Training is typically one of the\u00a0early phases of an IPv6 adoption project<\/a>.\u00a0 Everyone learning a new technology has to start somewhere and that typically means cracking open a book on the topic or leveraging an Internet search.\u00a0 Virtually all people in the IT department will need to learn about IPv6 to some extent.\u00a0 Some people may attend classes, or some may prefer the self-paced online learning approach.\u00a0 Regardless of whether you prefer\u00a0MOOCs<\/a>, an\u00a0in-person class\/conference<\/a>, or the feel of a hard-bound book and a comfortable chair, the important part is to not delay your IPv6 journey.<\/p>\n You might enjoy reading Rick Graziani\u2019s book \u201cIPv6 Fundamentals<\/a>\u201d and it will teach you a lot about the protocol.\u00a0 However, there is a significant step between doing some initial learning about IPv6 and being ready to deploy IPv6 in production.\u00a0 Obtaining some hands-on experience really complements book-learning.\u00a0 Therefore, having an\u00a0IPv6 proof-of-concept lab<\/a>\u00a0you can learn with is valuable.\u00a0 Some might want to start with some simple\u00a0GNS3 router simulations<\/a>\u00a0or buy\u00a0Cisco\u2019s Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL)<\/a>\u00a0to jump start their learning.\u00a0 Even assembling a set of\u00a0Raspberry Pis<\/a>\u00a0or laptops may help get you started.\u00a0 Regardless, you wouldn\u2019t just want to start to make IPv6 configurations on production devices, services, and software without having some hands-on experience with IPv6.<\/p>\n If your company does not provide any lab resources or IPv6 connectivity, then you might want to start learning about IPv6 in your home environment.\u00a0 Working to achieve IPv6 Internet access at your home is a great way to gain hands-on practical learning with IPv6.\u00a0 Striving for this measureable and realistic goal will keep you motivated and doing this activity at home will be convenient and require very little, if any, money.\u00a0\u00a0Jeff Carrell<\/a>\u00a0has shared his guidance on how to assemble a\u00a0functional IPv6 home lab environment<\/a>\u00a0and he has even taught\u00a0classes and workshops<\/a>\u00a0on this topic to help people get going.\u00a0 Furthermore, at the end of this endeavor, you will enjoy the benefits of possessing dual-protocol Internet connectivity.<\/p>\n The first step in this home networking endeavor is to evaluate your current upstream Internet connectivity.\u00a0 You will quickly discover if your ISP has IPv6-enabled Internet services.\u00a0 You might be lucky enough to have\u00a0Comcast IPv6 service<\/a>\u00a0and pleasantly discover that they\u00a0already have IPv6 ready for you<\/a>.\u00a0 Obtaining dual-protocol Internet connectivity should not be a problem for you if you subscribe to\u00a0Verizon FiOS<\/a>,\u00a0AT&T U-verse<\/a>, or any one of many other IPv6-capable broadband Internet providers.\u00a0 However, if your service provider is lacking IPv6 service details on their web site, it might just be a matter of getting connected to the right customer service representative or network engineer to enable IPv6 connectivity.<\/p>\n If your current ISP lacks any form of IPv6 connectivity (rare in 2016), you can use a tunnel between your home equipment and a tunnel service connected to the IPv6 Internet.\u00a0 Tunnel brokers (RFC 3053<\/a>) are organizations that provide, often for free, a manually or dynamically configured tunnel that encapsulates your IPv6 packets within IPv4 packets.\u00a0 The IPv6 packets at your home are encapsulated into IPv4 packets and sent across the IPv4-only ISP network to the tunnel broker service.\u00a0 When those packets reach the tunnel broker, they are decapsulated and the IPv6 packets are forwarded to the IPv6 Internet.\u00a0 This method can use a traditional\u00a0GRE tunnel<\/a>,\u00a0an IPv4 protocol 41 tunnel, or might leverage the\u00a0Tunnel Setup Protocol<\/a>\u00a0(TSP) (RFC 5572<\/a>).\u00a0 Examples of tunnel services include:\u00a0Hurricane Electric<\/a>\u00a0(HE.net),\u00a0Freenet6<\/a>\u00a0(from GoGo6), and\u00a0XS26<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even if you have IPv6-capable upstream Internet connectivity, your modem and hardware may be older and unable to support IPv6.\u00a0 Sometimes you can simply upgrade the firmware on a router and it might gain some IPv6 capabilities.\u00a0 Other times you may need to forklift upgrade (albeit a small forklift) your DSL or Cable Modem or router.\u00a0 When it comes to upgrading your router, you might also want to upgrade to a wireless router that supports\u00a0IEEE 802.11ac<\/a>.\u00a0 Today, many of the higher-end consumer-grade\u00a0routers that support 802.11ac also have solid IPv6 features<\/a>.<\/p>\n The IETF RFC 7084 (formerly RFC 6204),\u00a0Basic Requirements for IPv6 Customer Edge Routers<\/a>, provides a list of features that are desirable in a residential CPE device. \u00a0The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL<\/a>) provides\u00a0IPv6 Customer Edge (CE) interoperability testing<\/a>.