Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-intarea-ipv6-required
draft-ietf-intarea-ipv6-required
Internet Area Working Group W. George
Internet-Draft Time Warner Cable
Intended status: BCP C. Donley
Expires: June 10, 2012 Cablelabs
C. Liljenstolpe
Telstra
L. Howard
Time Warner Cable
December 8, 2011
IPv6 Support Required for all IP-capable Nodes
draft-ietf-intarea-ipv6-required-02
Abstract
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 which can mean IPv4 + IPv6, IPv6-only, or
IPv4-only, depending on context and application.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on June 10, 2012.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Clarifications and Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
1. Introduction
IP version 4 (IPv4) has served to connect public and private hosts
all over the world for over 30 years. However, due to the success of
the Internet in finding new and innovative uses for IP networking,
billions of hosts are now connected via the Internet and requiring
unique addressing. This demand has led to the exhaustion of the IANA
global pool of unique IPv4 addresses [IANA-exhaust], and will be
followed by the exhaustion of the free pools for each Regional
Internet Registry (RIR), the first of which is APNIC [APNIC-exhaust].
While transition technologies and other means to extend the lifespan
of IPv4 do exist, nearly all of them come with tradeoffs that prevent
them from being optimal long-term solutions when compared with
deployment of IP version 6 (IPv6) as a means to allow continued
growth on the Internet. See [RFC6269] and
[I-D.donley-nat444-impacts] for some discussion on this topic.
IPv6 [RFC1883] was proposed in 1995 as, among other things, a
solution to the limitations on globally unique addressing that IPv4's
32-bit addressing space represented, and has been under continuous
refinement (e.g., [RFC2460]) and deployment ever since. The
exhaustion of IPv4 and the continued growth of the internet worldwide
has created the driver for widespread IPv6 deployment.
However, the IPv6 deployment necessary to reduce reliance on IPv4 has
been hampered by a lack of ubiquitous hardware and software support
throughout the industry. Many vendors, especially in the consumer
space have continued to view IPv6 support as optional. Even today
they are still selling "IP capable" or "Internet Capable" devices
which are not IPv6-capable, which has continued to push out the point
at which the natural hardware refresh cycle will significantly
increase IPv6 support in the average home or enterprise network.
They are also choosing not to update existing software to enable IPv6
support on software-updatable devices, which is a problem because it
is not realistic to expect that the hardware refresh cycle will
single-handedly purge IPv4-only devices from the active network in a
reasonable amount of time. This is a significant problem, especially
in the consumer space, where the network operator often has no
control over the hardware the consumer chooses to use. For the same
reason that the average consumer is not making a purchasing decision
based on the presence of IPv6 support in their Internet-capable
devices and services, consumers are unlikely to replace their still-
functional Internet-capable devices simply to add IPv6 support - they
don't know or don't care about IPv6, they simply want their devices
to work as advertised.
This lack of support is making the eventual IPv6 transition
considerably more difficult, and drives the need for expensive and
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
complicated transition technologies to extend the life of IPv4-only
devices as well as eventually to interwork IPv4-only and IPv6-only
hosts. While IPv4 is expected to coexist on the Internet with IPv6
for many years, a transition from IPv4 as the dominant Internet
Protocol towards IPv6 as the dominant Internet Protocol will need to
occur. The sooner the majority of devices support IPv6, the less
protracted this transition period will be.
2. Clarifications and Recommendation
To ensure interoperability and proper function after IPv4 exhaustion,
support for IPv6 is virtually a requirement. Rather than update the
existing IPv4 protocol specification standards to include IPv6, IETF
has defined a completely separate set of standalone documents which
cover IPv6. Therefore, implementers are cautioned that a distinction
must be made between IPv4 and IPv6 in some IETF documents where IP is
used generically. Current requirements for IPv6 support can be found
in [RFC4294], soon to be updated by [I-D.ietf-6man-node-req-bis] and
in [RFC6204]. Each of these documents contains specific information,
requirements, and references to other draft and proposed standards
governing many aspects of IPv6 implementation.
Many of IETF's early documents use the generic term "IP" synonymously
with the more specific "IPv4." Some examples of this potential
confusion can be found in [RFC1812], especially sections 1, 2, and 4.
