IP4 Space

Mark Andrews marka at isc.org
Fri Mar 12 00:42:50 UTC 2010


In message <2d6a9f6f1003111016t16ddc73frc4a430e22089149d at mail.gmail.com>, Bill 
Bogstad writes:
> I fall into this category, but I'm trying to get better.  This may be
> OT for this forum, but as someone whose network admin hat has mostly
> been at the LAN/MAN level, I'm less concerned about IPv6 peering, etc.
> then I am with what applications/servers don't play well with IPv6 and
> how do I work around those issues.

You test and file bug reports.  Multi-homing support has been a
host requirement for 20+ years now.  IPv4 + IPv6 is just a example
of multi-homing so there really should be no reason for any application
to break when IPv6 support is added.

> Where does one go to find out how organizations have switched their
> internal IT infrastructure to IPv6?

I think you will find that most organizations *added* IPv6. 

> Does it make sense/work to do this for internal operations even if our
> outside connections are IPv4 only (forget about tunneling).  Even more
> mundane questions like how to deal with IPv4 only networked printers
> when everything else is IPv6?

I don't recommend turning on IPv6 internally without having external
IPv6 connectivity.  You don't have to offer IPv6 service publically
but being able to get out to the internet over IPv6 removes a whole
class of problems in applications which don't support multi-homing
properly and try IPv6 first.  You really don't want all the timeouts.

This doesn't have to be native IPv6 connectivity.  Tunnels work
just fine for this initially.

As for IPv4 only printers you can continue to run dual stack
internally forever if you want.  Otherwise put them on their
own vlan and connect to them over NAT64 or run a proxy service.
 
> If anyone in the Boston metro area wants to present to the local
> system administrators group
> (www.bblisa.org) on why we should care (and more importantly what to
> do) please contact me off list.   We're mostly a bunch of senior Unix
> system administrator who are comfortable in our IPv4 world
> and (I think) see IPv6 as a whole bunch of work to mostly get back to
> where we already are.  We've all heard about the coming address
> apocalypse, but it always seems somewhere in the distant future.
> 
> Thanks,
> Bill Bogstad
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org




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