Enterprises often utter the words, \u201cI have plenty of IPv4 addresses, so I don\u2019t need IPv6\u201d.\u00a0 How many times have you heard this argument?\u00a0 Those large enterprises, federal organizations, universities, etc., who were bequeathed large public IPv4 address resources often don\u2019t consider the other-half of the relationship. \u00a0From their perspective, it\u2019s not them that\u2019s the problem.\u00a0 \u00a0IPv6 is an issue for others to tackle.\u00a0 Those types of organizations sometimes have enough public IPv4 addresses that they can use them internally and on their perimeter networks.\u00a0 While they have a plentiful supply of public IPv4 addresses, they don\u2019t recognize the rest of the Internet population\u2019s lack of public IPv4 addresses.\u00a0 Some companies consider themselves lucky if they have a \/24 for their perimeter systems and make use of Network Address Translation (NAT) and proxies.\u00a0 But other people on the Internet don\u2019t even have a single non-dynamic public IPv4 address.<\/p>\n
The real issue here is that those enterprises who say \u201cI don\u2019t care for IPv6 because I love IPv4 and NAT\u201d aren\u2019t the problem.\u00a0 Instead, the problem is their customers, partners, and suppliers who lack public IPv4.\u00a0 Their customers do increasing amounts of online ecommerce via their mobile phones using private IPv4 addresses behind a NAT.\u00a0 When those customers go to a corporation\u2019s IPv4-only systems, the corporation must backhaul their traffic through a CGN,\u00a0NAT64\/DNS64<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0IPv4-as-a-Service<\/a>\u00a0system that may not be in their vicinity, adding latency and potentially reducing performance.\u00a0 Mobile subscribers have a high degree of IPv6 connectivity, but their mobile devices use a private IPv4 address and must pass through a CGN system within the mobile provider\u2019s network. \u00a0Furthermore, the NAT process causes TCP\/UDP header checksums to be recomputed, and often customers are competing for TCP \u201cport space\u201d with numerous others passing through the same CGN.\u00a0 Therefore, over time, the end-user experience with IPv4 will worsen.<\/p>\n Those mobile devices have IPv6, but they are unable to connect to the IPv6-celibate corporations that are recalcitrant given their commitment to IPv4-only.\u00a0 When these mobile devices connect to places on the Internet, their experience over IPv6 can be better than over IPv4.<\/p>\n Turns out, in fact, it is the traditional enterprises that are the problem in the relationship.<\/p>\n Picture source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.someecards.com\/usercards\/viewcard\/MjAxMy1mODJmMThiNGE1OTc3OGQ1<\/a><\/p>\n You can almost hear the commercial enterprises repeating George\u2019s famous breakup line as they ponder IPv6 adoption.<\/p>\n Picture source:\u00a0https:\/\/psiloveyou.xyz\/how-its-not-you-it-s-me-should-mend-your-relationship-not-break-it-fd6d855f71…<\/a><\/p>\n Playing the Field with Dual-Protocol<\/strong><\/p>\n If you are an enterprise conducting business on the Internet then you will want to be able to \u201cplay the field.\u201d\u00a0 You will want to be able to communicate and \u201chook up\u201d with any customer, supplier, partner, vendor who may be using IPv4 or IPv6.\u00a0 The Internet \u201cdating pool\u201d is already using native IPv6, yes still using NAT through one (or two) NAT devices for IPv4 connectivity.\u00a0 If the corporate enterprise adopts a dual-protocol Internet environment, then they will be reachable to the throngs of mobile devices already using IPv6 today that their customers possess.\u00a0 When an enterprise elects to deploy IPv6, then their customers using IPv6 are far more likely to \u201cswipe right.\u201d<\/p>\n Falling in Love, Head Up in The Clouds<\/strong><\/p>\n Corporate enterprises are falling in love with public cloud infrastructure.\u00a0 They are jumping into cloud-based relationships without first considering the consequences for their IP addressing plans.\u00a0 Enterprises may not think they need to enable IPv6 for their cloud environments so they start to deploy with 10.0.0.0\/8.\u00a0 They use\u00a010.10<\/strong>.0.0\/16 for the first\u00a0VPC<\/a>, they use\u00a010.20<\/strong>.0.0\/16 for the second\u00a0VPC<\/a>, and so on for their other cloud vendor environments.\u00a0 Then they quickly realize the repercussions of this profligate behavior.\u00a0 That is, when they try to establish a hybrid-cloud architecture and join their cloud environments to their on-premises data center they are faced with the massive overlap of private IPv4 address space with their internal networks.<\/p>\n As the enterprise has stated \u201cit\u2019s not them\u201d \u2013 they have plenty of bandwidth and IPv4 addresses.\u00a0 Typically, when they deploy their Internet-facing apps in the cloud, it is a single public IPv4 address on a load balancer front-ending the\u00a0auto-scale-group<\/a>\u00a0of web servers.\u00a0 Also, those public addresses are usually owned by the cloud service provider and are not allocated from the enterprise\u2019s current supply of public IPv4 addresses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, while the clients of that cloud-based web service or application lack direct IPv4, they do have direct native IPv6 connectivity.