Cisco Blog > Borderless Networks
After months of anticipation, World IPv6 Day is nearly upon us. Network equipment vendors, network service providers and networked enterprises have all diligently prepared and for twenty-four hours on June 8th we will all get to experience the fruits of that labor when more than three hundred websites offer their content using IPv6 in addition to IPv4. If everyone has done their job right, what do we expect to happen?
Nothing.
That’s right. The best outcome of World IPv6 Day would be a completely unchanged end-user experience, regardless of the fact that they now can use a new underlying network protocol.
Get Ready for Nothing
In order to best ensure that nothing happens, IT professionals should seek out latent IPv6 problems that may suddenly manifest themselves when so much IPv6 traffic appears. What steps should you take to ensure that you experience nothing?
Until June 9th, the Cisco Technical Support Website will display a banner which tests the most common failure mode expected on World IPv6 Day. Using some Javascript magic, the banner predicts the readiness of the host from which a visitor connects. Ideally, the visitor will see teal text and a check mark icon indicating success, but a visitor who sees red text and an X icon may have a potential connectivity problem.
Even if the visitor can achieve the coveted check mark on that banner, it would not hurt to conduct a few more tests.
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Tags: IPv6, World IPv6 Day
May 31, 2011 at 6:44 am PST
If you know anything about IPv6, you know that it expands the number of possible IP addresses to an unimaginably large scale. This relieves the pressing shortage of IP addresses being faced today in IPv4, so that there will be addresses available for all the new web sites, printers, cars and light bulbs that will need them.
IPv6 does this trick by using nice, big 128 bit addresses which are noted in hexadecimal. And the hexadecimal is where some fun comes in.
I’m not kidding: Fun! The fun is that hexadecimal addresses include, as you know, A,B,C,D,E, and F in addition to numerics. So, now those with a technical bent can actually start to spell some things even in the numeric addresses. It was inevitable that some clever people would combine the hex notation of IPv6 with the Internet tradition of “leetspeak.” (Leets are a kind of cute code, as you probably know, where you can replace letters with numbers that look similar. O becomes zero, L or T become 7, S becomes 5, G becomes 6, etc. Hence the name L33T (or more correctly 1337). Well, with ABCDEF in addition to the numbers, there are some fun possibilities for IP addresses. Letters? Leets? Imagine the possibilities for clever numeric addresses!)
We’ve already seen a couple in the wild:
Facebook’s IPv6 address:
face:b00c (“facebooc”)
Full address: 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3
A Cisco IPv6 test address:
c:15c0:d06:f00d (“cisco dogfood” as in “test your own dogfood”)
Full address: 2001:420:80:1:c:15c0:d06:f00d
Of course, the only people who will ever see these addresses are people who speak in hextets, which makes them all the more fun. (Most people will never see these addresses, because IPv6 is nicely invisible to users and you’ll still type facebook.com to get the Facebook, for example).
We haven’t seen any others yet, but Cisco’s Phil Remaker suggests that perhaps Starbucks.com could use CAFE or the National Cattlemen’s Association would use BEEF or that the LA County Coroner’s Office (and its gift shop) could use DEAD (if My Chemical Romance or the Grateful Dead‘s dead.net don’t grab it first).
Underneath this humor is a serious fact: The world is running out of IPv4 addresses, and the world’s technology companies and organizations are working together on the upcoming World IPv6 day on June 8th to test IPv6 end to end in action. You’ll be reading quite a lot more about the benefits and lore of IPv6 in coming days and weeks.
Tags: IPv6, World IPv6 Day
May 16, 2011 at 5:07 pm PST
As you may know, June 8th is going to be an important day for the Internet!
It is World IPv6 Day : http://isoc.org/wp/worldipv6day/
This day for 24 hours, most of the majors content providers will enable IPv6 on their front door.
www.cisco.com is going to be one of these web sites that will be reachable on IPv6 Internet, among 100’s of others globally, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, Akamai and many more. You can see the complete list of participants here.
Notably, many of the Federal Government Agencies are also participating such as:
Cisco has been very much leading the industry through this transition. The TAC (technical Assistance Center) and the service organization will support both the planning phase of World IPv6 Day, as well as providing customer support.
Government has been at the forefront of IPv6, and should continue to take the lead on this effort. Please read our whitepaper on the subject (you have to register) and check out our Federal IPv6 Site.
And I’ll make this offer -- any Government Agency that would like to participate in World IPv6 Day but needs a little help through the transition, please write me directly and we’ll get you lots of help.
Tags: Cisco, federal, IPv6, World IPv6 Day
Post from George O’Meara
SVP, US and Canada, Cisco Services
If you’ve been paying attention you will have heard that the world’s supply of IPv4 addresses is running out. While this isn’t a Y2K situation, it’s an important watershed in the explosive growth of the Internet. As the world shifts from an Internet of People and Places to an Internet of Things the foundation of the Internet is changing from IPv4 to IPv6.
Is Cisco ready to address the issue?
We’ve had working IPv6 code since 1996 for starters. So we have some very seasoned support engineers who can answer all your questions at the IPv6 Cisco Support Community site. If you need help assessing your business needs, you can use our professional service offerings to preserve your investment, prepare for the impending change and implement a long-term planning process.
How does an IPv6 address affect your experience?
No one really knows the full answer. That is why the Internet Society is sponsoring a global test run of IPv6 use on June 8th, known as World IPv6 Day. It’s an opportunity for many of the major technology industry players to conduct an unprecedented experiment by enabling IPv6 on the Internet.
In fact, next Tuesday, on May 17th you should tune into a free IPv6 Webcast to hear about steps you can take to prepare your network for World IPv6 Day.
What does this shift in Internet addresses mean to you and your business?
It means that IPv4 addresses will become increasingly expensive. The Internet of Things has fueled tremendous growth in the number of devices which need a network address. It’s not just a PC at work and one at home as we had a few short years back. Today everything needs addresses including your smart phone, tablet, the chips in your car, sensors in bridges and roadways, security cameras, IP phones and more.
In the not too distant future, smart devices, new applications and new businesses will only be issued IPv6 addresses. Make sure you’re ready for this change.
What can you do today?
- Recognize this transition is real.
- Educate yourself on the technology.
- Find at least one application to migrate to IPv6.
- Stage it out in phases on your network.
- Build your confidence through experience to future proof your network with the assistance of Cisco Services.
As I said, this isn’t a Y2K situation. The Internet of Things won’t come to a screeching halt. But your business network, or your customers, may start to experience less than optimal service or connectivity due to the industry’s lack of knowledge about how old IP addresses and new IP addresses will behave together.
Don’t risk having “good enough” technology and products. Get involved with the biggest network transition of our lifetime and start your adventure with Cisco Services expertise.
Tags: IPv6, World IPv6 Day
So, World IPv6 Day is just under a month away. You already have IPv6 connectivity, right? How do you know that everything will work correctly when the big day arrives? You will need to do some testing.
A number of enthusiastic engineers across the world have set up public IPv6 sites that you can use to perform all manner of tests. I would like to tell you about some of my personal favorites, and invite you to tell me about your own. Please note that Cisco manages none of the tools mentioned here, and as such cannot offer any assurances about their suitability for use on your network, so insert your own dire sounding legal disclaimers here before continuing.
Can You Connect?
For a quick “Am I Ready?” test, http:/omgipv6day.com/ provides a simple Yes-or-No assessment of your web browser’s ability to access IPv6 enabled sites on World IPv6 Day. Here is my attempt to connect with an impaired IPv6 tunnel:
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Tags: IPv6, World IPv6 Day
