Erion IPv6 Blog

3rd February 2011 is the day that IANA (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) finally assigned the last five /8 blocks (slash-eight blocks), one to each Regional Internet Registry (RIR).

Now the IPv4 Internet only has the stock of IPv4 addresses held by the regional registrars and Internet Service Provides (ISPs) to keep it going.

If you have not yet implemented or migrated to IPv6 then now is the time to do so. World-wide the move to IPv6 is rapidly gaining momentum as a result of the exhaustion of the IPv4 address pool. IPv6 is the only solution to the Internet address shortage. It is well developed and well understood. There are many good reasons to implement IPv6 and few down sides.

As a first stage in implementing IPv6, it is crucial that you train your staff. IPv6 is not simply IPv4 with longer addresses. There are many more differences between IPv6 and IPv4.

The differences do indeed start with changes to addresses, but they are not simply in the size of the addresses but also the types of addresses, their attributes and the way they are used. In addition to this, IPv6 includes many new features and makes better use of some of the features found in IPv4. For example, in IPv6 ICMPv6 is used for many critical functions. In IPv4, it is often possible to ignore ICMP, in IPv6 you cannot. This is one small example of the way in which IPv6 is different from IPv4. Others include, use of mulitcast, mobility, IPSec, QoS and the huge area of transitiom mechanisms.

So IPv6 education is critical.

Erion has been providing IPv6 services for over twelve years. As a part of this we provide the world’s most comprehensive and well-developed IPv6 training courses. Erion’s IPv6 training covers all aspects of IPv6, for all audiences, across all major platforms and operating systems. Erion’s certified IPv6 trainers and IPv6 training courses represent the best in the industry. Our customers include many of the world’s leading IT names, for example, Alcatel-Lucent, Arbor Networks, Atos Origins, BAA, BT, Cisco, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, IBM, The International Telecommunications Union, Microsoft, Orange and Research in Motion.

For more details regarding Erion’s IPv6 training courses see http://www.ipv6training.com.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2011, all rights reserved.

IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) has just allocated two /8 blocks (39 and 107) to APNIC (the regional Internet registry for Asia Pacific). The remaining five blocks will now be allocated, one per regional registrar.

This allocatation means that the pool of IPv4 addresses is effectively empty. After the allocatation of the remaining five blocks the five regional registrars (AfriNIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC) will no longer be able to obtain any additional IPv4 addresses. This means that once their customers (ISPs, LIRs and large enterprises) use their remaining stock of IPv4 addresses there will be no further addresses to assign to Internet users.

The solution is IPv6. The IPv6 address space in unimaginably large and is unlikely to be exhausted for generations, if ever. IPv6 not only solves the IP address problem it also brings with it many improvements and new features that have the potential to significantly change the way we use the Internet.

If you are not already using IPv6 (and you probably have IPv6 traffic on your network even if you don’t think you have) then now is the time to begin.

Erion is the world’s leading IPv6 training organisation (http://www.erion.co.uk). We have been providing IPv6 training and IPv6 consultancy services for over twelve years. Our IPv6 training portfolio is the world’s largest, covering all aspects of IPv6 for a wide range of audiences on all major operating systems and platforms. (See http://www.ipv6training.com for further details.)

Copyright Erion Ltd 2011.

Erion’is pleased to announce an initial IPv6 training schedule for 2011. At the time of writing, Erion has courses scheduled in the USA, UK and Slovenia. Further dates will be announced in 2011.

• 10th Jan 2011, Implementing IPv6, 4 days, Ljubjana, Slovenia
• 15th Feb 2011, Implementing IPv6, 4 days, Fremont, California, USA
• 28th Mar 2011, Introduction to IPv6, 1 day, London, UK,
• 29th Mar 2011, Implementing IPv6, 4 days, London, UK
• 5th Jul 2011, Implementing IPv6, 4 days, London, UK
• 4th Oct 2011, Implementing IPv6, 4 days, London, UK

Erion is the world’s leading provider of IPv6 training. We have the largest portfolio of IPv6 training courses, covering all IPv6 topics and suitable for all audiences. In addition to our public IPv6 training schedule we also provide IPv6 training as on-site courses and we provide Erion Modular IPv6 Training which allows for a bespoke training programme to be created based on our hundreds of IPv6 training modules.

