I’ve blogged (a lot) about planning for the integration of IPv6 into your network, and I even threw in some thoughts about how to go about doing the integration. Some of the procedures discussed in earlier posts included:
Equally important is the task of setting up a lab and (in our next post) developing a test plan. Read More »
Tags: IPv6, IPv6 deployment, IPv6 Lab
What’s new and exciting with EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)? Actually, lots… First a bit a background on EIGRP.
EIGRP is an advanced distance vector routing protocol used extensively by enterprise customers. It is very popular because it is simple to deploy and support. Some major attributes are:
- EIGRP does not mandate many network design requirements and is therefore perceived as “forgiving” and “flexible”. For example, EIGRP does not require support for multiple routing sub-domains or Areas.
- While route summarization is a recommended best practice to minimize route table size, it is optional with EIGRP.
- EIGRP can scale to support thousands of routers in a Hub and Spoke configuration. The Hub and Spoke design is especially popular in WAN networks.
For additional information on EIGRP, please click here. There is also a great BLOG that compares EIGRP and OSPF that I think you will find informative and is posted here.
While EIGRP has a large customer following, some customers have hesitated because of concerns of EIGRP being “proprietary”, which would prevent them from multi-vendor network support. In some cases this has caused customers to design their networks to limit usage of EIGRP, even though they would like to deploy it ubiquitously. One result has been non-optimal network design and traffic flow, resulting from multiple IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol) redistribution points.
That brings me back to what is new and exciting with EIGRP. Read More »
Tags: EIGRP, Enhanced Interior Gateway Protocol, ietf, ietf working group, IGP, Interior Gateway Protocol, ipv4, IPv6, IPv6 deployment, OSPF, WAN, WAN networks
The 2012 North American IPv6 Summit was held in Denver, Colorado on April 9-12, 2012. As usual, it was an excellent conference with the largest attendance of any IPv6 event in North America this year. There were many excellent speakers who gave timely talks on the state of IPv6 deployment, gaps in the overall education within the end-user base as well as advances and limitations in vendor support.
I gave a keynote talk on “Enterprise Internet Edge Design for IPv6″ and afterwards I was approached by several enterprise customers who stated that they had great success using the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) options defined in our Deploying IPv6 in the Internet Edge CVD. This is great to hear but our work is not done yet. We still need to help customers understand the significance of deploying IPv6 in not just the network but throughout the enterprise. This is most evident in the lack of documentation by commercial off the shelf (COTS) application vendors who need to do a better job of helping customers understand the support for IPv6.
Read More »
Tags: 2012 North American IPv6 Summit, Cisco Validated Designs, CVDs, internet edge design, IPv6, IPv6 deployment, Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force, Shannon McFarland
Historically, enterprise customers have had a mixture of deployment goals and starting points for the implementation of IPv6. These starting points very often boil down to the following:
- Core to edge
- Edge to core
- Internet Edge-only
Read More »
Tags: Cisco Validated Designs, core-to-edge design, CVDs, edge-to-core design, internet edge design, IPv6 deployment
