Internet Engineering Task Force W. George
Internet-Draft Sprint
Updates: 1812, 1122 C. Donley
(if approved) Cablelabs
Intended status: Standards Track C. Liljenstolpe
Expires: July 10, 2011 Telstra
L. Howard
Time Warner Cable
January 6, 2011
IPv6 Support Required for all IP-capable nodes
draft-george-ipv6-required-00
Abstract
Given the global lack of available IPv4 space, and limitations in
IPv4 extension and transition technologies, this document deprecates
the concept that an IP-capable node MAY support IPv4 _only_, and
redefines an IP-capable node as one which supports either IPv6 _only_
or IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack. This document updates RFC1812 and 1122 to
reflect the change in requirements.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on July 10, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Requirements and Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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1. Introduction
IP version 4 (IPv4) has served to connect public and private hosts
all over the world for over 30 years. However, due to the success of
the Internet in finding new and innovative uses for IP networking,
billions of hosts are now connected via the Internet and requiring
unique addressing. This demand has led to the exhaustion of the IANA
[IANA-exhaust] global pool of unique IPv4 addresses. While
transition technologies and other means to extend the lifespan of
IPv4 do exist, nearly all of them come with tradeoffs that prevent
them from being optimal long-term solutions when compared with
deployment of IP version 6 (IPv6) as a means to allow continued
growth on the Internet. See I-D.ietf-intarea-shared-addressing-
issues [I-D.ietf-intarea-shared-addressing-issues]and I-D.donley-
nat444-impacts [I-D.donley-nat444-impacts] for some discussion on
this topic. [add'l informative citations needed]
IPv6 was proposed in 1995 [RFC 1883 [RFC1883]] as, among other
things, a solution to the limitations on globally unique addressing
that IPv4's 32-bit addressing space represented, and has been under
continuous refinement and deployment ever since. [RFC 2460
[RFC2460]]. The exhaustion of IPv4 and the continued growth of the
internet worldwide has created the driver for widespread IPv6
deployment.
However, the IPv6 deployment necessary to reduce reliance on IPv4 has
been hampered by a lack of ubiquitous hardware and software support
throughout the industry. Many of those who are deploying IPv6 have
been forced to fund the initial IPv6 implementations for their
vendors, because the vendor continued to view IPv6 support as
optional. This added burden on the early adopters, plus the high
cost of replacing installed-base that does not currently support IPv6
has been a significant barrier to wider deployment of IPv6. Even
today, many vendors, especially in the consumer space are still
selling "IP capable" devices which are not IPv6-capable, and are
choosing not to update existing software to enable IPv6 support on
software-updatable devices. It is not realistic to expect that the
hardware refresh cycle will single-handedly purge IPv4-only devices
from the active network in a reasonable amount of time, especially in
the consumer space, where the operator often has no control over the
hardware the consumer chooses to use.
This lack of support is making the eventual IPv6 transition
considerably more difficult, and drives the need for expensive and
complicated transition technologies to extend the life of IPv4-only
devices as well as eventually to interwork IPv4-only and IPv6-only
hosts. While IPv4 is expected to coexist on the Internet with IPv6
for many years, a transition from IPv4 as the dominant Internet
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Protocol towards IPv6 as the dominant Internet Protocol will need to
occur. The sooner the majority of devices support IPv6, the less
protracted this transition period will be.
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
2. Requirements and Recommendation
This draft updates RFC 1812 [RFC1812] to note that IP nodes SHOULD no
longer support IPv4 only. This is to ensure that those using it as a
guideline for IP implementations use the other informative references
in this document as a guideline for proper IPv6 implementations.
This draft also updates RFC 1122 [RFC1122] to redefine generic "IP"
support to include and require IPv6 for IP-capable nodes and routers.
From a practical perspective, the requirements proposed by this draft
mean that:
New IP implementations MUST support IPv6, and current IP
implementations SHOULD support IPv6.
Helpful informative references can be found in RFC 4294 [RFC4294],
and I-D.ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router
[I-D.ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router]
Current and new IP Networking implementations SHOULD support IPv4
and IPv6 coexistence (dual-stack), but MUST NOT require IPv4 for
proper and complete function.
It is expected that many existing devices and implementations will
not be able to support IPv6 for one or more valid technical
reasons, but for maximum flexibility and compatibility, a best
effort SHOULD be made to update existing hardware and software to
enable IPv6 support.
Within the IETF, further protocol development on applications
_exclusive_ to IPv4 SHOULD cease in order to concentrate on
additional refinements and enhancements to IP version 6, with the
goal of bringing IPv6 to complete parity with IPv4. This does not
mean that further work SHOULD NOT have support for IPv4, merely that
it MUST happen as a part of an IP version-agnostic implementation, or
as an implementation that explicitly supports both IPv4 and IPv6.
New features and protocols SHOULD NOT be introduced for use as IPv4-
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only unless they are specifically in support of IPv6 transition or
IPv4-IPv6 interworking. A comprehensive list of these parity items
and enhancements is outside the scope of this document, but this
document recommends that the charters and work items of currently
active IETF Working Groups (WGs) be evaluated to ensure that they are
supporting the goal of full parity for IPv6.
3. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Marla Azinger and Victor Kuarsingh for their additional
review of the proto-draft.
4. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
5. Security Considerations
There are no direct security considerations generated by this
document, but existing documented security considerations for
implementing IPv6 will apply.
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC1122] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.
[RFC1812] Baker, F., "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers",
RFC 1812, June 1995.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
6.2. Informative References
[I-D.donley-nat444-impacts]
Donley, C., Howard, L., Kuarsingh, V., Chandrasekaran, A.,
and V. Ganti, "Assessing the Impact of NAT444 on Network
Applications", draft-donley-nat444-impacts-01 (work in
progress), October 2010.
[I-D.ietf-intarea-shared-addressing-issues]
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Ford, M., Boucadair, M., Durand, A., Levis, P., and P.
Roberts, "Issues with IP Address Sharing",
draft-ietf-intarea-shared-addressing-issues-02 (work in
progress), October 2010.
[I-D.ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router]
Singh, H., Beebee, W., Donley, C., Stark, B., and O.
Troan, "Basic Requirements for IPv6 Customer Edge
Routers", draft-ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router-09 (work in
progress), December 2010.
[IANA-exhaust]
IANA, "IANA address allocation", 2011, <http://
www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/
ipv4-address-space.xml>.
[RFC1883] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 1883, December 1995.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
[RFC4294] Loughney, J., "IPv6 Node Requirements", RFC 4294,
April 2006.
Authors' Addresses
Wesley George
Sprint
12000 Sunrise Valley Drive
Reston, VA 20196
US
Phone: +1 703-592-4847
Email: wesley.e.george@sprint.com
Chris Donley
Cablelabs
858 Coal Creek Circle
Louisville, CO 80027
US
Phone: +1-303-661-9100
Email: C.Donley@cablelabs.com
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Christopher Liljenstolpe
Telstra
Level 32/242 Exhibition Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
AU
Phone: +61-3-8647-6389
Email: cdl@asgaard.org
Lee Howard
Time Warner Cable
13241 Woodland Park Road
Herndon, VA 20171
US
Phone: +1-703-345-3513
Email: lee.howard@twcable.com
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