Lanterna Rally

Author: Eliot John Mustell

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

The transition to IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) from IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) has been discussed since the mid to late 90's, back when it was commonly called internet protocol next generation. Even back in the 90's at conferences such as INET IPv6, and IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) in 1994, documented in RFC 1752 "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol"the concern of running out of IP addresses and transitioning to the internet protocol of the next generation were topics of trepidation. Even this year, the Chinese conference Global Mobile Internet & IPv6-Next Generation Internet Summit 2009 held in April to discuss the same exact issue that has been discussed for over the past decade when they were first meeting about it. The research paper will explore the development of IPv6 over the past decade, along with discussing the successes of IPv6 so far; such as the much needed updates to IPsec (Internet Protocol Security), and the updates to common routing protocols such as EIGRP, ISIS, BGP, OSPF and RIP used in the current IPv4 setting. The short comings of IPv6 will be demonstrated, for instance its lack of integration and cost associated with the transition including financial, and the knowledge pool need at a company to implement IPv6 properly. Success and failures of a transition to IPv6 using examples like China and the Department of Defense will be analyzed, to explain what went right in those situations and what went wrong. What experts in the field and academics scholars think about the transition will be weighed in on the IPv6 transition process. In short, as discussed above the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has been long hard road so far, and it does not look like it will get any easier any time soon, so this research paper will shed some light on grey area known as the transition to IPv6 to explain why it's not necessary for the US at this time.