Département Réseau, Sécurité et Multimédia Rapport d'Activités 2008

TestbedsA showroom for practical IPv6 deployementResearch Staff : Laurent Toutain, Bruno StevantKeywords : IPv6, IPv6-IPv4 transitionApplications : Home networks, SME networks,Partners & Funding : funded by Conseil Régional de Bretagne and European Commission.presentation and meeting facilities, called theIntroductionIPv6 Showroom.As IPv4 address space exhaustion becomes ashort-term reality, the transition to IPv6 is nowa major concern for Internet Access Providers,in order to sustain the growth of demand forconnectivity. But large scale organizations arealso concerned now by this transition, becausethe size of their infrastructure requires them asmuch anticipation. As an example, the USFederal administration is working on IPv6integration till the last 3 years [1]. In a 3 yeartime-frame, which is the current estimation forIPv4 address space exhaustion [2], SME,Home Networks, Administration Networks, allkind of organization will be concerned by IPv6integration, first to be visible by new IPv6customers and second to provide new servicesusing IPv6. But what should be the strategy toadopt inside these networks to integrate IPv6 ?RealizationFollowing the Point6 project, funded in 2005and 2006 by the Brittany Region Council, wejoined a European funded project calledTrain2Cert. This project aims to define acommon set of technical courses and practicalsfor students seeking certification. Ourcontribution to this project is to define coursesand practicals focused on IPv6 deployement.These courses are dedicated to networktechnicians and engineers, who are theindividuals directly concerned by IPv6integration. To define the practical approach toIPv6 deployement, we decided to reproduce ina laboratory the network infrastructure of aSME office and demonstrate how IPv6 can beintegrated in such network. This plateform isavailable in a dedicated room withOn this plateform, we demonstrate the abilityof the different services for an organization(front-office and back-office) to be available inIPv6 but also to be back-compatible withlegacy IPv4 client. The network infrastructureof the showroom allows a service to bemigrated from IPv4-only network to dual-stack(IPv4 and IPv6) network and finally to IPv6-only networks. Clients of the plateform areavailable with the current offer of operatingsystem (Linux, XP, Vista, MacOS X) and mayalso migrate from an IPv4-only network to anIPv6-only netwoks. With such plateform, weare able to experience any transition scenariofor services and show the impact of thistransition on any kind of clients.Future worksWe are currently working at expanding thenumber of scenario to be demonstrated in thisshowroom. At the moment, this plateform candemonstrate the migration of a web-service toIPv6. We plan to include services such asremote authentication, file-sharing and VoIP.References[1] http://www.gcn.com/IPv6/ GovernmentComputer News – IPv6 Section[2] http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/ IPv4address report68 Pracom’s Annual Report 2008