Slide 1
An Enterprise IPv6 Migration ToolkitChristian BrownSteve
LotthammerMatt OswaltCHRISTIAN
Hello and welcome to our presentation this evening. My name is
Christian Brown, this is Stephen Lotthammer, and this is Matt
Oswalt. Were going to talk to you tonight about our IPv4 to IPv6
Migration Toolkit for Enterprise Level entities. Im going to
provide you with an overview of our work and why this strategy is
necessary, then Matt is going to go into some detail about our work
with our research. Steve is going to discuss our other deliverables
for this project, and then Ill be back to wrap things up. Sit back
and enjoy our presentation.
1The IANA
CHRISTIAN
First, we need to understand the problem facing enterprises
today. As you may have read back in February, The Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority ran out of Addresses in the IPv4 addressing
space. What does this mean?
Project description and intended use.
2
CHRISTIANWell it means that every device that requires an IP
Address that is made from now on will not have an IPv4 address.
They will have to have an IPv6 address. The IPv6 address space has
more than enough room for current and future devices and is now a
necessity. Enterprises that wish to communicate with these devices
will have to convert their infrastructure to IPv6 as well.3
CHRISTIAN
So the question is, how does an enterprise navigate through the
confusing process of converting to an IPv6 infrastructure?
Well, thats where we come in4The IPv6 Migration Toolkit
CHRISTIAN
With our IPv6 Migration Toolkit! What youre looking at here is a
logical layout of our Toolkit. It consists of 3 main sections; a
Quick Reference guide for a snapshot look at some tools we put
together showing different performance testing and evaluations of
existing technologies. We hope that enterprises will be able to
look at this section and see rather quickly the benefits inherent
in IPv6 and what they need to do to quickly bring their
infrastructure up-to-date. Steve will go into detail on this
section later in the presentation.
A Research Section which provides a more in-depth look at the
different technologies available for IPv6 Migration. This section
contains information on the different strategies enterprises can
use during the process of Migration. Matt will talk about this
section in detail shortly.
Finally, there is an appendix section that provides more detail
about each aspect of our Toolkit and information on other topics
that need to be considered during Migration. These appendices are
referenced within the Toolkit and can be used by enterprises to
further their understanding of the data we have provided.Im going
to turn things over to Matt right now who will discuss the research
portion of our Migration Toolkit.
5Research and testing
MATT (start at 230)
To develop this toolkit, work was done that involved researching
and implementing many common technologies used in an IPv6
migration. These ranged from IPv6 translation, to tunneling
mechanisms, IPv6 vulnerability assessments, and analyzing protocol
behavior in a variety of configurations.
Through this research, we were able to look into each technology
and develop recommendations for implementing them.6Transitional
TechnologiesTranslationIPv6 IPv4 TunnelingIPv6 over
IPv4Dual-StackIPv6 + IPv4
MATT
Transitional Technologies are tools that a network engineer can
use to ensure a seamless migration to IPv6. There are a variety of
transitional technologies, but they all generally fall under three
categories:
(pause)
Translation, Tunneling, and Dual-Stack.7Transitional
TechnologiesTranslationChanging IP packets on the fly
MATT
Translation is the concept of changing an IPv4 packet to IPv6
and vice versa It can be buggy and insecure but it allows IPv4 only
endpoints to communicate with IPv6 only endpoints8Transitional
TechnologiesTunnelingIPv4 within IPv6
MATT
Tunneling essentially places IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets
This can be insecure and difficult to manage, but it does allow for
some creative network designs during an IPv6 migration to ensure
connectivity9Transitional TechnologiesDual-StackRun both IPv6 and
IPv4 everywhere
MATT
Dual-Stack This is the ideal state for an IPv6 migration. Its
not so much a transitional technology as a goal to be reached. Both
IPv6 and IPv4 connectivity are available at every point in the
network. However, this requires the infrastructure to basically run
two networks.10Transitional TechnologiesDual-Stack where you
canTunnel where you mustTranslate if your life depends on it
MATT
After all our research, we concluded that all three technologies
are valid tools to use in a migration. However, our recommended
best practice is to implement dual-stack wherever possible.
Tunneling can be used to connect the dots where dual-stack isnt
immediately possible. Translation can be used in only the most
specific cases. Our recommendation is to avoid it if possible. It
is likely to be more cost-effective to upgrade equipment rather
than try to implement translation.11OPNETSimulates the effects of a
phased IPv6 migrationGathers performance data on network
resources
One of our deliverables included using the OPNET Modeler network
simulation software for evaluating and testing a phased IPv6
migration. As sections of the network were migrated, performance
data was gathered, which provided an accurate forecast of how a
real enterprise network might perform during each phase of an IPv6
rollout.
This is an important intermediate step between the planning and
implementation stages of an IPv6 migration.
In this simulation we were able to find that because the
infrastructure was essentially supporting two networks, the strain
on the network devices increased, but they were able to provide
acceptable network performance.12IPv6 - THE NEW AND IMPROVED IPIPv6
isnt just about bigger address
spaceSecurityUsabilityPerformance
In terms of security, IPv6 was designed to be 100 percent
compatible with the IPSec protocol suite. IPSec works to secure IP
communications by providing authentication and encryption for each
IP packet of a communication session. Like two puzzle pieces, IPv6
was built to completely fit together with the IPSec suite.
