Whats Happening with IPv6?

October, 2001 Steve Deering

deering@cisco.com

IP Scaling Problems the View from Late 1991

running out of Class B addresses (near-term)
solution: CIDR (Classless Interdomain Routing) to allow addresses to be allocated and routed as blocks of any power-of-two size, not just Class A, B, and C

running out of routing table space (near-term)

solution: provider-based delegation of address blocks, i.e., address hierarchy changed from organization:subnet:host to provider:subscriber:subnet:host

running out of all IP addresses (long-term)

solution: a new version of IP with bigger addresses, dubbed IP Next Generation, of IPng

note: this was before the Web!

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IPng Candidates
IPv7 (Ullman) TUBA (Callon) ENCAPS (Hinden) IPAE SIP (Deering) Pip (Francis) IPv6 SIPP TP/IX CATNIP

Jan 92

Jul 92

Jan 93

Jul 93

Jan 94

Jul 94
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Whats Been Happening Since Mid 1994?

writing protocol specs, arguing about every detail, and progressing through the IETF Standards process
scores of documents, on IPv6 address formats and routing protocols (unicast & multicast), L2 encapsulations, autoconfiguration, DNS changes, header compression, security extensions, IPv4/IPv6 co-existence & transition, MIBS, (see playground.sun.com/ipv6 for list of documents)

implementation by vendors, and interoperability testing

building deployment testbeds

shipping products deploying production services
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Why IPv6? (Theoretical Reasons)

only compelling reason: more IP addresses!
for billions of new users (Japan, China, India,) for billions of new devices (mobile phones, cars, appliances,) for always-on access (cable, xDSL, ethernet-to-the-home,) for applications that are difficult, expensive, or impossible to operate through NATs (IP telephony, peer-to-peer gaming, home servers,)

to phase out NATs to improve the robustness, security, performance, and manageability of the Internet

IP Address Allocation History

1981 1985 1990 1995 2000

- IPv4 protocol published ~ 1/16 of total space ~ 1/8 of total space ~ 1/4 of total space ~ 1/2 of total space

this despite increasingly intense conservation efforts

PPP / DHCP address sharing CIDR (classless inter-domain routing) NAT (network address translation) plus some address reclamation

theoretical limit of 32-bit space: ~4 billion devices practical limit of 32-bit space: ~250 million devices
(see draft-durand-huitema-h-density-ratio)

Other Benefits of IPv6

server-less plug-and-play possible
end-to-end, IP-layer authentication & encryption possible elimination of triangle routing for mobile IP other minor improvements

NON-benefits:
quality of service (same QoS capabilities as IPv4)
flow label field in IPv6 header may enable more efficient flow classification by routers, but does not add any new capability

routing (same routing protocols as IPv4)

except larger address allows more levels of hierarchy
except customer multihoming is defeating hierarchy

Why IPv6? (Current Business Reasons)

demand from particular regions
Asia, EU technical, geo-political, and business reasons demand is now

demand for particular services

cellular wireless (especially 3GPP[2] standards) Internet gaming (e.g., Sony Playstation 2) use is >= 1.5 years away (but testbeds needed now)

potential move to IPv6 by Microsoft?

IPv6 included in Windows XP, but not enabled by default to be enabled by default in next major release of Windows use is >= 1.5 years away

IPv6 Header compared to IPv4 Header

Ver. Traffic Class
Payload Length

Flow Label
Next Header Hop Limit

Hdr Type of Ver. Len Service

Identification Time to Protocol Live

Total Length
Flg Fragment Offset Header Checksum

Source Address
Source Address Destination Address Options...

Destination Address

shaded fields have no equivalent in the other version IPv6 header is twice as long (40 bytes) as IPv4 header without options (20 bytes)
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How Was IPv6 Address Size Chosen?

some wanted fixed-length, 64-bit addresses
easily good for 1012 sites, 1015 nodes, at .0001 allocation efficiency (3 orders of magnitude more than IPv6 requirement) minimizes growth of per-packet header overhead efficient for software processing

some wanted variable-length, up to 160 bits

compatible with OSI NSAP addressing plans big enough for auto-configuration using IEEE 802 addresses could start with addresses shorter than 64 bits & grow later

settled on fixed-length, 128-bit addresses

(340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 in all!)