Since RFC1812 is an IPv4 router specification, the generic use of IP
in this standard may cause confusion as the term "IP" can now be
interpreted to mean: IPv4 + IPv6, IPv6-only, or IPv4-only.
Additionally, [RFC1122], is no longer a complete definition of "IP"
or the Internet Protocol suite by itself, because it does not include
IPv6. For example, section 3.1 does not contain references to the
IPv6 equivalent standards for the Internet layer, section 3.2 is a
protocol walk-through for IPv4 only, and section 3.2.1.1 explicitly
requires an IP datagram whose version number is not 4 to be
discarded, which would be detrimental to IPv6 forwarding. Additional
instances of this type of problem exist that are not discussed here.
Since existing RFCs say "IP" in places where they may mean IPv4,
implementers are cautioned to ensure that they know whether a given
standard is inclusive or exclusive of IPv6. To ensure
interoperability, implementers building IP nodes will need to support
both IPv4 and IPv6. If the standard does not include an integral
definition of both IPv4 and IPv6, implementers need to use the other
informative references in this document as a companion guideline for
proper IPv6 implementations.
To ensure interoperability and flexibility, the best practice is:
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
New IP implementations must support IPv6.
Updates to current IP implementations should support IPv6.
IPv6 support must be equivalent or better in quality and
functionality when compared to IPv4 support in a new or updated IP
implementation.
New and updated IP Networking implementations should support IPv4
and IPv6 coexistence (dual-stack), but must not require IPv4 for
proper and complete function.
Implementers are encouraged to update existing hardware and
software to enable IPv6 wherever technically feasible.
3. Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following people for their reviews and comments: Marla
Azinger, Brian Carpenter, Victor Kuarsingh, Jari Arkko, Scott Brim,
Margaret Wasserman, Joe Touch, Fred Baker, Benson Schliesser, Eric
Rosen, David Harrington, Wesley Eddy.
4. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
5. Security Considerations
There are no direct security considerations generated by this
document, but existing documented security considerations for
implementing IPv6 will apply.
6. Informative References
[APNIC-exhaust]
APNIC, "APNIC Press Release", 2011, <http://www.apnic.net/
__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/33246/
Key-Turning-Point-in-Asia-Pacific-IPv4-
Exhaustion_English.pdf >.
[I-D.donley-nat444-impacts]
Donley, C., Howard, L., Kuarsingh, V., Berg, J., and U.
Colorado, "Assessing the Impact of Carrier-Grade NAT on
Network Applications", draft-donley-nat444-impacts-03
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
(work in progress), November 2011.
[I-D.ietf-6man-node-req-bis]
Jankiewicz, E., Loughney, J., and T. Narten, "IPv6 Node
Requirements", draft-ietf-6man-node-req-bis-11 (work in
progress), May 2011.
[IANA-exhaust]
IANA, "IANA address allocation", 2011, <http://
www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/
ipv4-address-space.xml>.
[RFC1122] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.
[RFC1812] Baker, F., "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers",
RFC 1812, June 1995.
[RFC1883] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 1883, December 1995.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
[RFC4294] Loughney, J., "IPv6 Node Requirements", RFC 4294,
April 2006.
[RFC6204] Singh, H., Beebee, W., Donley, C., Stark, B., and O.
Troan, "Basic Requirements for IPv6 Customer Edge
Routers", RFC 6204, April 2011.
[RFC6269] Ford, M., Boucadair, M., Durand, A., Levis, P., and P.
Roberts, "Issues with IP Address Sharing", RFC 6269,
June 2011.
Authors' Addresses
Wesley George
Time Warner Cable
13820 Sunrise Valley Drive
Herndon, VA 20171
US
Phone: +1 703-561-2540
Email: wesley.george@twcable.com
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft IPv6-required December 2011
Chris Donley
Cablelabs
858 Coal Creek Circle
Louisville, CO 80027
US
Phone: +1-303-661-9100
Email: C.Donley@cablelabs.com
Christopher Liljenstolpe
Telstra
Level 32/242 Exhibition Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
AU
Phone: +61-3-8647-6389
Email: cdl@asgaard.org
Lee Howard
Time Warner Cable
13820 Sunrise Valley Drive
Herndon, VA 20171
US
Phone: +1-703-345-3513
Email: lee.howard@twcable.com
George, et al. Expires June 10, 2012 [Page 7]
