IPv6

IPv4 provides appoximately 3.7 billion assignable addresses of all 4,296,967,296 available addresses. this is because IPv4 divides addresses into classes and some of these classes are used for multicasting, research and testing and other reserved uses. in 2007 there are about 2.4 billion of IPv4 addresses that has been used. newer technology requires more addresses, including mobile users (PDA, new mobile phone), transportation (allow remote monitoring and maintenance), electronics (home appliances).


Europe, Japan and Asia-Pacific region has started to begin the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Japan officially started to move in 2000 and set a deadline in 2005 to upgrade existing systems in every sector. this is followed by Korea, China and Malaysia. DOD mandated at early 2003, that all new equipment must be ip-enabled and compatible to IPv6.

IPv5 was used to define an experimental real-time streaming protocol.

not only IPv6 provides more addresses than IPv4, but also IPv6 is easier to use, has a simplified header and more secure. devices has been evolving from stationary devices into moving devices. in IPv6, mobile devices can roam into network reqions without breaking the network connection. the simplified header offers several advantages:
  • Better routing efficiency
  • no broadcasts, avoid potential threat of broadcast storm.
  • no checksum processing
  • flow labels field, no need to open the inner packet to identifiy various traffic flow.


IPv6 Representation
IPv6 is 128-bit length. it's represented as a series of eight 16-bit fields, each seperated by a colon. example, 1031:40BF:A03C:0000:5031:04DE:0000:0000. the representation can be shortened by using the following rules:
  • leading zeros are optional to be written. the field 04DE can be written as 4DE. field 0000 can be written as 0
  • successive zeros can be represented as two colons "::". the field 0000:0000 can be written as :: .

from the example above, it can be shortened as 1031:40BF:A03C:0:5031:4DE:: .


Global Unicast Address
IPv6 has a block of global unicast address. that is, addresses that are globally unique and are able to be routed. this address typically consists of a 48-bit global routing prefix and followed by a 16-bit subnet ID. an Organization can divide a given global unicast address into subnets with a maximum number of 65,535 subnets for each address. currently, IANA uses the range of addresses that starts with binray value 001 (2000::/3), which is 1/8 of the total IPv6 addresses. IANA is allocating the addresses in the ranges 2001::/16 to the five RIR (ARIN, RIPE, APNICm LACNIC, AfriNIC).

Reserved Address
IETF has reserved 1/256 of the total IPv6 addresses for various uses, both present and future.

Private Address
IPv6 has private addresses (just as in IPv4) for use in local needs only and not to be routed outside a particular private network. these addresses start with the first octet value of "FE" in hexadecimal notation and the next hexadecimal digit being a value between 8 and F.
these addresses are further divided into two types:
  • Site-Local addresses. the same as private addresses stated in RFC 1918 for IPv4. the scope of these addresses is an entire site. however, the use of site-local addresses is problematic and is being deprecated as stated by RFC 3879 in 2003. site-local addresses begin with the first two hexadecimal value of "FE" and the third being a value from "C" - "F".
  • Link-local addresses. link-local addresses are new concept to IP networking. these addresses have a smaller scope than site-local addresses. they refer only to a physical network (physical link). routers won't forward packets containing these addresses. they are used for link communications such as automatic address configuration, neighbor discovery and router discovery. Many IPv6 routing protocols also use link-local addresses. these addresses begin with the first two hexadecimal value of "FE" and the third being a value from "8" - "B".

Loopback Address
the concept is the same as a loopback address in IPv4. however in IPv6, there is just on address instead of a whole block for this function. the loopback address in IPv6 is 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 or also expressed as ::1.

Unspecified Address
in IPv4, a device that doesn't know its IP address will set the source address as all zeroes value. this is formalized in IPv6. the all-zeroes address is named "unspecified" and typically used in the source field of a datagram that is sent by a device that seeks to have its IP address configured. also expressed as ::.


IPv6 addresses have a portion that serves the same functionality of the host portion of IPv4 addesse, which is called the interface identifier. this portion is always 64 bits length and can be dynamically derived from a layer 2 address (MAC). this portion can be defined statically or dynamically. two ways to statically define IPv6 addresses ID are:
  • manual interface ID assignment. one way to statically define the IPv6 address for a device is to manually configure both the network (prefix) and the interface ID to the device. to assign an IPv6 address to an interface in Cisco router, enter the following command in the interface configuration level
ipv6 address ipv6-address/prefix-length

ipv6-address: the address of the interface in IPv6 notation, example 2001:A58E:9CD:2947::49
prefix-length: the length of the prefix (network) portion. example /64


  • EUI-64 interface ID assignment. EUI-64 standard define the way to stretch the MAC address, which is 48 bits, of the interface to a 64 bits interface ID used for IPv6. the convertion is done by inserting the 4 hexadecimal values of "FFFE" at the 24th bit of the MAC address. example, a MAC address of 00:0c:4F:90:27:FC is converted to 00:0c:4F:FF:FE:90:27:FC. to assign an IPv6 with the EUI-64 scheme to an interface in Cisco router. enter the following command at the interface configuration level.
ipv6 address ipv6-prefix/prefix-length eui-64
ipv6-prefix: the network (prefix) portion of the address
prefix-length: the length of the prefix (network) portion

example,
 
ipv6 address 2001:A58E:9CD:2947::/64 eui-64



two ways to dynamically define IPv6 addresses ID are:
  • Stateless autoconfiguration. this is the plug-and-play feature of IPv6. this enables devices to connect to the network without the needs of any configuration and any servers.
  • DHCPv6 (statefull). this uses a DHCP server to pass address parameter configuration to IPv6 devices. it provides automatic address allocation of reusable addresses and additional configuration flexibility. this feature can be used concurrently with stateless autoconfiguration feature in IPv6.


