Building The Net

My ‘Linux as an IPv6 dual stack Firewall’ Talk from SCaLE11x

— Stu

The End of IPv4… The Adoption of IPv6… “The King is Dead!, Long Live the King!”

At a ceremony today, February 3, 2011, the last five /8s were delegated to RIRs. For most people, this has little meaning, but to us that make our livings from the IPv4 protocol, and who have spent countless years learning the tricks of the trade, this marks an end of an era.

As for me, I’m ready for the ‘big switch’ to IPv6. But I know many of my friends and colleagues that have procrastinated, claiming this day would never come, or are waiting for a vendor to swoop in and save the day. Well, to those I say, WAKE UP! The companies you work for, and the customers you service will be greatly effected by the IPv4 shortage and the logical adoption of IPv6. The day is at hand, and vendors stand to make their money by just selling the upgrades to their equipment to handle IPv6, so I don’t think a magic bullet is in the cards. As of now, the best solution for your company to look at is dual stack. In as short a time as a year, you could have customers that are unable to reach your web based services, or only able to connect at modem speeds to them, due to overloaded proxies. I strongly suggest you start working on this now, especially if you have outward facing services such as a web server or email server.

That’s it for now, I’m busy preparing for the Southern California Linux Expo. This year it will be held at the Hilton LAX on February 25-27, 2011. Look forward to seeing you all there!

— Stu

Adventures in IPv6… Or how I spent my Xmas Vacation!

Whether you are a network administrator, an end user, or someone that falls in between, you are going to be hearing a lot about IPv6 in the coming years. If you’re in the business of delivering network services, then you need to get up to speed on this… Because before you know it, you will have a client or end user come up to you with a problem that IPv6 is involved in.

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