For further information please contact us on +44 (0)1422 207000, enquiry@erion.co.uk or through our web-site contact form.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2011, all rights reserved. Permissionto publish this article unchanged is hereby given.

Erion was a case study at the EU’s workshop on IPv6 training in Ghent, Belgium earlier this week. At the event, Erion’s David Holder presented the opening talk.

In his presentation, David set out to the lessons learned by Erion in over 12 years of providing IPv6 training. He described how Erion set about becoming the world’s leading IPv6 training company with the world’s most comprehensive set of IPv6 training courses and how they came to achieve this.

His presentation slides can be found here, Erion Case Study of World-Leading IPv6 Training Company at EU IPv6 Curricula Day Presentation. Please contact us if you have any questions.

This article is copyright Erion Ltd 2010, all rights reserved.

Today four IPv4 address blocks (/8’s) were allocated by IANA. This leaves only seven blocks to be allocated to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). RIR policy states that when the central pool reaches five blocks, the remaining blocks will all be immediately allocated. This means that the final allocation is likely to be to APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Center) in January 2011. APNIC’s usual allocation is due in two weeks but will almost certainly be delayed until the New Year.

This means that IPv4 exhaustion will finally be reached in early 2011, just as was predicted. From then on everyone who requires IPv4 addresses will only be able to use exisiting stocks. RIRs have a stock of IPv4 addresses that will last for a number of months. Some ISPs also have stocks that will keep them going for several months.  If you are unfortunate enough to require IPv4 addresses and your local RIRs and ISPs have exausted their stock, then you will no longer be able to get any public IPv4 addresses.

Public IPv4 addresses are necessary to connect to the global Internet. Whilst large numbers of networks use “Intranet” addresses, internally these cannot be connected directly to the Internet,  so at some point public IPv4 addresses are essential. Furthermore, many applications and services must use public IPv4 addresses. This means that if you cannot get public IPv4 addresses for your organisation, you could face serious problems for your Internet connectivity and Internet services.

The long term solution is IPv6. IPv6 has almost limitless address space and is available in all modern operating systems and network equipment. There is no doubt that the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses will result in a rush to migrate to IPv6.

Erion Ltd

Erion Ltd is the world-leader in IPv6 training with the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of IPv6 training courses. Erion has also been providing IPv6 consultancy services for over twelve years. Erion is ready to help you learn about and implement IPv6.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2010, all rights reserved.

Erion’s David Holder will be presenting at the EU’s Workshop on “Skills for IPv6″ in Ghent Belgium on the 13th December 2010.

He is pleased to be invited to speak and support the EU’s efforts to encourage the adoption of IPv6 in the community. A key part of the adoption of IPv6 is the need for training.

Erion has been providing IPv6 training for over twelve years. Over that time we have created the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of IPv6 training courses. Our courses cover all aspects of IPv6 on all major platforms and operating systems, and are aimed at a wide range of different audiences, from advanced technical staff through to senior management. In over a decade, Erion has gained a wealth of experience in training all types of organisations on every aspect of IPv6. Our customers include many of the world’s leading technology and none technology companies. Well known examples include (in no particular order), The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Cisco, Ericsson, Arbor Networks, Orange, Research in Motion, Sony, EMC, Atos Origin, BAA, BBC and 3Com.

In addition to Erion’s published standard IPv6 courses, we also provide what we call “Modular IPv6 training”. In our IPv6 modular courses, we put together an IPv6 training programme for a client using modules from a number of our standard courses. This allows us to create tailored IPv6 courses for clients without the usual overheads of creating bespoke training.

Further details on Erion’s IPv6 training services can be found at our IPv6 training web-site. Please contact us for further information.

At this year’s Storage Developers Conference in Santa Clara, Erion’s David Holder gave a presentation on IPv6 and SMB.

One question that was raised was that of whether Samba4 will include IPv6 support when it is released. Jeremy Allison was able to confirm that IPv6 was a blocking feature and that Samba4 would not be released without Ipv6 support. He went onto explain that at SambaXP the Samba Team had agreed that Samba4 would not be released without support for any of the major features already found in Samba3. Since IPv6 is a standard feature of Samba3 since version 3.2 Samba4 must support IPv6.

