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IPv6 Transition

There are significant potential benefits to transitioning enterprise networks to IPv6, but wide-scale adoption in general enterprise settings continues to lag. Questions about the viability of technologies and deployment guidance necessary to do so securely remain a barrier to progress for many.

The IPv6 protocol suite offers a vastly greater address space than IPv4 and supports significant new capabilities necessary to enable modern network environments.

The NCCoE considered a project to demonstrate the feasibility of securely migrating common enterprise network environments to IPv6-only deployments. This project would address the technologies necessary to maintain interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6 systems during such a transition.

The NCCoE considered conducting a project to provide guidance and a reference architecture that address operational, security, and privacy issues associated with the evolution to IPv6-only network infrastructures. The project would demonstrate tools and methods for securely implementing IPv6, whether as a “greenfield” implementation, or as a transition from an IPv4 infrastructure to an IPv6-only network.

While the focus was on enterprise networks, use case scenarios would address other technologies commonly found in modern enterprise environments such as hybrid public/private cloud services, mobile devices, remote/telework, and advanced transport services. The primary focus of the demonstration project would be on the security technologies, services, and recommended practices necessary to ensure that evolving enterprise IT environments to be IPv6-only can be accomplished in a secure and robust manner.

 

Mature IPv6 implementations exist in almost all client/server operating systems and network routing and switching platforms. Today, there are few technical barriers to deploying robust dual-stack enterprise control and data-planes.