With each new Interop show, we have been pleased at the steady increase in IPv6 awareness, but this year takes the cake! Not only did we have a record number of visitors at the ARIN booth, but many attendees stopped by specifically to update us on their IPv6 progress and to seek advice to keep their growing pains to a minimum.

Most show-goers were well versed in the need to deploy IPv6, thanks in part to the extensive trade show outreach conducted in recent years by ARIN staff, our social media and Public Policy Meeting marketing, and good old word of mouth. We were pleased to see that the Interop agenda included two IPv6-centric sessions to get attendees’ tuned in to the urgent need to dual-stack their networks and prepare for the future.

The IPv4 global free pool depleted over a year ago, and our friends at RIPE NCC and APNIC are managing the distribution of their final /8s. ARIN is not far behind, but common refrain we heard from attendees was a concern that they have delayed work on IPv6 because they thought it was hard to get. We were happy to let then know that obtaining an IPv6 address block from ARIN is actually a simple and straightforward process.

We were overjoyed to hear so much IPv6 discussion at the Interop show, but we know that Interop does not represent the entire Internet technical community. If you work for or know of an organization that is not on the path to deploying IPv6, let us know! We are happy to help you get them up to speed with informational presentations, handouts, videos, etc. We can even provide a speaker to present to them in-person. Simply put, an IPv4-only website is only on a subset of the Internet, and is invisible to any IPv6-only networks or users, a rapidly growing group. When it comes to IPv6 adoption, there is no time like the present, and we are here to help you get started.

If you are interested in obtaining your first IPv6 block, visit ARIN’s resource request section and see just how easy it can be to get your initial allocation or assignment. Once you are ready to get your feet wet, check out our IPv6 Wiki and last year’s IPv6 Summer Reading List blog for helpful advice, informative presentations, and real-world IPv6 adoption stories. If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@arin.net.

A big thank you goes out to all those who came to us with great feedback and questions, and we will see you at Interop New York this October!

Guest blog post by Gregg O’Brien

It’s no secret by now that IPv6 is the way of the future. Many IT/Network administrators know that they will inevitably be required to start moving towards IPv6 sooner or later, but the idea of migrating servers, applications, and network infrastructure is a large undertaking.

Fortunately, along with IPv6 came a series of transition technologies including ISATAP to make the switch to IPv6 easier.

ISATAP stands for Intra Site Automatic Tunneling Address Protocol and is defined in RFC 5214. ISATAP is an interface that hosts can use to pass IPv6 traffic over IPv4 networks. It does this by taking an IPv6 frame and applying headers to the frame with IPv4 network information. The hosts can then send this frame over the network to an IPv6 host, which can then process the IPv6 frame contained therein.

ISATAP is pretty easy to recognize. Its addresses are formatted in a very unique way. Here is an example of an ISATAP address:
2002:9D36:1:2:0:5EFE:192.168.12.9

If you look closely, you will notice that the first portion of the address, 2002:9D36:1:2:0:5EFE: is formatted like a typical IPv6 address. The subsequent portion of the address looks like an IPv4 address – 192.168.12.9. The format of this address provides some key information:

1) It is a valid IPv6 address that can be used for IPv6 communication

2) The presence of the IPv4 address indicates the IPv4 information that will be used to shuttle the IPv6 traffic over the IPv4 network.

But why would we want to transport IPv6 traffic over the IPv4 network? Why not just continue using IPv4 then?

Well, the idea here is to facilitate transition to IPv6. Consider the following scenario:

An existing IPv4 network in place with several hosts and applications.

Investing in overhauling the infrastructure to accommodate IPv6 is a longer term project, but the goal is to do as much with IPv6 now, to save work later.

ISATAP can help here allowing IPv6 networks and IPv4 networks to talk to each other. So as the network expands, new hosts and network gear can deployed with IPv6 instead of IPv4, but still communicate with the legacy IPv4 portions of the network.

Here we now have two segments of the network, one running IPv4, the other running IPv6. With the use of an ISATAP router and by enabling ISATAP on the hosts present in the IPv4 network, native IPv6 can be deployed on the new network segment. As time passes and hardware/applications are decommissioned, the IPv4 network can be phased out until the organization is fully operational on IPv6.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas about how to get an IPv6 project started in your own environment using IPv6!