\u00a0 The products that they\u00a0test and certify<\/a>\u00a0are good examples of products that would be ideal for building a dual-protocol home lab. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)\u00a0IPv6 Transition Working Group<\/a>\u00a0(formed in 2011) has also concentrated their efforts on ensuring that consumer-electronics manufacturers are creating dual-protocol devices for home use.\u00a0 Their\u00a0CEA-2048, Host and Router Profiles for IPv6<\/a>, effort provides guidance for home router vendors.<\/p>\n Now that you have your network equipment upgraded and you are assured that your upstream connectivity support IPv6, you can connect it all together, power it on, and discovery if you have obtained a global IPv6 address.\u00a0 Your home router will receive an\u00a0ICMPv6 Router Advertisement<\/a>\u00a0(RA) message from the upstream ISP network indicating that your CPE should proceed to use DHCPv6 to obtain its single external IPv6 address.\u00a0 The ISP likely operates a\u00a0high-availability DHCPv6 service<\/a>\u00a0that receives the DHCPv6 Solicit messages from subscribers CPE and then determines the IPv6 addresses to allocate.\u00a0 After that step is complete, your CPE will also send a subsequent DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation (PD) (RFC 3633<\/a>) request to obtain an IPv6 prefix (typically a \/64) to be used for the internal home LAN.\u00a0 It is important to remember that this IPv6 address block is Provider Assigned (PA) and not Provider Independent (PI) and thus, non-portable between ISPs.\u00a0 If you switch ISPs, then you will need to renumber any statically-assigned systems.\u00a0 However, the new ISP will provide you a new IPv6 prefix from their block and the dynamically-assigned systems in your house should transition smoothly to the new address space.<\/p>\n When you reach this stage, your internal home network will likely use a single flat \/64 IPv6 global prefix for the home LAN.\u00a0 Unlike IPv4, your home router will not need to perform NAT on the IPv6 packets flowing in the outbound direction.\u00a0 The internal home LAN devices will use the global (i.e. public) IPv6 addresses that the service provider allocated to your home as the source addresses for the outbound connections.\u00a0 It may be difficult for some people to trust a router without NAT, but it is not needed for IPv6 (see RFC 4864,\u00a0Local Network Protection for IPv6<\/a>).\u00a0 The return traffic will return to the home CPE device, which should statefully track those connections.\u00a0 It is the statefulness of the connections flowing through the CPE that provides security and that CPE should prevent unauthorized externally-originated connections.\u00a0 The IETF RFC 6092,\u00a0Recommended Simple Security Capabilities in Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) for Providing Resident…<\/a>, often referred to as \u201cSimple Security\u201d provides the recommendations for a home CPE device that operates securely.\u00a0 Vendors that support RFC 6092 should be preferentially purchased over those that lack IPv6 security features.<\/p>\n It is ski season in the\u00a0Rocky Mountains<\/a>\u00a0and you can often hear the words \u201cGo Big or Go Home<\/a>\u201d uttered while standing on the lip of the cornice above the mountainside.\u00a0 However, when it comes to IPv6 home networking, it is possible to do both simultaneously.\u00a0 When you are building out a more complex home network, IPv6 can scale.\u00a0 If you want to \u201ctake it to the next level\u201d and really build the ultimate dual-protocol Internet \u201cman-cave<\/a>\u201d or \u201cshe-shed<\/a>\u201d, then you will need to have a home network that scales beyond a single LAN with a \/64 prefix.\u00a0 There are a couple of solutions if you want to receive a larger block of IPv6 addresses from your service provider.<\/p>\n The drawback to having a bigger topology is that you need to have networking equipment in your home that is capable of dynamic routing and forwarding traffic across multiple LANs, VLANs, each with its own \/64 prefix network.\u00a0 However, if you want to construct a home lab and really get into learning IPv6, this is something that you will likely need to have experience with when you help your company transition to IPv6.<\/p>\n There are emerging options for those who have larger home networks, but still desire simplicity of configuration.\u00a0 Many residential subscribers would certainly want to avoid configuring network devices manually as well as configuring dynamic routing protocols.\u00a0 Many people in IT end up acting as IT tech support for their families when they go home and may prefer simpler technology options for their less-technically-inclined family members.\u00a0 Imagine trying to explain to a parent or grandparent how to configure an IPv6 dynamic routing protocol like OSPFv3 or MP-BGP!