Background to IPv6

Benefits of IPv6

The most prominent reason for deploying IPv6 is its vastly increased address space, offering 128-bit addresses in place of IPv4's 32-bit addresses. While most UK Universities have sufficient address space, increased use of wireless PDAs, laptops and embedded systems will cause an increase in demand. Already some UK colleges, and some departments in universities, are running Network Address Translation (NAT) to serve a large number of networked hosts behind a small pool of public IP addresses.

Likely applications

An IPv6 infrastructure will enable the development of novel applications which simply will not work or that have high overheads in the presence of obstacles such as NAT. Applications domains that could benefit include:

• distributed systems
• GRID applications
• wireless 802.11b communities
• 3G/UMTS networks
• home networking

Staff and students will be able to work at home much more effectively with always-on broadband network access, for example making use of advanced collaborative conferencing applications or accessing home services from their office desktops. We should remember that the IPv4 killer application, the Web, was not invented until at least ten years after the Internet was available to the public. We do not yet know the ‘killer’ IPv6 application, but by promoting deployment and gaining early access to the technology, we are more likely to be ready for it to emerge.

Other pointers to IPv6 adoption

The pan-European IPv6 research network, GÉANT, is running dual stack IPv4/IPv6 and IPv6 is being implemented by national educational networks in Europe, the USA and Japan. Vendor-independent standards groups are increasingly focusing on IPv6 instead of IPv4 – for example, the bulk of the IETF's Mobile IP work is now IPv6 only.

Janet IPv6 Positioning Statement

The Janet IPv6 Positioning Statement is available.

Janet and IPv6 - Background

For over a decade, Janet has been involved in various IPv6 related activities, including the successful deployment of IPv4/IPv6 dual stack on the Janet backbone in 2003.

Since dual stack was deployed, Janet has established a number of IPv6 related peerings and a programme of IPv6 related activities to encourage regional and site network operators to get familiar with the deployment and operation of IPv6 services within their network. The support and guidance has been provided through a series of IPv6 hands on workshops through to the dissemination of IPv6 publication material.

By the end of 2006, Janet had observed the stability of the dual stack infrastructure. Also noted was the stable IPv4/IPv6 dual stack services deployed on the pan-European network, GEANT2, other national research networks across Europe and Internet2 in the US.

Further background information on IPv6 is available.

UK Government Position

The e-GIF defines the technical policies and specifications governing information flows across government and the public sector. These cover interconnectivity, data integration, e-services access and content management. Version 6.1, published in March 2005, contains the high level policy statements, management, implementation and compliance regimes.

This report provides a clear policy statement on the direction that public sector services should take in terms of IPv6. Section 2.12 of the report states:

“The e-GIF policy is for a gradual migration to IPv6, maintaining coexistence with IPv4. Our advice for new procurements is to support coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6 networks and to procure dual IPv4 and IPv6-enabled products when it is cost effective to do so”

Given that the Janet community is traditionally an early adopter of advanced networking applications, Janet believes that it is now cost effective to provide support for IPv6 across Janet.

The e-GIF Interoperability Framework can be found here.

European Commission (EC) Position

The EC has funded a number of IPv6 related activities over a number of years. They state that 74% of the IPv4 address space has been assigned and that the push for wireless and mobile devices will see the take up of IPv6. To raise awareness the EC have provided significant funding to initiatives such as the IPv6 Task Force and projects such as 6NET. Further details about the EC’s action plan on IPv6 are available.

Commercial Sector

It is acknowledged that within the commercial sector most vendors are now building IPv6 support as standard within new equipment that is manufactured.

Procurement Advice to Regional & Campus Network Connected to Janet

The advice given to Regional and Campus Network Operators is to request IPv6 support as mandatory for any new networking infrastructure. Example text to use in procurement documentation is available; however, feel free to contact Janet for further advice and guidance.