IPv6 Address Planning

Chapter 9. Managing Growth and Change

Introduction

In the last chapter, we looked at some of the tools that DDI in general and IPAM in particular provide for the provisioning and management of address and name resources.

In this chapter, we’ll explore some of the principles and best practices for managing the address plan through network and organizational growth and change.

We’ll also review how best to manage network renumbering in IPv6 (something made easier by the protocol’s improvements on handling multiple addresses).

Finally, we’ll consider some of the address planning considerations for both next-generation networks and those transition technologies besides dual-stack that remain relevant, as well as how to deal with unplanned growth.

Renumerology: IP Renumbering Made Easy…(or Somewhat Less Painful)

No matter how thorough our address planning or how diligent our address management, we’ll eventually be confronted with the requirement to renumber some or all of our network. Networks grow—and shrink—along with the businesses and organizations they support. Where growth occurs, it can be the result of corporate mergers or acquisitions, the planned deployment of new services or technologies, or just good old-fashioned network bloat as infrastucture is grafted on to work around problems as they arise. Or sometimes we have to change providers, number into a new assignment from our new provider, and out of the old one to return it.^[116]

A renumbering project could theoretically apply to ...