IPv6 Transition
there are many transition mechanisms that enable smooth integration of IPv4 and IPv6. different situations require different strategis. the commonc techniques are (recall the advice "Dual stack where you can, tunnel where you must". these two are the most common techniques used.):
  • Dual stacking. routers and switches are configured to implement and provide connectivity for both IPv4 and IPv6 with IPv6 being the preferred protocol. this is the recommended option.
  • Tunneling. serveral tunneling techniques available are"
  • manual IPv6-over-IPv4 tunneling. encapsulates IPv6 packets within IPv4 protocol. this requires dual-stack routers.
  • Dynamic 6to4 tunneling. automatically establish conneciton between IPv6 networks over a IPv4 network (usually the internet). this dynamically applies a valid IPv6 prefix for each IPv6 network which enables fast deployment of IPv6 in a corporate network without the need of address retrieval from ISPs or registries.
  • Intra-Size Automatil Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP) tunneling. this uses the underlying IPv4 network as a link layer for IPv6. this allows IPv4 or IPv6 dual-stack hosts within a site to communicate with other such hosts on a virtual link, creating IPv6 network using the IPv4 infrastructure.
  • Teredo tunneling. this is an automatic host-to-host tunneling instead of gateway tunneling. this passes unicast IPv6 traffic when dual-stacked hosts are located behind one or multiple IPv4 NATs.
  • NAT-Protocol Translation (NAT-PT). this allows direct communication between hosts that use different IP protocol version. this translation is more complex than IPv4 NAT. at this time, this approach is the least favorable and should be used as a last resort(included in Cisco IOS releas 12.3.(2)T and later releas with the appropriate feature set).

Cisco IOS Dual Stack
dual stack is an integration method allowing a node to provides connectivity for both IPv4 and IPv6. each node has two protocol stacks with the configuration on the same interface or multiple interfaces. a dual-stack node should prefer IPv6 when it is available. old IPv4 applications continue to work as before. Cisco IOS Release 12.2(2)T and later (with appropriate feature set) are IPv6-ready. in order for Cisco routers to be able to forward IPv6 datagramse, use the global command "ipv6 unicast-routing". then configure every interface that forward IPv6 traffic with an IPv6 address.

example, configure interface FastEthernet0/1 to support both IPv4 and IPv6.
ipv6 unicast-routing
interface FastEthernet0/1
ip address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address 2001:A58E:9CD:2947::49/64


when both protocols are configured on the interface, the interface is considered dual-stacked


IPv6 Tunneling
tunneling is an integration method by encapsulating IPv6 packets within another protocol, such as IPv4 protocol (when encapsulated into IPv4 protocol, a protocol type of 41 is specified at the IPv4 header). this enables connecting IPv6 networks without converting any intermediary networks to IPv6. tunneling requires the end routers to be dual-stacked (both border routers must support IPv4 and IPv6 and have their interfaces configured for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses). tunneling has two issues, it decreases the MTU by 20 octets because of the IPv4 header, tunneled networks are often difficult to troubleshoot. tunneling should not be considered as a final solution. a native IPv6 architecture should be the end goal.


Routing Consideration in IPv6
review of router's functionality in a network:
  • the control plane. handles the interaction of a the router with other network elements, providing needed information and control the overall router operation. this playe runs routing protocols and network management processes.
  • the data plane. this forward packets from a source interface to another interface. this involves switching mechanisms such as Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) and process switching.
  • Enhanced services. advanced features such as ACL, QoS, encryption, etc.

Challenges in IPv6 routing
IPv6 Control Plane
  • IPv6 address size. address size affects the routing performance. in the same CPU environment, IPv6 takes more time to process source and destination address information. if routers relying only on software processing, they are likely to perform slower in IPv6 environment.
  • IPv6 routing protocols. more address size means, messages between routing procotols will be larger than messages in IPv4 environment.
  • Multiple IPv6 node addresses. IPv6 nodes may have multiple IPv6 unicast addresses, memory consumption on Neighbor Discovery cache may be affected.
  • Routing table size. increased IPv6 total address leads to larger routing table. this may require more memory to support it.

IPv6 Data Plane
the data plane forwards IP packet based on the decisions made by the control plane.
  • Parsing IPv6 extension headers. IPv6 packets may have some additional headers. these headers sometimes used by application in IPv6 environment. this additional fields require additional processing. if the length of the extension header exceeds the hardware register limits, the packet may be given to software switching or dropped. this somehow affect forwarding performance.
  • IPv6 address lookup. most routers today perform lookups using an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) which is originally designed to work in IPv4 environment. when this is used to process IPv6 packets which have larger address size, this could result in punting the packets into software processing or dropping the packets.

Cisco IOS IPv6 Name Resolution
two ways to perform name resolution in Cisco IOS
  • Statically define a name for an IPv6 address. use the following command at global configuration level
ipv6 host name [port] ipv6addr [{ipv6addr}..]
name : name of the ipv6addr
port : telnet port to be used for the associated host
ipv6addr: the address of the hostname. there can be up to four addresses for a given hostname

example,

ipv6 host router1 2001:A58E:9CD:2947::1

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