With a successful World IPv6 Day on June 8th and the prediction that the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) will allocate its last IPv4 addresses this before the end of this year, Hurricane Electric is suggesting simple steps for data center managers to ease the transition and reap the benefits inherent in IPv6.
Owen Delong, IPv6 evangelist at Hurricane Electric and director of professional services, recommends transitioning to a dual-stack environment by implementing the following steps:
- Add IPv6 Capabilities to provisioning and monitoring systems
- Upgrade critical infrastructure (hardware and software) to support dual IPv4/IPv6 stacks
- Plan data center addressing and deployment
- Enable IPv6 on your core and backbone
- Establish IPv6 peering and transit sessions
- Add IPv6 capabilities to external facing services, including email, web and DNS
Despite the effort required to transition to IPv6, IPv6 has tremendous long-term benefits. According to a US Commerce Department study, ongoing benefits to the global economy of $10 billion/year will result from IPv6 adoption.
Recently, Owen Delong, conducted the first IPv6 certification course in Mexico and was appointed to the IPv6 Advisory Board for Infoblox, a leading developer of network infrastructure automation and control solutions. In addition, this month Owen taught an IPv6 seminar to secondary and post secondary school communities in Lincoln, NE.