minimum, with more then one laptop per person in a lot of cases. All these devices need to be evaluated for IPv6 support to see if they will support the proposed changes, and what, if any upgrades will be needed for full support. This will have an impact to both the schedule and cost of an IPv6 deployment.

Migration Timeline
Now that we have developed a list of what will need to be upgraded, and paired that with a list of what upgrades our vendors will support, we can use that to develop a process and timeline to test all necessary changes, upgrade appropriate systems and eventually move an an environment where IPv6 is fully operational across all IT systems. This planning stage, taking what we know will need to be updated and planning how to update and test it, is the most important part of an IPv6 migration. This stage is our best opportunity to ensure we understand the time commitments for this project, the costs this project will incur and the potential challenges we will run into.

As we develop a complete migration process, there are many angles that must be included to ensure all services rolled out are ready for prime time and allow your staff to be as proficient as they were in an all IPv4 world. We must ensure that we understand what software will need to be upgraded, what software re-written, and how to test those changes so that we do not introduce complications.

After we have a plan for making the appropriate software updates and testing them, you can develop a detailed plan for how to implement IPv6. This plan should include which services will be upgraded first, second and so on. This plan should also include what groups of users will be the first to migrate so that they can be made aware of the plans and provide input during the migration process. This input can then be used to make each subsequent step smoother then the previous one.

In addition to the migration plans and testing plans, plans for disaster recovery and maintenance will need to be updated. Because IPv6 is such a radical change from current technologies, most maintenance plans and disaster recovery plans will need to be updated to handle the varied techniques that will need to be used once IPv6 is in place and operational.

Industry Commitments
The last big question lingering after a through assessment of your infrastructure is, what about the rest of the industry and our vendors? That is currently a point of contention in the vendors space, vendors are hesitant to implement IPv6 capability until customers demand it, and customers are hesitant to implement IPv6 until vendors provide a fully support capability in there products. The most visible of this contention is with todays modern firewall products, today very few fully support the RFCs around IPv6, but as most companies look to IPv6, this is an early capability that must be in place to continue rolling out IPv6.

As time continues, more and more vendors will adopt and support IPv6 in the same ways they support IPv4. IPv4 has taken decades to grow to the point of adoption it is at now, along that path many, many enhancements have been made to the routers, switches and servers that power our enterprise environments. As time continues to progress, more and more customers will push vendors to add complete IPv6 capabilities, as they do it will enable a larger portion of companies to begin to fully embrace IPv6.