It's pretty clear that in the later part of 2010 IPv6 became a much talked about technical topic. What hasn't become clear is how many folks have followed up and implemented on it. As of this article post Hurricane Electric's IPv6 stats say 48 days of IPv4 space remaining with only 7 /8's remaining. However, since an automatic delegation happens when the number reaches 5 (1 /8 delegation goes out to each RIR) we really only have 2 /8's remaining for IANA to allocate out per RIR requests.
What is more interesting is that they have added a RIR stats showing how many /24's each RIR has and what percentage of their pool they are at. Notice that APNIC and ARIN are currently the lowest. There are several good blogs on who they thing will get the next 2 /8 delegations but it would not surprise me at all to see APNIC get one soon and for them to run out first too. Stephen Lagerholm has a blog that covers the topic in good depth and is definitely worth a read. What should scare you more are his stats and the fact that he has been scary close on most of the dates in the past. Also, his IPv6 stats show just how poorly the service providers, networking engineers and application folks are working together to get IPv6 adoption going.
I have been working on getting a new California IPv6 Task Force website put together. I will next be working on updating the North American IPv6 Task Force. There are now many sites with really good IPv6 information out there so the goal for the sites are to point to good resources and not to re-invent the wheel. The North American site will simply aggregate the content of all the other NA Task Force sites so someone can just watch that site to find out what is happening in North America. In addition, each regional task force will cover their respective area to tell you what is going on locally.
In case you don't know some of them:
California IPv6 Task Force - http://www.cav6tf.org/
Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force - http://www.rmv6tf.org/
Texas IPv6 Task Force - http://www.txv6tf.org/
Hawaii IPv6 Task Force - http://www.ipv6hawaii.org/
Mid-Atlantic IPv6 Task Force - http://www.midatlanticv6tf.org/
Canadian IPv6 Task Force - http://www.ipv6canada.ca/
Mexico IPv6 Task Force - http://www.mexico.ipv6-taskforce.org/eng/
Task Forces are in the works for the Northwest and Southeast but nothing formal has come out as of yet. Then there is also the global IPv6 Task Force - http://www.ipv6tf.org/
I hope everyone realizes that regardless of your business or residential status soon there will be both clients AND servers that will only have IPv6 available to them due to the lack of IPv4 address space. It won't happen overnight but it will happen VERY RAPIDLY. You have a choice, keep up and learn the next networking protocol that will allow everything to continue to function or fall behind and lose value and relevance. That said, there are some easy ways to start. First, check out http://www.tunnelbroker.net/ which is a free service from Hurricane Electric. It allows you to run a dedicated tunnel to your work or home and get IPv6 connectivity. You should also check out Freenet6 from gogo6. They have a nice windows client application that allows you to have IPv6 access via their free tunnel broker.
Prediction - 2011 will be the year of IPv6 - likely the year of panic about IPv6.
- Ed
Howfunky...a place with useless technical content!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 06, 2010
It is that Microsoft MVP renewal time of the year
I have several colleagues who are either up for a re-award for their Microsoft MVP award or others who are being considered for the award. I have to admit after all the years of being an award recipient myself I still find the process fascinating and a bit shrouded in mystery. Microsoft does the awards on a quarterly basis now to spread out the workload of reviewing people but the end of the year seems a good time to reflect on things especially since the award is given for the community work done in the "previous year."
My own experience has been really positive in terms of the nomination and re-award process and I think the Microsoft MVP leads (Shout out to Jake Grey who is my lead) do a remarkable job given the number of individuals they are doing checks on. Knowing the variation in participation and the breadth of technical topics the MVP community covers it is remarkable they can review though everyone.
I recently read a posting here by Eric Ligman and another posting here by Alessandro Teglia both on the MVP program, what it takes to become an MVP and a bit about the program also. The fact that the site list numbers like approximately 4,000 MVP's out of 100 million online community members seems to put my status in a staggeringly small category. It also means that a very small group of individuals (at least in Microsoft's opinion) influence a huge group of online and offline people.