IPv6 also contains new features for enhancing the usability and
administration of the network, such as Neighbor Discovery, which
identifies other IPv6 devices on the network, Router
Advertisements, which allow for automatic discovery of IP
information, and Path MTU Discovery, which automatically determines
the maximum packet size on a network.
Finally, IPv6 was built from the ground up to have better
performance than IPv4. The IPv6 header is more simple, containing
fewer fields. This allows routers to make routing decisions much
more quickly. Ill now hand it over to Steve to show the data we
collected that supports this.13Performance TestingIn live tests
IPv6 shows a considerable increase in performance over IPv4.
We tested the performance of IPv4 and IPv6 under various
scenarios in order to verify statistics gathered from Cisco and
other testing authorities. Our tests corroborate Ciscos data, and
we found that IPv6 shows a considerable increase in real-world
performance over IPv4. 14Performance Testing
In order to demonstrate the performance differences between IPv4
and IPv6 we created a test network in our lab and used the open
source application iPerf to gather throughput data.
Our lab setup consisted of 3 clients and 3 serversWindows XP,
Windows 7, and Cent OS connected over gigabit links to a Cisco
router.
For the purposes of this presentation we chose to show the data
we captured from the Linux distribution, CentOS. The rest of our
performance data can be found in our final report and our Migration
Toolkit.
15Performance DataCentOSTCP over IPv4
In our first graph you can see the performance of the IPv4
network stack in Cent OS.
Blue represents traffic flowing from the Client to a CentOS
serverRed represents traffic from the Client to a Windows 7
ServerAnd Green represents traffic from the Client to a Windows XP
server.
On average Cent OS was able to achieve a speed of about 565 Mb/s
on IPv416Performance DataCentOSTCP over IPv6
On IPv6 CentOS performs visibly better, achieving an average
speed of 666 Mb/s17Performance DataCentOSUDP Comparison
In our tests UDP performance nearly doubledfrom 444 Mb/s on IPv4
(in blue) to 706 Mb/s on IPv6 (in red)
Our data shows that IPv6 truly is the successor to IPv4. In
addition to providing a larger address space, IPv6 has been
streamlined to provide this increase in performance. Our hope is
that enterprise managers could use this data to quickly see some of
the benefits in upgrading to IPv6.18OS Ratings
Windows Server
Legend
We also tested common operating systems for their level of
compatibility with IPv6.
Here you can see our rating sheet for Windows Server
systems.
Each Rating includes a color code, The name of the operating
system, the status of that OS and our recommendation along with any
implementation steps needed.
A Green rating is for an OS that has full IPv6 support and is
ready out of the box.An Orange rating represents an OS that
supports only some IPv6 features or only supports IPv6 with manual
installation or configuration.A Red rating does not support IPv6
and must be upgraded or replaced before attempting migration.
19OS RatingsTested a variety of Operating Systems for IPv6
compatibility.LinuxCommon DistributionsKernels
In Linux we tested several common distributions as well as the
major supported kernel version.
We found that any distribution of linux running kernel version
2.6 or higher includes full IPv6 support.20OS RatingsTested a
variety of Operating Systems for IPv6
compatibility.MicrosoftWindows 2000 / 2000 ServerWindows XP / Vista
/ 7Windows 2003 / R2 / 2008 / R2
In Windows we tested several workstation and server variants of
the operating system, from Windows 2000 to present.
Any Windows operating system on Vista/Server 2008 or higher
includes a fully functioning IPv6 stack21OS RatingsTested a variety
of Operating Systems for IPv6 compatibility.AppleMac OS XMac OS
9
For Apples operating systems we tested OS 9 and a variety of OS
10 versions (including Leopard and Snow Leopard)
All variants of OS 10 above 10.2 support IPv6, however none of
them have support for DHCP with IPv6.
These Operating System Readiness Assessments provide
administrators with an at-a-glance resource to determine the status
of workstations and servers on their networks.22ConclusionIPv6
ToolkitTransitional Technologies ResearchOPNET ModelingPerformance
Comparison Testing ChartsOS Ratings
As youve seen through the course of this presentation, our IPv6
Toolkit is designed to help Enterprises with the process of
preparing to migrate their infrastructure to IPv6. Weve shown you
the items in our toolkit including our Transitional Technologies
Research, our OPNET modeling, our Performance Comparison Testing
Charts, our OS Ratings and discussed our research findings with
you. It is our hope that enterprises will find our kit a useful
addition to their arsenal as they move into this new realm of IPv6.
Wed now like to open the floor to questions.
OR
We have demonstrated our IPv6 Migration Toolkit and discussed
our research findings with you. Wed now like to open up the floor
to questions. Thanks for your time.23IPv4 Internet
UCs Network
Tunnel02001:470:1F10:AE3::2/64
Routed /642001:470:1F11:AE3::/64
IPv6 Enablement Proof of Concept
CEAS Networking Lab
DHCP/DHCPv6
IPv4 Internet
UCs Network
Tunnel02001:470:1F10:AE3::2/64
Routed /642001:470:1F11:AE3::/64
IPv6 Enablement Proof of Concept
CEAS Networking Lab
DHCP/DHCPv6