\u00a0 If the cloud-based applications want to be desirable and have the best opportunities for the best connectivity in all cases, then they will need to be accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6.\u00a0 This means choosing a\u00a0cloud provider that has a substantial IPv6 service offerings<\/a>\u00a0to facilitate the greatest degree of Internet reachability.<\/p>\n Getting Married \u2013 Mergers and Acquisitions<\/strong><\/p>\n Believe it or not, IP addresses are a topic for many prenuptial agreements.\u00a0 When two corporations want to merge, there is often a lengthy courtship that occurs as they evaluate their compatibility (and sort out all their overlapping IPv4 addresses).\u00a0 The choice is then made to readdress (typically the acquired company takes on that responsibility) or they decide to perpetually live their lives at arms-length and install bi-directional NAT between them.<\/p>\n Picture source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.today.com\/health\/why-couples-sleep-separate-beds-how-ask-your-spouse-t126112<\/a><\/p>\n IPv6 has the advantage when two companies fall in love and want to take that next step and move in together.\u00a0 Both organizations would be using globally-unique IPv6 addresses.\u00a0 They don\u2019t require chaperones to avoid address overlap.\u00a0 IPv6 allows them to have a \u201cspur of the moment Las Vegas wedding\u201d and directly connect without concern for overlapping addresses or NATs.\u00a0 Both companies would be using globally-unique IPv6 addresses that facilitate direct communication without any NAT or readdressing process.<\/p>\n Be the Bigger Person<\/strong><\/p>\n When it comes to communication in a relationship it is said that it\u2019s best to be open-minded and receptive to others\u2019 ways of communicating.\u00a0 If enterprises close off their borders to IPv6 and only speak IPv4, then they are not leveraging all that the Internet has to offer.\u00a0 You should \u201cbe the bigger person\u201d and proceed to adopt IPv6 so that, regardless of other\u2019s preferences for IPv4-only \u2013\u00a0whether it\u2019s IPv4 through a CGN,\u00a0NAT64\/DNS64<\/a>,\u00a0IPv4-as-a-Service<\/a>, or IPv6 \u2013 you will be able to communicate with everyone.\u00a0 After all, massive corporate enterprises have substantial IT budgets that eclipse the expense of their customer\u2019s tiny mobile devices offering native global IPv6 but NAT\u2019ed IPv4.\u00a0 They have the means to deploy IPv6 and, frankly,\u00a0at this late stage<\/a>, it shouldn\u2019t be too difficult or time consuming to\u00a0IPv6-enable their Internet-edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Achieving Self Actualization Through Holistic IPv6 Deployment<\/strong><\/p>\n As for the enterprises, the \u201cit\u2019s not me, it\u2019s you\u201d mentality prevents them from deploying IPv6, but the reality is that \u201cit is them\u201d because they haven\u2019t yet adopted IPv6.\u00a0 Enterprises should avoid\u00a0becoming IPv6 technology laggards<\/a>\u00a0and should be more aggressively considering their adoption of new technology to create a competitive advantage.\u00a0 Their customers, partners, and suppliers may not have sufficient IPv4 resources and may be already using IPv6. And that should motivate them to have open lines of communication.<\/p>\n In the end, relationships are all about communication.\u00a0 If you are unable to communicate natively, transparently, and honestly, then your relationship is doomed.\u00a0 If enterprises, like people, are open with their feelings and with their choice of IP version, they have will have fulfilling enduring relationships with their IPv6-enabled customers.<\/p>\n Scott Hogg\u00a0(@ScottHogg<\/a>) is CTO of\u00a0HexaBuild.io<\/a>, an IPv6 consulting and training company.\u00a0 Scott is Chair Emeritus of the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force (RMv6TF<\/a>) and authored the Cisco Press book on\u00a0IPv6 Security<\/a>.\u00a0 Follow HexaBuild on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seem to be some \u201cissues\u201d with enterprise\u2019s relationship with IPv6.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t clear if they just aren\u2019t getting along or if enterprise is in a monogamous exclusive relationship with IPv4 and unwilling to explore the dual-protocol swingers\u2019 lifestyle.\u00a0 Maybe conservative enterprises are \u201cIPv6-curious\u201d and fear reprisals from their peer-group if they exhibit an excessively-promiscuous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":1127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[41,56,38,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-1346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ipv6-coe","8":"tag-cloud","9":"tag-ipv4","10":"tag-ipv6","11":"tag-networking","12":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"We\u2019ve](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/Its-not-you.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"George\u2019s](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/I-invented-its-not-you.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Getting](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/arms-length-small.jpg\")
<\/p>\n