RIPE NCC IPv6 course
I attended RIPE NCC’s IPv6 for LIRs training course today, and it was both enjoyable and interesting.
The technical level wasn’t very high – as expected from the course outline – but it was a nice opportunity to actually spend some time writing an address plan, talking about transition strategies, and all in all getting rid of some of those irrational anxieties one tend to have about breaking the internet during the adoption of IPv6. On top of this, it’s always nice to see familiar faces, not to mention getting a bit familiar with new ones. Our trainers seemed very competent, and were pleasant company throughout the day.
A few points made and lessons learned:
- I’m not as fluent in doing mind conversions between binary and hexadecimal as I am between binary and decimal, when I’m counting IPv4 subnets.
- A main concern for operators that are about to adopt IPv6, is the lack of knowledge about the subject among their colleagues and customers, even though those colleagues and customers may have as good a no knowledge about IPv4.
- A zone file grows large if it holds static PTR records for all addresses in a /32.
- The medium-sized tshirt I got for my company having 4 star IPv6 RIPEness is a bit large for my five year old daughter to use as a nightie, and she explicitly refuses to have her picture taken in it.
In my company, as in so many others, we’ve often discussed how and when to adopt IPv6 in our installation, and without exactly putting dates on the checklist, I think we’ve got a pretty good overview of the task at hand.
After today, I feel a bit more prepared for taking it on.
Update, March 24:
I guess I was more persuasive today. IPv6: Act now – do it for the kids.
