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There's an ongoing "panic" all over the news for some time now about IPv4 running out and IPv6 being the savior. All the big companies are preparing and showing how it should be done (last actions from Google, FaceBook). I do understand the problem and I do think people should slowly starting to move but is it also a big deal for small companies?

I've clients which are usually very small companies with 5 to 50 employees using Windows XP/Windows 7 for their clients and Windows 2003/Windows 2008R2 for their servers. Nothing complicated with 1 up to 5 switches (some managed and some unmanaged but nothing too complicated - Linksys/D-Link). On top of it there's usually modem provided by ISP and small home router (D-Link, Draytek, Linksys) or if the client is a bit bigger something like FortiGate FW50B.

How should they prepare? Is there anything each company should do? Like buy new routers? I'm looking for general advice on how to approach this from my clients perspective. Should we wait for ISP to come to us first and then try to fix things later or there's nothing we should be worried about and just do what we do and there's nothing to be done ?

MadBoy
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4 Answers4

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For a truly small company, just wait for your ISP, and anyone else who handles your public face : if you have hosted mail, they should handle any IPv6 matters for mail. If someone hosts your website, ask them if they have made IPv6 DNS entries for you, or what their plan for doing so is. If they say they don't have one, I wouldn't worry about it much this year. Maybe a little bit of worry next year, but it's too soon to say.

mfinni
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    +1, You should keep IPv6 in mind and in any new plans; but I'm not losing any sleep over it until at least next year, probably longer yet. – Chris S Jun 09 '11 at 14:05
  • I'll wait for ISP. We didn't had any offers yet from ISP about this so I doubt they are planning to switch to IPv6 anytime soon. – MadBoy Jun 10 '11 at 06:59
  • Why would you want to wait for your ISP and then have to rush around and hope you did it right? It's one thing if the ISP doesn't offer it, its entirely another to simply cross your fingers and wait till you are forced to move. – Jim B Jun 10 '11 at 14:15
  • Well they don't even mention any times yet so when they do it won't be switch in next 5 days or we cut you off. I'll just wait for some information from ISP (they will have to start some global informing action). – MadBoy Jun 10 '11 at 14:36
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I'd be suprised if your ISP didn't offer IPv6 now. Small companies will have the easiest transition so I would get them started now. depending on the home router they have they may or may not have to purchase a new one. http://www.sixxs.net/wiki/Routers is a geat resource to get started on what home routers to look at.

Jim B
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    In my experience, most ISPs do not have native IPv6 support; though most have 6to4 support at least. Definite +1 for mentioning many (most?) existing SOHO routers don't support IPv6. – Chris S Jun 09 '11 at 14:07
  • I'm in the northeast, most of the ISPs up here have it and of course comcast and verizon support it – Jim B Jun 09 '11 at 16:09
  • Optimum Online (Cablevision) are handing out new Netgear routers which show no signs of ever supporting IPv6. – Steve-o Jun 09 '11 at 16:20
  • @Jim, that's surprising, we've got Comcast here and they do not support IPv6 natively, though they do through 6to4. – Chris S Jun 09 '11 at 17:19
  • @chris S - Really? I get ipv4 and IPv6 DHCp addresses to all devices that support it. I thought their rollout was nationwide. – Jim B Jun 09 '11 at 18:18
  • @steve-o wow- how old are the routers they are handing out? Docsis 3 modems have ipv6 support and docsis v2 modems had an update (which they certainly may not have done on existing modems) to bring ipv6 to docsis 2 – Jim B Jun 09 '11 at 18:23
  • @Jim Netgear WDNR3400's that are nice enough with dual radio & guest network support. I think it's Netgear generally holding back. – Steve-o Jun 09 '11 at 18:49
  • @steve-o -so you get a cable modem and a seperate wireless router from them? I figure you were talking about a cm232. – Jim B Jun 09 '11 at 19:14
  • In the Mid-West here, native IPv6 is not available from any of the providers (big or small). However, it's not that hard to setup a routing device with a tunnel to one of the free IPv6 providers. – Brian Knoblauch Jun 09 '11 at 19:14
  • @Jim DOCSIS 3 modem + Netgear WiFi router. – Steve-o Jun 09 '11 at 19:25
  • In europe ipv6 is not yet so widespread so ISP's haven't been offering anything really :-) Unless i go to them and specifically ask for IPv6 i doubt they will enable it. I have some clients having exchange and most of my servers have ipv6 disabled. I guess slowly I should start to enable it.. – MadBoy Jun 09 '11 at 21:23
  • @madboy, it can't hurt to get the ball rolling now. There is no reason to disable IPv6 in windows (other OSes YMMV). Certianly do all the investigation about your devices to see if they support it. – Jim B Jun 10 '11 at 14:13
  • Only one ISP in The Netherlands is offering IPv6. We're a small 20 person company, and our fiber provider isn't there yet. So, we use a 6in4 tunnel from SixXS.net. It has been fast and stable for a year now. I terminate the tunnel at a linux VM in front of our Cisco ASA firewall. This allows the firewall to filter both IPv4 and IPv6. Only our clients have a routable IPv6 address. Internals servers not yet. We're bugging our hosted for our web servers, but then again we do webdev so we should be leading the pack. – Martijn Heemels Nov 24 '11 at 22:58
  • I know this is an old thread, but for reference I believe the WDNR3400s now support IPv6 after firmware update (similar to other NetGear routers that have received an update in the past months) – gparent Mar 27 '12 at 17:20
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I recall that ICANN recommended that everyone switch to IPv6 about oh, 15 years ago. So while you think that companies are "slowly" changing over this year, it's actually quite an abrupt and panicked change that's been brought about only because we're all in imminent danger of falling off the edge. The transition should have been completed by now, rather than just starting.

That said, two major obstacles currently stand in the way of complete transition today: SOHO routers (virtually none of which support IPv6) and last-mile ISPs. And they're basically stuck with a lack of demand from consumers, most of whom are completely ignorant of the problem. The ISPs could force the issue by switching to IPv6 for everyone tonight (or next month with sufficient warning), but without some kind of illegal collaboration between them, it would enrage their customers and force them to sign up for service with competing ISPs that haven't made the upgrade. In no small part because there are almost no SOHO routers on store shelves, and consumers wouldn't even have the choice.

Ernie
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I would do all the low-risk things before your ISP has native IPv6 ready.

Making sure that your devices have IPv6 enabled so that when you offer IPv6 to your network they accept the traffic. They should get local IPv6 addresses like fe80::21a:a0ff:fed1:5424 but no real addresses. This will help you find out if you have any rogue RA's.

Check all your routers and see if they have native IPv6 support. Check all appliances and find out if they have IPv6 support. Printers and NAS's are a good place to start looking. Give yourself a picture of the things that you will need IPv4 for the long term.

There are a few software updates you may need to perform in order to be ready for IPv6. Certain older versions of MacOS X and Opera are known to cause problems.

ewwhite
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Mike F
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