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Migrating your network to IPv6

New Address

Article from ADMIN 33/2016

By Eric Amberg

Abraham Lincoln once said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." The transition to IPv6 is a big step for many organizations. Careful planning and a systematic approach are critical to a successful migration.

All too often, IPv6 is simply ignored or postponed to make room for seemingly more important things. However, IPv6 is one of the most important topics for the future of IT. The transition to IPv6 is a company-wide project. It is not enough for the IT department to have a brainstorming session and hatch a plan. Everyone who has a legitimate interest in the actions and their results must be involved. IPv6 migration planning must be a top priority, and it must have the support of management.

The Right Perspective

If you are responsible for project planning, you need to think like a general: Do not just consider the individual areas of the battlefield but analyze the overall situation. Gain insights, identify strengths and weaknesses, and define objectives. Only after this process should you start to develop a plan for how and in what order you will achieve these objectives. Defining these milestones has proved essential to IPv6 migration.

Always schedule sufficient time and take setbacks into account. Depending on the environment, an IPv6 migration could extend over several years, so be realistic and not too optimistic. You will put yourself and your team under unnecessary management pressure if you define the timing goals too tightly.

Establishing experience and know-how is an important part of the IPv6 migration. Build a lab environment that simulates the basic components of the production environment and allows for realistic testing. If you need to roll back and restart because of a lack of testing, your users will not be happy – not to mention the potentially unpleasant questions from management. Be sure to perform extensive testing on the results after each change.

While you are planning your project, you need a realistic assessment of the costs. Costs arise from the need to replace non-IPv6-capable systems, but also from person-days, expenses for employee training, and

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