IPv6 Network Administration

Up and Coming Subject Areas

The subject we'll look at here is what may happen when the worlds of IP networks and mobile telephony collide.

Cellular Devices

Cellular devices are, loosely, devices that are expected to be hand-held, and operating in a cellular network of some kind. Mobile phones of various generations would be cellular devices, as would some kinds of laptop, or computers where power management is very important. They are typically small in size and in capability: they have limited CPU power, RAM, and battery capacity. The battery capacity issue is particularly relevant when the only network connection costs you significant amounts of power to transmit. Signalling traffic, such as RAs and pings, which in wired networks would be essentially "free," can be very keenly felt by a small device.

If you are looking at implementing IPv6 for such a device, then RFC 3316 is the RFC to read. It outlines some of the considerations for IPv6 on a device meeting the above definitions.

P2P Applications

It seems clear that peer-to-peer applications are going to be an important chunk of what networks are used for in the future. While P2P file sharing applications have acquired a tarnished name, due primarily to copyright concerns surrounding the files being shared, these applications also address hard problems related to how you distribute files efficiently. For example, Bittorrent is already the method of choice for downloading the most recent Linux distributions. Furthermore, the BBC ...