IPv6 Implementation Best Practices For Service Providers

Transcription

1 IPv6 Implementation Best Practices For Service Providers Brandon Ross Chief Network Architect and CEO 2013 Utilities Telecom Council Network Utility Force

2 RFC IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes - Given the global lack of available IPv4 space, and limitations in IPv4 extension and transition technologies, this document advises that IPv6 support is no longer considered optional. It also cautions that there are places in existing IETF documents where the term "IP" is used in a way that could be misunderstood by implementers as the term "IP" becomes a generic that can mean IPv4 + IPv6, IPv6-only, or IPv4-only, depending on context and application. 1

3 RFC 6540 Are you aware of this requirement? Are your nodes IPv6 capable? 2

4 IPv6 Background IPv4 depletion is already occurring IPv6 adoption is accelerating Most network hardware supports IPv6 For the most part, dual stack Just Works 3

5 IPv4 Free Pool Depletion 4

6 IPv6 Enabled Networks 5

7 US Federal Lesson Learned - federal government had mandated for all public facing web services to support IPv6 by September 30, 2012 (287 of 1494 sites had IPv6 web support by the deadline) Today 962 of 1332 sites support IPv6 - over 70% (far ahead of most other large organizations) Source: 6

8 What next? Okay, my organization is convinced it s time to begin IPv6 deployment, what do I need to consider? 7

9 Best Practices The fundamentals haven t changed a bit for IPv6, consider: Security Maintainability Scalability Performance Flexibility 8

10 Apply the Fundamentals What areas need the most attention? Addressing plan Interconnectivity Bootstrapping/AAA Security issues Staff training Transition 9

11 IPv6 Address Space is VAST IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, allowing 2 128, or approximately addresses, or more than times as many as IPv4, which uses 32-bit addresses. (Wikipedia) That s 340 Undecillion! Undecillion is a number with 36 zeros. We must change our thinking about how to allocate address space to meet our best practice goals. 10

12 State of Assignments All of the registries, for the most part, assign initial blocks for Service provider /32 Enterprise /48 11

13 What makes up a good addressing plan? Depends on the type of network, the size of the network, and problem to be solved Points to consider Documentation Ease of troubleshooting Aggregation Standards compliance Growth SLAAC Existing IPv4 addressing plan Human factors 12

14 Algorithmic Approaches Interop took an algorithmic approach to IPv6 numbering Encode every IPv4 address in your network in an IPv6 address (A0A0A0A) 2001:DB8:A0A:A0A:: 13

15 Interconnectivity Routing protocols have been updated, but the fundamental concepts remain the same Run routing protocols such that they fail when the underlying transport fails That means separate v4 and v6 protocols For ease of management, configure IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity to follow the same paths Also use the same routing policies whenever possible Ask your Internet traffic peers, suppliers, partners and clients to begin transporting IPv6 traffic 14

16 Bootstrapping/AAA Some fundamental changes have been made to the bootstrap process to join an IPv6 network, all part of the Neighbor Discovery process Router Advertisements (RA) Tells potential clients about the routers and prefixes available on the network StateLess Address Auto Configuration (SLAAC) New in IPv6, allows a device to generate it s own address Supported universally Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol v6 (DHCPv6) Very similar to v4, can distribute address, DNS server, other information about the network Good support, but far from universal 15

17 Security Issues Use the same diligence you used for IPv4 Ask equipment vendors to support specific protections in IPv6 RA-Guard prevents an attacker from sending rogue RAs into the network and becoming a man-in-the-middle DHCP-Shield similar to RA-Guard in that it blocks fake DHCP servers from giving out false information Ensure equipment supports all IPv4 features you use in IPv6 as well such as ACLs, anti-spoof filtering (RPF), etc. Why should v6 be any different in these areas? Where firewalls are needed, ensure your choice of firewall supports v6 as well as v4. NAT is NOT a security feature and v6 doesn t have it 16

18 Staff Training Find an experienced organization to provide training Service providers require a different level of scalability and maintainability than enterprise, use a trainer that understands SP s unique challenges Build a lab, get a tunnel to experiment with IPv6 17

19 Transition Technologies 3 Types Dual Stack Hopefully will be the most common Simply means running both v4 and v6 at the same time Tunneling Putting either IPv4 packets inside IPv6 packets or vice versa, depending on the situation Can be useful to solve problems in certain areas, but in general, tunneling hurts performance and should be avoided when possible Examples: 6rd, 6in4, 4in6, DS-Lite, MAP Translation Converting an IPv4 packet into an IPv6 packet or vice versa Like in tunnels, can be useful in certain circumstances, especially for rapid deployment of IPv6 on public facing services such as web servers Example: NAT64 18

20 Conclusions IPv6 works in the real world There are challenges to implementing IPv6, but nothing show-stopping Much of the Internet s content is reachable over IPv6 (and growing fast) including all of Google, FaceBook and 3000 other sites A much smaller percentage of Internet users have IPv6 connectivity (though this may change quickly with IPv4 depletion) 19

21 Thank You! - download this presentation here: or here: - meet with us at booth 501 bross@netuf.net Network Utility Force 2013 Utilities Telecom Council