Cardinal Sins on the Road to IPv6
24/05/2012
The process of transitioning towards the new Internet protocol (IPv6) is advancing in Latin America and the Caribbean, driven by a regional community of experts and technicians who are devoting much effort to the deployment of this technology which is crucial for the current and future development of the Internet.
Under the title of “The Seven 7 Cardinal Sins when Implementing IPv6”, Arturo Servin, LACNIC’s Technical Manager, found an educational way in which to share his team’s experiences when implementing the new Internet protocol with those attending the LACNIC XVII meeting.
He observed that his intention was to “document and show the errors experienced when implementing IPv6”, as in some cases applying the new technology “can be extremely successful or a major disaster.”
According to Arturo, the seven cardinal sins when applying the new Internet protocol (IPv6) are as follows:
Sloth: When IPv6 is available but is not used. Of the top 50 Brazilian websites as ranked by Alexa, only 10 have IPv6, while in Mexico only one does. “We must not miss the opportunity to learn and implement IPv6 on our networks.”
Wrath: This means being frustrated and abandoning all attempts to deploy IPv6. “Don’t if we are not authorized to deploy IPv6 on our networks. Let’s be persistent.”
Envy: The fact that our competitors’ websites are available over IPv6 does not mean that we must rush to do the same. This can lead to operational errors such as AAAA records that do not point to an operational service or a service with poor connectivity.
Gluttony: We must plan how to implement IPv6 in production, not only how to enable the protocol. We must make sure that IPv6 works at the same level as IPv4.
Greed: It is not about implementing IPv6 without the necessary resources. Money is not enough. Managers must teach and train their technical staff.
Pride: The Internet does not belong to us, let’s not unnecessarily deaggregate prefixes. There is a lot of unnecessarily deaggregated IPv4 space, possibly due to a lack of knowledge. We cannot let this happen in IPv6.
Lust: Being tempted to implement LSN (Large Scale NAT) or CGN (Carrier Grade NAT) instead of IPv6 as a permanent solution to IPv4 exhaustion. These are just temporary and partial solutions. The long-term solution is IPv6 implementation.