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hß · NetworksCurated

IETF discusses transition scenarios for the new internet protocol IPv6

Summary

In Dublin in 2008 the IETF discussed how IPv4 devices could continue to communicate during the transition to IPv6, since all 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses were expected to be allocated in around three years. Comcast engineer Alain Durand presented “Dual-Stack Lite”: IPv4 is tunnelled through the provider’s IPv6 network and translated there using carrier-grade NAT. Experts such as Fred Baker and Gert Döring warned that such NAT could delay IPv6 and called for native deployment.

Ideas

  • Tunnels transport IPv6 over IPv4 and vice versa, but do not translate.
  • Carrier-grade NAT stretches the remaining IPv4 addresses.
  • Dual-Stack Lite avoids several layers of NAT at the customer’s end.
  • Content providers have to move their own services to IPv6.

Insights

  • Transition technologies extend the life of the old protocol and slow down the new one.
  • Large content providers determine the switch more than network operators do.

Facts

  • The Chinese research network Cernet had been connected to the IPv6 network Cernet 2 for two years.
  • The Munich provider Spacenet already supplied ADSL customers with IPv6 on request.
  • For translation, Fred Baker favoured the Chinese IVI approach, which statelessly embeds parts of IPv4 addresses in provider-specific IPv6 prefixes.

References

Critique

  • The report describes proposals but not their disadvantages for port forwarding and logging behind carrier-grade NAT.

Remarks

  • IANA allocated the last free IPv4 blocks in February 2011; DS-Lite was standardised in 2011 as RFC 6333 and is widespread among German cable providers.

Recommendations

  • Provide your own services dual-stack so that they remain reachable behind DS-Lite connections.
  • With DS-Lite connections, plan incoming IPv4 connections via tunnels or IPv6 instead of port forwarding.

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