IPv6 Addressing and Management Challenges

With the continued proliferation of IP devices, global IPv4 address space availability has been exhausted for all intents and purposes. Organizations requiring new or additional address space these days are only able to obtain IPv6 space, without paying exorbitant fees for sparse IPv4 space, or using a service provider which shares IPv4 space behind carrier grade NATs. Even if your organization currently has more than ample public and private IPv4 address space for the foreseeable future, consideration of IPv6 is recommended. Such consideration should include planning for IPv6 implementation on external resources such as web and email servers.

Google has been measuring the proportion of IPv6 traffic reaching its sites for years now. As of now, over 40% of Internet users accessing google sites are using IPv6. If you’re not supporting IPv6 access to your Internet resources, a large proportion of potential visitors could be prohibited from viewing your content or suffering performance degradations if falling back to IPv4.

This white paper is intended to help you learn about IPv6. We begin with an overview of the key benefits of IPv6, then delve into the details of IPv6 addressing and allocation. Next, we discuss IPv6 address assignment strategies using autoconfiguration or DHCPv6. With this foundation of IPv6 addressing information, we’ll then review the key IP management challenges related to IPv6.