Ignore IPv6 connection? At your own risk!

Ignore IPv6 connection? At your own risk!

About a year ago, my colleague Lawrence Garvin wrote an article about the apparent shortage of IPv4 addresses, saying, "IPv4 addresses are not exhausted; these addresses are not completely in use, some organizations do not allocate more addresses to lower-level organizations. In my opinion, this is not due to address scarcity, but to human address shortage caused by poor management of Address allocation."

In less than a week, John Curran, President and Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Internet number Registration Center (ARIN), responded: "This is not the case at all. Let me tell you why, in the near future, the remaining unallocated IPv4 addresses in the United States, Canada and most of the Caribbean regions will be exhausted, and there will be no space available, and the number of Ipv4 addresses will soon become zero."

Curran is completely correct; now, all IT individuals (from enthusiasts to Fortune 100 CTO) should act because those who ignore IPv6 connections will suffer unexpected consequences.

You may think, "Why ?"

Garvin's point of view is not an imaginary one. This is actually an interesting concept. Maybe companies are sitting on a large inventory of IP addresses, and what we do is to encourage them to give up these addresses, so that we can avoid the crisis.

Unfortunately, we know that this is not the case. Curran can provide relevant reference data, which has become more obvious now: By September 24, 2015, the IPv4 address pool was officially exhausted, and the US internet number registration center opened a waiting list for the addresses needed. At the same time, many people flood into the proxy B2B Transaction Center, earning profits from the remaining addresses.

However, this is not the only reason.

As Neetha Edwin said, IPv6 faces its own network security challenges. The problem here is that it is enabled. So you can't bury your head in the sand and say, "Okay, if I don't look at it, it won't hurt me ." On the contrary, if you ignore the influence of IPv6 on your network, you may cause more harm to yourself.

You also need to consider,IPv6 connections are not just about the network". The tools you use in your daily work will be affected by the way they respond to IPv6, including completely unresponsive. When you make a change, can your IP address management tool be effective? Don't tell me you didn't use the IPAM or DDI tool, because it is no longer 1997. What about your VPN Client? Although enterprise VPN clients can process IPv6, in last June, tests on top-level private VPN services and clients found that none of IPv6 connections were secure.

But this is not the reason to avoid migrating to IPv6 connections. In fact, this is exactly the convincing reason you need to consider migration now, starting from your evaluation and planning, it means you no longer need to conduct "fire drills ".

The most convincing reason is: if you do not start now, it may cause more harm to you. As Denise Fishburne points out, if you do not start now, you will hate you in the future.

You may wonder, "how to do it ?"

You may finally persuade yourself to start the action, so what should you do now?

First, you need to know what IPv6 is, how it works, and the difference between it and IPv4. Now there are many resources on the Internet for your reference.

You can also look at the companies that have done well in this area and learn from them. For example, a recent article describes how Telekom Malaysia adopts the internal and external Method for migrating to IPv6, and IPv6 supporters need to be prepared to persuade the management to understand the advantages of IPv6, these advantages are not very obvious and easy to see. In addition to pointing out IPv6 Security Issues, Neetha Edwin also talked about how to manage and promote the advantages of this new architecture.

However, you will eventually find that,This process is very similar to most IT projects you have experienced.:

1. Collect knowledge about new technologies or trends.

2. Determine whether to deploy the service.

3. Check which hardware and software are compatible and which need to be replaced or upgraded.

4. determine where to start deployment in your environment. (Tip: from center to edge)

5. Inform the management of the project.

Remember Joel Dolisy, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer of SolarWinds, recently told me: "Your description must involve three aspects of your business: continuously develop, reduce costs or avoid risks.

You may ask, "When ?"

Now, you have no reason to wait.