In 2011 we have already seen some important Internet anniversaries and milestones. We have celebrated 25 years of IETF meetings and 40 years of the FTP protocol, but the most significant milestone took place in February when IANA handed out its final blocks of IPv4 addresses to the RIRs (see page 21). It seems like a good time to publish an edition of IPJ devoted entirely to IPv4/IPv6 transition, and to help me with this task I have invited Geoff Huston as co-editor and author for this issue, so let me hand it over to him:
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by Geoff Huston, APNIC
The level of interest in IPv4 address exhaustion seems to be increasing, so I thought I would share some answers to the most common questions I have been asked on this topic in recent times.
by Phil Roberts, ISOC
On June 8, 2011, websites including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Bing will make their main webpages reachable over IPv6 for a 24-hour period from 00:00 to 23:59 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This activity, World IPv6 Day, a “test flight” of IPv6, is motivating organizations across the Internet industry to prepare their services for IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol. Internet Service Providers, hardware makers, operation system and application vendors, and other websites are indeed working to make this activity of testing IPv6 on an Internet scale successful.
by Geoff Huston, APNIC
Last October, I attended the Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE)[1] meeting in Rome, and—not unexpectedly for a group that has some interest in IP addresses—the topic of IPv4 address exhaustion, and the related topic of the transition of the network to IPv6, captured a lot of attention throughout the meeting. One session I found particularly interesting was on the transition to IPv6, where people related their experiences and perspectives on the forthcoming transition to IPv6.
On February 3, 2011 a critical point in the history of the Internet was reached with the allocation of the last remaining IPv4 Internet addresses from a central pool. It means the future expansion of the Internet is now dependant on the successful global deployment of the next generation of Internet protocol, called IPv6.
by Geoff Huston, APNIC
In the previous article, I looked at some common myths associated with the transition to IPv6. In this article I would like to look behind the various opinions and perspectives about this transition, and examine in a little more detail the nature of the technologies being proposed to support the transition to IPv6.
The Internet Protocol Journal (IPJ) is published quarterly by Cisco Systems. The journal is not intended to promote any specific products or services, but rather is intended to serve as an informational and educational resource for engineering professionals involved in the design, development, and operation of public and private internets and intranets. The journal carries tutorial articles (“What is…?”), as well as implementation/operation articles (“How to…”). It provides readers with technology and standardization updates for all levels of the protocol stack and serves as a forum for discussion of all aspects of internetworking.