Erion has a long history of working towards IPv6 enabling Samba and was involved in IPv6 enabling the Linux CIFS client and Samba3. Erion carried out the first IPv6 Samba join to Windows Server 2008  and the first ever IPv6 Linux CIFS mount to Windows Server 2008 in 2008.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2010.

Despite the imminent depletion of the IPv4 address pool and the serious consequences for the IPv4 Internet, there are still many organisations that continue to delay the implementation of IPv6. Whilst the need for IPv4 in some organisations is arguably less than in others, one area that cannot be ignored is the essential need to secure current IPv4 networks against attacks perpetrated through the use of IPv6 and IPv6 transition technologies.

It is undeniable that the vast majority of current TCP/IP networks already include not only IPv6 capability, but also have IPv6 traffic flowing over them. All modern operating systems include IPv6 dual stacks (which also provide backwards compatibility for IPv4). These operating systems, including Windows, Unix and Linux all use IPv6 by default when they can. As a result, current IPv4 networks must be secured against attacks via IPv6 and associated technologies even though they may not have explicitly deployed IPv6.

Whilst, IPv6 in and of itself is to a large extent neither more or less secure than IPv4, it’s existence in a network immediately increases the “attack surface” and therefore the security risks. Since the increased risk is not simply the sum of the two protocols but a complex interaction of IPv4, IPv6, transition mechanisms and other protocols, it is fair to say that the attack surface is somewhat more than doubled by IPv6. Furthermore, IPv6 includes many new features that make it significantly different from IPv4. This not only further increases the “attack surface” but it also means that many new mitigation and security techniques must be learned.

For those who might consider the “increased risk” a reason not to deploy IPv6; remember that IPv6 already exists whether you deploy it or not. Therefore you need to secure against IPv6 threats in your IPv4 networks.

It is essential that network security managers and others responsible for network and system security learn about IPv6 now and implement appropriate security measures as soon as they can. Erion provides the world’s most comprehensive range of IPv6 training. This includes in-depth IPv6 security training, for example, our 3-day Securing IPv6 course.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2010.

Today the pool of IPv4 addresses dropped below 5% of the total IPv4 address space. The cause was the allocation of two blocks of IPv4 addresses to APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The speed with which IPv4 addresses is being consumed is demonstrated by it being only 9 months ago that the remaining space dropped below 10%.

There are now only twelve blocks available for allocation. The first seven of these blocks will be allocated under the normal allocation policy. Once these are assigned, the final five blocks will immediately be assigned, one to each RIR.

At current depletion rates, the IPv4 pool will be exhausted early in 2011.

The solution to the address space exhaustion is IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol. All organisations need to take seriously the deployment of IPv6 to avoid a chaotic migration at the last moment.

David Holder is to speak at this year’s Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara. Erion has a long history of working to IPv6 enable networked storage solutions and in particular the Open Source Samba implementation of the CIFS/SMB protocols. This year, Dr Holder plans to give a presentation on how to IPv6 enabled storage applications. The full abstract is below.

IPv6 Enabling CIFS/SMB Applications

Today IPv6 is no longer the protocol of the future, it is being extensively deployed in production networks. The central pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted in 2010 to 2011. As a result, Governments and organisations world-wide have been mandating its use for a number of years. As a CIFS/SMB developer, the time has come where you can no longer ignore IPv6.

IPv6 is the default protocol in all major operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. CIFS and Active Directory have had support for IPv6 for a number of years.

This paper will address the key issues facing CIFS/SMB developers when migrating their applications to IPv6. It will provide a review of the status of IPv6 in Samba and Windows and describe how CIFS/SMB applications should be migrated to IPv6. This presentation will also include a brief IPv6 API and porting tutorial presenting the key things that developers need to know about IPv6 and the IPv6 socket API in order to effectively use IPv6 in their applications.

Dr David Holder is closely involved in the migration of Samba to IPv6. He has worked with IPv6 for well over a decade and is a regular speaker at global IPv6 conferences.