IPv6 Network Administration

Inputs to Deployment Plans

Now, however, we need to drill down into more specific analysis. Below we consider various influences on a deployment plan. We consider the most important case, existing IPv4 infrastructure, first, then talk about considerations around converting hosts and routers.

Existing IPv4 Infrastructure

This will be by far the most common starting point for IPv6 deployment, and will continue to be for years. The good thing is that IPv6 is, as designed, able to run in parallel on almost any kind of layer 2 media: Ethernet, ATM, and so on. This means that you can start with as minimal a deployment as you want, by connecting IPv6 capable hosts to your existing layer 2 infrastructure. Adding to or changing the IPv6 deployment is very easy, and as time goes on, the amount of administrator effort required for getting IPv6 up and running on new equipment will go down. The tricky element obviously, is managing the two in simultaneously.

As noted above, there are various transition mechanisms that can help with deploying IPv6. One of the most useful for low-overhead connectivity is the dual-stack approach, where the OS can communicate using each protocol (IPv4 and IPv6) separately. We find that in situations where performance is not absolutely paramount, having a dual stack means that experimenting with IPv6 becomes very easy, as we illustrate below. For situations where dual stack is not feasible, there are other mechanisms to deal with IPv6-only hosts, and we look at those ...