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IPv6 tunnel technologies
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Migration to IPv6 is picking up speed. In the fall of 2012, Deutsche Telekom announced that new DSL customers would have dual stack connections (IPv4+IPv6). Other providers will be following suit in the next few months. For many larger companies, migration to IPv6 is not a matter of a few days but of years. As early as the design phase, the IPv6 developers took into account the fact that the introduction of IPv6 to existing IPv4 networks would, in some cases, involve a long transition period where both technologies would exist side by side. This article describes some tunnel technologies for implementing IPv6 in an IPv4 world.
In the transition phase, IPv6 systems must be able to communicate both with each other and with IPv4 systems. The term "node" in IETF terminology describes an active system on the network that communicates via IPv4 or IPv6. This includes normal workstations and servers as well as routers. RFC 4213 (Basic Transition Mechanisms for IPv6 Hosts and Routers) describes the following node types:
- IPv4-only nodes: These systems run only IPv4.
- IPv6-only nodes: These systems run only IPv6.
- IPv6/IPv4 nodes: These systems run both IP stacks in parallel.
- IPv4 node: The system communicates with IPv4. This can be either be an IPv4-only node or an IPv6/IPv4 node.
- IPv6 node: The system communicates with IPv6. This can be either be an IPv6-only node or an IPv6/IPv4 node.
In the following section, the question is how to gradually introduce IPv6 parallel to IPv4. In the process, the challenge of merging the two worlds must be considered. In principle, the following approaches are available:
- Dual-stack: The systems on the network run both IPv4 and IPv6.
- Tunnel mechanisms: This is mainly a question of tunneling IPv6 communications through an IPv4 area in order to link IPv6 islands.
- Translation mechanisms: Similar to the NAT principle, IPv4
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