{"id":3297,"date":"2015-06-29T21:20:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T21:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=3297"},"modified":"2020-05-06T10:30:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T17:30:11","slug":"a-free-new-tool-for-getting-started-with-ipv6-infoblox-6map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infoblox.com\/blog\/company\/a-free-new-tool-for-getting-started-with-ipv6-infoblox-6map\/","title":{"rendered":"A Free New Tool for Getting Started with IPv6: Infoblox 6Map"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Most IT folks are at least vaguely aware of the enormous scale of IPv6. The 128 bits in the IPv6 address provides 340 trillion, trillion, trillion possible addresses (i.e., 3.4 times 10 to the 38th power). Compared to IPv4\u2019s approximately 4.3 billion addresses, it\u2019s roughly the difference between the volume of the Earth and a deck of cards.<\/p>\n

Such scale is the reason that standard subnet sizes in IPv6 are much larger than those in IPv4. How much larger? The standard interface assignment in IPv6 is a \/64, or 180 billion, billion addresses. That\u2019s the equivalent of 4.3 billion IPv4 Internets. Meanwhile, a \/48 is the smallest IPv6 subnet size assigned to an organization (it\u2019s the smallest Internet-routable prefix). That\u2019s 281 trillion IPv4 Internets.<\/p>\n

One of the first tasks for a network engineer or network architect adopting IPv6 is putting together an IPv6 address plan. This can immediately become an exercise in confusion and indecision for engineers only familiar with IPv4. Even using the relative abundance of private address space in IPv4, it\u2019s unlikely that any subnets in your IPv4 address plan will contain more than a few thousand addresses. Yet suddenly, you\u2019re sitting on (at the very least) 281 trillion Internets worth of addresses! Where to begin?<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there are a few basic principles in IPv6 address planning that can greatly simplify any plan for the assignment of such a large amount of address space to an existing network.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where our new\u00a0Infoblox 6Map tool<\/a>\u00a0can help.<\/p>\n

Infoblox 6Map applies these principles in what we hope is an intuitive wizard for network engineers and architects. By entering a relatively small information about the structure of the network, the enterprise architect can generate and download a printable graphic that shows best-practice subnet assignments for network elements, including locations, functions, and interfaces. By creating a 6zmap account, the user is able to repeat the process and produce additional plans modeling different address planning approaches.<\/p>\n

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The advantages of an address plan that follows best-practices are numerous. The best practices that 6Map promotes include:<\/p>\n