It seems that some other companies have decided to model their community recognition after the Microsoft MVP program. For instance the VMware vExpert program seems almost a direct lift - I guess that is a great compliment to the work Microsoft has done and a validation that community really is important in a companies marketing and support relationships.
For those of you who are Microsoft MVP's I hope to see you at the Summit in Redmond. For those waiting to hear if you were re-awarded I have my fingers crossed for you and for those who are waiting to find out if they get to join the exclusive club, best of luck!
- Ed
My own experience has been really positive in terms of the nomination and re-award process and I think the Microsoft MVP leads (Shout out to Jake Grey who is my lead) do a remarkable job given the number of individuals they are doing checks on. Knowing the variation in participation and the breadth of technical topics the MVP community covers it is remarkable they can review though everyone.
I recently read a posting here by Eric Ligman and another posting here by Alessandro Teglia both on the MVP program, what it takes to become an MVP and a bit about the program also. The fact that the site list numbers like approximately 4,000 MVP's out of 100 million online community members seems to put my status in a staggeringly small category. It also means that a very small group of individuals (at least in Microsoft's opinion) influence a huge group of online and offline people.
It seems that some other companies have decided to model their community recognition after the Microsoft MVP program. For instance the VMware vExpert program seems almost a direct lift - I guess that is a great compliment to the work Microsoft has done and a validation that community really is important in a companies marketing and support relationships.
For those of you who are Microsoft MVP's I hope to see you at the Summit in Redmond. For those waiting to hear if you were re-awarded I have my fingers crossed for you and for those who are waiting to find out if they get to join the exclusive club, best of luck!
- Ed
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
California IPv6 Task Force Update
I have been working with some colleagues to get a few items moving along for the California IPv6 Task Force. The primary one has been to get the website a bit more 2010-11 in look and feel. We will be porting it to a WordPress site and we hope to have the North American IPv6 Task Force site ported over and hosted in the same way. Both will be at Hurricane Electric and available via IPv6. Our goal really is to make the site a jump site with current content and links for folks to get started on IPv6. So the first shout out goes to Jared Curtis for making this part a reality.
In addition to that goal, we are going to be starting to get some IPv6 labs up online and will be looking for individuals to help put together short technical white papers. The materials will be made available via the website and hopefully people who are trying to make the transition to IPv6 will find it useful.
On top of that, we will soon have the mailing list server up and operational. Once that is done it will be a bit easier to get some events happening throughout California. If you are interested in helping at all please don't be shy and drop me an email at ed AT cav6tf DOT org. I'll be happy to get you in the loop on what we are working on and a potential project you can do.
- Ed
In addition to that goal, we are going to be starting to get some IPv6 labs up online and will be looking for individuals to help put together short technical white papers. The materials will be made available via the website and hopefully people who are trying to make the transition to IPv6 will find it useful.
On top of that, we will soon have the mailing list server up and operational. Once that is done it will be a bit easier to get some events happening throughout California. If you are interested in helping at all please don't be shy and drop me an email at ed AT cav6tf DOT org. I'll be happy to get you in the loop on what we are working on and a potential project you can do.
- Ed
Friday, October 29, 2010
gogoNET Live! IPv6 Conference - Nov 3-4
If you are in California and interested in IPv6 then you should already be signed up for the gogoNET LIVE! event being hosted at San Jose State University happening Nov 3-4th. The line up of keynotes is impressive:
Vint Cert - Honorary Chair, IPv6 Forum; Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
John Curran - President and CEO, ARIN
Elise Gerich - Vice President, IANA
Bob Hinden - Chief Internet Technologist, Nokia
Dave Ward - CTO, Infrastructure Product Group, Juniper
Latif Ladid - President, IPv6 Forum, Conference Co-Chair
Bruce Sinclair - CEO, gogo6, Conference Co-Chair
There are a ton of great speakers too. Check out who is presenting at the speakers page. Shameless plug because I will presenting on what is happening with the California IPv6 Task Force. I personally always enjoy seeing Martin Levy with Hurricane Electric present along with Tony Hain with Cisco and Stephan Lagerholm with Secure64 Software. I am excited to hear from Silva Hagen with Sunny Connection AG and Donn Lee with Facebook too.
