IPv6 Network Administration

Preface

The chief thing is not to study, but to do.

Sayings of the Fathers, 1:17

IPv6 has been overhyped, undersold, rubbished, acclaimed, scuppered, and resurrected—often several times a day by the same person in different conversations. It's been talked up and talked down, misunderstood, ignored and defended; but it is overcoming barriers and finding growing acceptance and support within the Internet community. For an obscure networking protocol of current interest to a small fraction of the population of our planet, this combination of passion and ignorance seems remarkable. You might ask, `So why all the fuss?' The motivation behind IPv6 is the need to fix the most difficult problems that the Internet faces today: address exhaustion, network management, scalability issues, and multi-homing. It is the promise of addressing^[1] these issues that has sparked the interest it has aroused, and that same promise is and will drive its adoption and eventual deployment. In fact, about the only thing that IPv6 hasn't been is widely deployed enough to justify this attention! We hope to do our small part to change that by providing this book to help you make your own judgement, ignoring the gain-sayers and the hype, and focusing on what IPv6 can do for you.

We of course know that technical merit or promise alone is not enough to make something successful, so besides an excellent design and good intentions, what else does IPv6 have going for it? Well, it's been adopted as a standard by organizations ...