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IPv4-IPv6 Transition / Co-Existence Techniques

a wide range of techniques have been identified and implemented, basically falling into three categories: (1) dual-stack techniques, to allow IPv4 and IPv6 to co-exist in the same devices and networks (2) tunneling techniques, to avoid order dependencies when upgrading hosts, routers, or regions (3) translation techniques, to allow IPv6-only devices to communicate with IPv4-only devices
expect all of these to be used, in combination

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Standards
core IPv6 specifications are IETF Draft Standards => well-tested & stable
IPv6 base spec, ICMPv6, Neighbor Discovery, PMTU Discovery, IPv6-over-Ethernet, IPv6-over-PPP,...

other important specs are further behind on the standards track, but in good shape
mobile IPv6, header compression,... for up-to-date status: playground.sun.com/ipv6

3GPP UMTS Release 5 cellular wireless standards mandate IPv6; also being considered by 3GPP2
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Implementations
most IP stack vendors have an implementation at some stage of completeness
some are shipping supported product today,
e.g., 3Com, *BSD(KAME), Cisco, Compaq, Epilogue, Ericsson/Telebit, IBM, Hitachi, Nortel, Sun, Trumpet,

others have beta releases now, supported products soon, e.g., HP, Juniper, Linux community, Microsoft, others rumored to be implementing, but status unkown (to me), e.g., Apple, Bull, Mentat, Novell, SGI, (see playground.sun.com/ipv6 for most recent status reports)

good attendance at frequent testing events

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Deployment
experimental infrastructure: the 6bone
for testing and debugging IPv6 protocols and operations (see www.6bone.net)

production infrastructure in support of education and research: the 6ren

CAIRN, Canarie, CERNET, Chunahwa Telecom, Dante, ESnet, Internet 2, IPFNET, NTT, Renater, Singren, Sprint, SURFnet, vBNS, WIDE, (see www.6ren.net, www.6tap.net)

commercial infrastructure
a few ISPs (IIJ, NTT, Telia) have started or announced commercial IPv6 service
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Deployment (cont.)
IPv6 address allocation
6bone procedure for test address space regional IP address registries (APNIC, ARIN, RIPE-NCC) for production address space

deployment advocacy (a.k.a. marketing)

IPv6 Forum: www.ipv6forum.com

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Much Still To Do
though IPv6 today has all the functional capability of IPv4,
implementations are not as advanced
(e.g., with respect to performance, multicast support, compactness, instrumentation, etc.)

deployment has only just begun much work to be done moving application, middleware, and management software to IPv6 much training work to be done
(application developers, network administrators, sales staff,)

many of the advanced features of IPv6 still need specification, implementation, and deployment work
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IPv6 Timeline
(A pragmatic projection) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Early adopter Appl. Porting <= Duration 3+ yrs.=> ISP adoption <= Dur. 3+ yrs.=> Consumer adoption <= Dur. 5+ yrs. => Enterprise adopt. <= 3+ yrs. =>

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IPv6 Timeline
(A pragmatic projection) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Early adopter

Appl. Porting <= Duration 3+ yrs.=>

ISP adoption <= Dur. 3+ yrs. => Consumer adoption <= Dur. 5+ yrs. =>

Enterprise adopt. <= 3+ yrs. =>

Asia

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IPv6 Timeline
(A pragmatic projection) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Early adopter Appl. Porting <= Duration 3+ yrs.=> ISP adoption <= Dur. 3+ yrs.=> Consumer adoption <= Dur. 5+ yrs. => Enterprise adopt. <= 3+ yrs. =>

Asia Europe

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IPv6 Timeline
(A pragmatic projection) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Early adopter

Appl. Porting <= Duration 3+ yrs.=>

ISP adoption <= Dur. 3+ yrs.=> Consumer adoption <= Dur. 5+ yrs. =>

Enterprise adopt. <= 3+ yrs. =>

Asia Europe Americas

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Recent IPv6 Hot Topics in the IETF

multihoming
address selection address allocation DNS discovery

enhanced router-to-host info

site renumbering procedures inter-domain multicast routing address propagation and AAA issues of different access scenarios end-to-end security vs. firewalls and, of course, transition / co-existence / interoperability with IPv4 (a bewildering array of transition tools and techniques)

3GPP usage of IPv6

anycast addressing scoped address architecture flow-label semantics

API issues (flow label, traffic class, PMTU discovery, scoping,)

Note: this indicates vitality, not incompleteness, of IPv6!

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Conclusions?
if I knew it was going to take so long, I would have let one of the other IPng candidates win!
one shouldnt expect it to have taken less time, given the nature of the undertaking the IETF was unusually far-sighted (lucky?) in starting this work when it did, instead of waiting till the Internet falls apart

the Internet is now falling apart

IPv6 is ready to put it back together again
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