The event is being presented by the IPv6 Forum, the California IPv6 Task Force and gogo6.
If you aren't paying attention to IPv6 here is a little bit of youtube video amusement from Cisco to get you moving.
- Ed
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
IPv6 - The Ostrich Effect
I have decided it is time to label one of the psychological effects being seen in the IT Professional community in regards to IPv6. I am calling it the Ostrich Effect and I am defining it as:
"The aversion to receiving information about IPv6 or avoiding the topic long enough in hopes it will go away"
It seems there are several different grouping of opinions regarding IPv6 and here are my quick outline of those groups below. I do think some of my group's mental states lines up with the stages of grief which are Denial, Anger, Negotiation, Depression and Acceptance however I think mine have more to do with the camps that have evolved around the issue of IPv6. I actually think that for each group defined below they will still have to go through all the stages of grief, I just think some will make it through without issue and some might not make it at all.
1. The "it will never happen" group
Typically folks in this category are more project planners, IT directors and CFO types who are justifying their comments by making generic snide references to how long have people been saying we would run out of IPv4 addresses and that it hasn't come to pass or that there is no new beneficial value from planning or even looking into IPv6. Their primary concerns are cost controls not operational issues so to them IPv6 only looks like an additional cost without any benefit. There are also people who believe IPv4 can live forever by doing even more NAT/PAT solutions but they clearly haven't looked at the bigger picture of the challenges with that for solution providers and carriers. Also, many in this group tend not to understand the larger issues with IPv4 vs IPv6 such as routing table size, the usage rate of addresses etc and seem to think that we can simply "recover" IPv4 addresses from folks who got allocated "too many" in the early days of IPv4. In a desperate plea to those folks, go take a look at what ARIN has to say about that.
2. The "I'm not convinced and this is annoying" group
Honestly, I think most business and management folks fit into this category right now. That is why there are IPv6 Task Forces all over the US to try and help people understand why they should be in the 3 or 4 category. Many professionals feel it is hard enough to keep up on what they have today in terms of technology so to learn a whole new networking protocol adds a lot of burden for the same perceived functionality they get out of IPv4 today. In addition, they truly believe they have a lot more time to work this out then they actually do. Basically they are stalling and are annoyed that people are telling them they have to pay attention.
3. The "I get it but I will wait for broader adoption" group
This group of people understand it is coming but don't want to be the first to have to do it. Unfortunately most network admins and system admins fit in this group. What is more alarming is they are horribly lacking in training and resources to get IPv6 working in their environment and unfortunately are unlikely to get budget to get the training they need. Hence their desire to wait! What is of great concern for them is when their management moves from group 2 to group 4 overnight. Then their management expects them to be able to implement overnight too. My only advise is get training any way you can so you are ready when the sleeping giant awakens.
4. The "I am totally stoked to get IPv6 rolled out" group
The rare group of IT professionals and visionary business leaders who understand that for their business model to continue working they must be able to support and communicate with everyone who might potentially be on the Internet, regardless of if they are using IPv4 or IPv6 to reach you. And with the address pool depletion happening soon (maybe before the end of 2010 if there is a run on addressing) you will have no choice - you MUST adopt IPv6 to meet that goal. So, they are already planning to design, deploy and support it, it means continued business which means everyone can keep the lights on. In other words, they get it. Many forward thinking companies have already starting doing this - kudos to you!
5. The "I've been doing IPv6 for years - what took you so long" group
The front runners and leaders who are using IPv6 as a strategic advantage as market leaders of services hoping to gain new customers and take customers from those who are unable to meet the new business requirements of those in group 4. Hate to say it but to be in group 5 means you've already been doing IPv6 for more than a year or longer. This group has left the station and it's an exclusive club and you can't join - sorry, it's just too late. For those in this group - you rock.
