The IPv6 bandwagon

I have to admit, there are times when I get tired of watching some companies and industry folks claim IPv6 expertise when clearly they are just jumping on the bandwagon. I am grateful for the current interest in IPv6 that is pushing adoption forward and I have been impressed with lots of companies who have been waving the flag for years now and have put their money where their flag waving is.

For those who are new and trying to figure out who is legit in the IPv6 arena I think the easy way is to see what events a company has sponsored over the years. If they have helped in regional IPv6 Task Force summits or conferences or have run their own IPv6 events for more then a year or two they are likely legit.

The same goes for speakers and industry experts. If you are talking to someone and they claim to have been working with IPv6 since 1995 or such nonsense you can call bull - the RFC (2460) didn't come out until Dec 1998. Unless they were working with Bob Hinden and Stephen Deering on the draft (not very likely) then they are full of it. To be honest, I have been slightly alarmed at recent IPv6 events I have been attending where I am chatting with folks and a new person I get introduced to claims to have years of industry experience deploying IPv6. I am far from a long timer in the IPv6 community but due to my position on the California IPv6 Task Force and my regular attendance at IPv6 events across the country I think I am relatively familiar with the majority of regular speakers and presenters who have real world IPv6 experience and relevant information to share. Often when I ask around these self proclaimed experts are not known by any of my colleagues. I ask because I'm relatively new to the IPv6 community.

I've been fortunate enough to be on panels or presented at conferences with the likes of Jeff Doyle, Scott Hogg, Shannon McFarland, Ciprian Popoviciu, Silvia Hagen, Bob Hinden, Jeremy Duncan, Yurie Rich, John Curran, Owen DeLong, Stephan Lagerholm, Shane Amante, Yanick Pouffary, Jason Fesler, Tom Coffeen, Ron Broersma, Lorenzo Colitti, John Jason Brzozowski, Dan Wing, Eric Vyncke, Andrew Yourtchenko, Mark Townsley, Dave Ward, Erik Kline, Vint Cerf, Chris Grundemann, Salman Asadullah, Elise Gerich, Bruce Sinclair, Jordi Palet , Tony Hain, Stan Barber, John Baird, Joe Klein, Joesph Davies, Chris Palmer, Dave Thaler, Martin Levy and countless others who are regular IPv6 contributors. The contribution level varies but it has been very exciting to say I've been involved in a small way with this community of impressive individuals.

Clearly my list of folks is heavily biased on individuals participating in North American conferences and events and the list would be massive if the rest of the world was included. I wish I could keep a complete list of folks who have true IPv6 expertise but I think the days of having a manageable list are over.

Am I crazy to be concerned about this? I am not sure, the reality is we want more and more folks to adopt and use IPv6 and as that happens the rising tide will lift everyone to greater IPv6 proficiency and eventually expertise. This is a good thing so I guess I will calm down and stop being concerned about too many people getting on the bandwagon, after all, that is the point of all of this!
- Ed

North American IPv6 Summit - Advanced IPv6 design and deployment items for enterprise networks that are Microsoft technology focused

Back on April 9 through the 11th was the North American IPv6 Summit in Denver, CO. I presented on "Advanced IPv6 design and deployment items for enterprise networks that are Microsoft technology focused" and my presentation is now posted up on the site.

In addition to presenting I also had the opportunity to build out the Cisco wireless network that was used for the conference. It was an interesting experience due to the fact that the wireless was dual stacked and we made SSID's available for each of the carriers brought in for the conference. To top it off, we also made IPv6 only SSID's for each of the carriers allowing conference attendees the chance to test out what IPv6 only connectivity was like. Of course the other SSID's were dual stacked.

The Cisco Wireless LAN Controller required the newest software release of 7.2.103 in order to properly support IPv6. After a few early bumps (and reboots) everything worked as expected and we had several hundred folks up and running on wireless for the duration of the conference. Some interesting IPv6 deployment caveats came out from doing this work. First, due to older Mac OSX and Linux clients not having a DHCP client in the OS it meant that we ended up having to run both DHCPv6 and SLAAC on the same network. Effectively were had to set the A, M and O flags all at the same time. This meant that Windows 7 client machines ended up with three global unicast IPv6 addresses and their link local addresses. One from DHCPv6, one from a the privacy address that is dynamically built (instead of EUI-64) and a temporary address built for the random privacy address to do outbound sessions. Mac OSX and Linux clients built out SLAAC EUI-64 addresses as expected but were unable to obtain DNS information unless they ran a DHCPv6 client as we did not have RFC 6106 set up at all.

Overall, it was functional, but far from perfect. Given we had less then 8 hours to turn the whole thing up I was not disappointed because we had a working network built by a diverse group of engineers who all came together in one day. I would consider that a pretty impressive feat.
- Ed

One week away from World IPv6 Launch

June 6th, 2012 is World IPv6 Launch. the goal is to get as many companies and web properties to turn on IPv6 and leave it on. Some of the largest Internet content companies will be turning up IPv6 and leaving it up.

If you haven't invested time in learning IPv6 this should be a wake up call to do so. If you are a Microsoft IT Pro and attending Microsoft TechEd in June in Orlando you can attend my session - WCL324 - IPv6 Bootcamp. If you are Cisco network sort of person and are attending Cisco Live! in San Diego (the same week as Microsoft TechEd - go figure) you can attend Shannon McFarland's presentation's on IPv6 which are excellent. Either way, it is time to learn IPv6 and if you don't know it by now we might have to revoke your geek card.
- Ed

Techdays SF - VPN Session Presentation

For those that attended my VPN session at TechDays SF at Microsoft today, thank you. I am making available my handout which is a reference guide to go along with my presentation. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and make sure to fill out your surveys about the sessions.
- Ed

Less then two weeks until TechDays SF

I am co-chairing a regional IT Professional conference in San Francisco called TechDays SF. The conference is going to have some amazing speakers (many who present at Microsoft TechEd and other major IT conferences across the US) and I encourage you to check out their bios and the session abstracts too. The conference is at Microsoft's San Francisco office and is Thursday March 22nd and Friday March 23rd from 9am to 5pm both days. The TechDays website has all the details so I won't rehash it all here but please do plan on joining us, it should be a great event!
- Ed