What’s happening with IPv6 at the 85th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) coming up in Atlanta November 4-9, 2012? Which working groups will be meeting?
As noted in our recently published “Internet Society’s Rough Guide to IETF 85′s Hot Topics” there are 4 working groups meeting at IETF 85 specifically on IPv6 issues:
- v6ops (IPv6 Operations)
- 6renum (IPv6 Site Renumbering)
- 6man (IPv6 Maintenance)
- sunset4 (Sunsetting IPv4)
Descriptions and links for each group are included below. Given that IPv6 is the way forward for the Internet, you can expect IPv6-related topics to come up in working groups all across the IETF, but these four working groups are specifically focusing on aspects of IPv6.
(Text taken directly from the Internet Society’s Rough Guide to IETF 85)
v6ops (IPv6 Operations) WG
The v6ops WG continues to be active in describing operational considerations of IPv6 deployment. A couple of interesting drafts that are being discussed by the working group apply in particular to IPv6 on mobile networks:
Both have generated a lot of comment and it will be interesting to see how they proceed. There are also some proposed design guidelines for IPv6 and deployment guidelines for enterprises.
(8 November 2012, 1300-1500; 1510-1710)
6renum (IPv6 Site Renumbering) WG
The 6renum WG is chartered to perform an analysis of IPv6 site renumbering. If the analysis leads to conclusions that are also applicable to IPv4 that will be an advantage, but it is not an objective of the WG to make its outputs more widely available than IPv6. Similarly the WG is targeting enterprise networks, but the analysis may also be applicable to SOHO or other (e.g. ad-hoc) scenarios.
The working group has issued last calls on each of its 3 working group documents:
An iteration of the static problem draft has been made based on WGLC but as of today revisions have not been published on the other two. Presumably any final comments will be discussed on these documents.
Agenda: Not yet posted – check https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/85/agenda.html
(8 November 2012, 1730-1830)
6man (IPv6 Maintenance) WG
The 6man Working Group is charged with the maintenance, upkeep and advancement of the IPv6 protocol specifications and addressing architecture, which is especially relevant as IPv6 begins to be deployed around the world at scale this year. Reflective of that, the 6man working group has 14 working group documents currently being considered. These are likely to be discussed in Vancouver, as well as some cross items with the 6lowmpan (v6 for low power networks) WG, which is not meeting at IETF 84.
(5 November 2012, 0900-1130)
sunset4 (Sunsetting IPv4) WG
sunset4 is a new working group in the Internet Area. In short the formation of the working group is an acknowledgement that the Internet is still largely IPv4, but in the presence of address exhaustion it cannot continue to be the Internet that we know today. The Internet will transition to IPv6 but there will be an interval where the Internet’s performance degrades as more coping mechanisms are adopted and before a complete transition to IPv6. This working group hopes to develop techniques to mitigate some of that pain. The immediate activity is to evaluate various CGN (carrier-grade NAT proposals) and determine whether there is a work item around CGN that functions as a suitable IPv4 sunsetting mechanism.
As a result of discussion at IETF 84, the gap analysis document has been made a working group document:
(5 November 2012, 15200-1720)