I hope to post up a road map that I am developing for the CAv6TF soon. It is for IT Professionals to allow them to rapidly meet the IPv6 requirements that will drop on them like a lead balloon. It is specifically targeted for folks in group 3 and 4 and has both the road map but a checklist too.
- Ed
"The aversion to receiving information about IPv6 or avoiding the topic long enough in hopes it will go away"
It seems there are several different grouping of opinions regarding IPv6 and here are my quick outline of those groups below. I do think some of my group's mental states lines up with the stages of grief which are Denial, Anger, Negotiation, Depression and Acceptance however I think mine have more to do with the camps that have evolved around the issue of IPv6. I actually think that for each group defined below they will still have to go through all the stages of grief, I just think some will make it through without issue and some might not make it at all.
1. The "it will never happen" group
Typically folks in this category are more project planners, IT directors and CFO types who are justifying their comments by making generic snide references to how long have people been saying we would run out of IPv4 addresses and that it hasn't come to pass or that there is no new beneficial value from planning or even looking into IPv6. Their primary concerns are cost controls not operational issues so to them IPv6 only looks like an additional cost without any benefit. There are also people who believe IPv4 can live forever by doing even more NAT/PAT solutions but they clearly haven't looked at the bigger picture of the challenges with that for solution providers and carriers. Also, many in this group tend not to understand the larger issues with IPv4 vs IPv6 such as routing table size, the usage rate of addresses etc and seem to think that we can simply "recover" IPv4 addresses from folks who got allocated "too many" in the early days of IPv4. In a desperate plea to those folks, go take a look at what ARIN has to say about that.
2. The "I'm not convinced and this is annoying" group
Honestly, I think most business and management folks fit into this category right now. That is why there are IPv6 Task Forces all over the US to try and help people understand why they should be in the 3 or 4 category. Many professionals feel it is hard enough to keep up on what they have today in terms of technology so to learn a whole new networking protocol adds a lot of burden for the same perceived functionality they get out of IPv4 today. In addition, they truly believe they have a lot more time to work this out then they actually do. Basically they are stalling and are annoyed that people are telling them they have to pay attention.
3. The "I get it but I will wait for broader adoption" group
This group of people understand it is coming but don't want to be the first to have to do it. Unfortunately most network admins and system admins fit in this group. What is more alarming is they are horribly lacking in training and resources to get IPv6 working in their environment and unfortunately are unlikely to get budget to get the training they need. Hence their desire to wait! What is of great concern for them is when their management moves from group 2 to group 4 overnight. Then their management expects them to be able to implement overnight too. My only advise is get training any way you can so you are ready when the sleeping giant awakens.
4. The "I am totally stoked to get IPv6 rolled out" group
The rare group of IT professionals and visionary business leaders who understand that for their business model to continue working they must be able to support and communicate with everyone who might potentially be on the Internet, regardless of if they are using IPv4 or IPv6 to reach you. And with the address pool depletion happening soon (maybe before the end of 2010 if there is a run on addressing) you will have no choice - you MUST adopt IPv6 to meet that goal. So, they are already planning to design, deploy and support it, it means continued business which means everyone can keep the lights on. In other words, they get it. Many forward thinking companies have already starting doing this - kudos to you!
5. The "I've been doing IPv6 for years - what took you so long" group
The front runners and leaders who are using IPv6 as a strategic advantage as market leaders of services hoping to gain new customers and take customers from those who are unable to meet the new business requirements of those in group 4. Hate to say it but to be in group 5 means you've already been doing IPv6 for more than a year or longer. This group has left the station and it's an exclusive club and you can't join - sorry, it's just too late. For those in this group - you rock.
I hope to post up a road map that I am developing for the CAv6TF soon. It is for IT Professionals to allow them to rapidly meet the IPv6 requirements that will drop on them like a lead balloon. It is specifically targeted for folks in group 3 and 4 and has both the road map but a checklist too.
- Ed
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