<\/p>\n The IETF has formed a\u00a0Homenet working group<\/a>\u00a0to determine how to scale home networks without requiring the resident to have a CCIE-equivalent certification to establish connectivity. \u00a0This Homenet working group has published \u201cIPv6 Home Networking Architecture Principles<\/a>\u201d (RFC 7368) that describes the challenges with large home networks and IPv6.\u00a0 Jari Arkko and Mark Townsley created a presentation titled \u201cThoughts on Home Networking Architecture<\/a>\u201d for IETF 81 that covers some of these issues for larger IPv6 home networks.\u00a0 This work was a precursor to RFC 7368).\u00a0 Mark Townsley also delivered a presentation titled \u201cRouting IPv6 in the Homenet<\/a>\u201d for APNIC 36, and again at\u00a0RIPE 67<\/a>, that covered the issues and possible solutions.<\/p>\n The process of dynamically and automatically determining which \/64 prefix within a \/56 prefix to allocate to the various home networks can be complex and difficult for most subscribers.\u00a0 The Homenet working group also published \u201cDistributed Prefix Assignment Algorithm<\/a>\u201d (RFC 7695) that describes the methods that a larger IPv6 prefix will be divided up for the various internal home networks, each with a single \/64.<\/p>\n Once the \/64 prefixes are allocated to the various LAN segments within the home, routing will need to take place to facilitate reachability between the different networks within the home and externally to the Internet.\u00a0 Using OSPFv3, IS-IS, or MP-BGP would likely be too difficult for most subscribers to manage on their own.<\/p>\n Options for using a self-configuring dynamic routing protocol, take a page from the IoT and mesh networking fields as well as traditional IP routing protocols.\u00a0 Examples of these types of\u00a0routing protocols<\/a>\u00a0that might be suitable for home networks include use of OSPFv3 (zOSPF<\/a>).\u00a0 Another example of an IoT routing protocol that could be used in Homenet situations would be \u201cRPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks<\/a>\u201d (RFC 6550).<\/p>\n CableLabs<\/a>\u00a0has also formed a home networking initiative called\u00a0Home IP Networking (HIPnet)<\/a>\u00a0to help address these architecture considerations for their cable MSO consortium members.\u00a0 At the\u00a02015 IPv6 Summit<\/a>\u00a0event, Michael Kloberdans, Lead Architect on Home Networking at CableLabs gave a presentation titled \u201cIPv6 \u2013 an Enabler for Virtualizing the Home<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 CableLabs has created a\u00a0GitHub site<\/a>\u00a0to share their HIPnet source code and\u00a0OpenWRT<\/a>\u00a0image with the broader networking community.<\/p>\n There are\u00a0many resources available<\/a>\u00a0to those who want to learn about IPv6 and start to experiment with systems, network devices, and software that uses IPv6.\u00a0 There are free and low-cost options to build up your IPv6 lab and you can do much of this at your home.\u00a0 Establishing IPv6 connectivity to your home requires some newer CPE and an IPv6-capable ISP, but each year those become more readily available.\u00a0 It is becoming easier to receive a single global \/64 prefix on your home LAN.\u00a0 There are options for creating a larger IPv6 lab environment, but those become more costly and require more of a time commitment.\u00a0 Someday, the work the\u00a0IETF<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0CableLabs<\/a>\u00a0will make larger home networking simpler.\u00a0 However, today those activities are still in the research stages.\u00a0 For those who want to create larger home networks, more networking expertise to make it functional may be necessary.\u00a0 But if your goal is to learn about multi-subnet IPv6 routing and prepare yourself for an eventual deployment in production, this self-paced learning will pay dividends and make the company deployment go much more smoothly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Embarking on the IPv6 Learning Path Training is typically one of the\u00a0early phases of an IPv6 adoption project.\u00a0 Everyone learning a new technology has to start somewhere and that typically means cracking open a book on the topic or leveraging an Internet search.\u00a0 Virtually all people in the IT department will need to learn about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":2497,"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":[38,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-2949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ipv6-coe","8":"tag-ipv6","9":"tag-networking","10":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBuilding Your Lab<\/h2>\n
IPv6 Internet Connectivity<\/h2>\n
Upgrade Your Kit<\/h2>\n
Getting Your IPv6 Addresses<\/h2>\n
Going Big & Going Home<\/h2>\n
\n
Larger and Simpler Home Networks<\/h2>\n
Next Steps<\/h2>\n