Building The Net

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

— Stu

HowTo Install the Base Package Set to Create a Debian Router.

— 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

Setting up IPv6 connectivity.

Back in December `09, my company ACT USA, began testing IPv6. These tests quickly advanced to our production environment. Over the last six months, I have been in the process of setting up native IPv6 connectivity for all our data centers. This connectivity is based on the dual stack model. This article attempts to cover the technology available, and the choices I made based on that technology.

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Building Redundant Networks in Data Centers.

I recently was asked to put together a brief web presentation on the different methods of creating redundant networks. I couldn’t think of a better place to put it, then right here on my blog. After all, I was overdue for a post anyways…

What do I mean by redundant networks?

A redundant network is two or more distinct paths for data to travel to and from an upstream network. In it’s simplest form, it can be a piece of equipment that can be manually placed into service easily upon a failure. More often though it is set up so that any single device or connection can fail, and without user intervention, a backup system or connection will automatically step in and take over the job of the failed device, or connection. A redundant network does not mean that no mater what happens, your data will still be reachable. There are many factors that need to be considered, ranging anywhere from your providers, to your applications, that can cause a failure.

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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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