Some recommendations for migrating to IPv6

The transition to IPv6 will soon be necessary. Still, adapting the network to this new version of the connection protocol will arrive sooner or later. Here are some tips to ensure a smooth transition

While Arcep has fixed the IPv4 address shortage date as November 7, 2019 , the transition to IPv6 is now a real emergency. As a reminder, IPv6 is a standard designed to redefine the writing of IP addresses in order to solve the problems of depleted stocks that the various Regional Internet Registries, which are responsible for allocating address blocks, encounter today. But the different actors involved in this transition do not all have the same priorities and the transition takes place at a reduced speed.

According to Google statistics, about 15% of global Internet traffic in 2016 used IPv6. By the end of 2017, about 20% of Internet traffic should use the new protocol. The proportion should be 35% by 2019. Last April Arcep said that France can claim an IPv6 utilization rate of 14.6%. This puts the country in the average of European countries in terms of IPv6 adoption.

But most of this IPv6 traffic does not come from businesses. Because if ISPs willingly or forcibly switch to IPv6 because they ran out of IPv4 addresses, companies do not have the same pressure. Above all, IPv6 does not represent today any business advantage. This is not a priority for many actors, except for a few specific reasons.

For example, many modern operating systems already use IPv6 by default. IT teams may have problems if they do not secure or support this protocol through which users pass through the enterprise information system. Then, it must be seen that a large part of global internet traffic, especially mobile traffic, uses IPv6. So setting up IPv6 in your company allows to connect without gateway with this expanding universe .

Here are some recommendations for migrating your business to IPv6:

Train the entire CIO at IPv6

IPv6 has some fundamental components that are completely different from IPv4. Hence the need to train teams internally to see how this new way of connecting plays on infrastructure and applications.

And as we talk about infrastructure and application, consider training staff beyond the network team.

Analyze your current infrastructure and applications

Companies will also need to assess the capacity of their existing environment to manage IPv6. It is then important to look at the impact on the overall infrastructure of a network environment, not just switches, routers, network cards, or operating systems.

Everything must be examined to see what supports IPv6, or not. One particular case to watch is legacy applications that potentially can not support the new protocol.

Set up a test environment

Setting up a test environment that emulates the IT operations performed by a company on a daily basis is a good idea.

In this way, teams can activate IPv6 in a test environment and see what happens. A good way to track conflicts with applications or hardware.

Write an IPv6 plan

Based on the information they have gained from their training, assessments and tests, organizations can then plan how they want to deploy the new protocol in their environment.

To do this, planning is a good idea as well. Especially since the transition to IPv6 may cause a reconfiguration of the computing environment.

The opportunity to take advantage of the specifics of IPv6, or even to do the spring cleaning to optimize the operation of the network with the current needs of the company.

Deploy IPv6 in multiple phases

When it comes time to deploy IPv6 in production, it should be done step by step, in order to finely manage the transition. The Big Bang method in this area is a risk that it is better not to run.