ARIN 31 was a big success.  Responses from people who took our meeting survey included statements like these:

“I was very impressed by the content and level of engagement from the community.”

“One of the best-run meetings I’ve ever attended.”

“This was my first ARIN meeting, and I was impressed at how well ARIN has aligned execution with its underlying principles.”

We accomplished many important items at ARIN 31 from fruitful policy proposal discussions to informative updates from Internet industry experts. Policy discussions were conducted on the following proposals:

ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement

ARIN-2013-1: Section 8.4 Transfer Enhancement

ARIN-2013-2: 3GPP Network IP Resource Policy

ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

Participants enjoyed presentations on a variety of topics like: Internet governance, delegated RPKI, news from the global Internet resource community, ARIN’s pending fee schedule, BCOP, Deploy360, and ARIN department, Board, and AC updates.

To reference ALL the details about what happened at ARIN 31 including the date, agenda item, speaker, discussion notes, transcript, webcast archive (Quicktime) and Presentations (PDF or PPTX), please refer to our full meeting report broken down by day:

Day 1 Report (Monday, 22 April 2013)

Day 2 Report (Tuesday, 23 April 2013)

Day 3 Report (Wednesday, 24 April 2013)

Thank you to all on-site and remote participants who helped work together toward shaping number resource policy that affects the entire Internet community.  Your involvement continues to be very important.

Save the date for 4 June for our next Public Policy Consultation in New Orleans during NANOG 58 and for 10-11 October when we’ll be taking ARIN 32 to Phoenix, Arizona!

Video Clip: IPv4 Exhaustion at ARIN

President and CEO of ARIN, John Curran, discusses the immediate problem of IPv4 depletion, including the latest global trends and statistics from the ARIN region.  He shows how the dwindling supply of IPv4 will limit the Internet’s growth and articulates the importance of implementing IPv6.

Video Clip: Address Policy Workshop

ARIN’s senior policy analyst, Einar Bohlin, and Advisory Council member, Owen Delong, speak about IPv4 and IPv6 policies at ARIN.  They explain how your addressing needs can be met through the ARIN policy development process and how to obtain IPv4 addresses directly from ARIN while they are still available.  They also cover address transfer policies and most importantly, IPv6 policies, which allow for a liberal allocation of addresses for IPv6 deployment.

Video Clip: Evaluation of the Current Transfer Market

Lastly we’d like to share with you this lively panel of industry experts discussing the IPv4 address (and ASN) transfer market while answering the most pressing questions about Internet number resource transfers.  This panel features John Curran, ARIN’s President and CEO, Lee Howard from Time Warner Cable, Charles Lee from Addrex,
 Louis Sterchi from Kalorama,
 Dr. Patrick Ryan from Google, and 
Allan MacGillivray from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority.

We hope you enjoyed these selected videos from the event hosted by ISOC.  If you’d like to continue watching video clips from the rest of the event, refer to the INET Denver playlist with all videos from the day’s presentations.

Day 3 Daily Recap

Today, members heard the most recent news from each ARIN department.  These updates included detailed information from Financial Services, Human Resources and Administration, Registration Services, Communications and Member Services, and Engineering.  The ARIN Advisory Council and ARIN Board of Trustees provided updates as well, including a report from the Board Treasurer on ARIN finances.  Our meeting then concluded with an open microphone session with final questions and comments from the community.

The full meeting report will be published by 3 May 2013 on this ARIN 31 Meeting Presentations page.  In the meanwhile you can view or download all presentation slides from each day of the meeting already posted online at the following pages:

Day 1 – ARIN 31 Public Policy Meeting Presentations

Day 2 – ARIN 31 Public Policy Meeting Presentations

Day 3 – ARIN 31 Members Meeting Presentations

Plus, if you’d like to refer to any of the handouts prepared for ARIN 31, they are posted online on this meeting materials page.

Hopefully your ARIN 31 experience was a positive one. Whether you participated in the meeting onsite or at large, please complete a quick survey to give your honest feedback on the meeting to help us improve future ARIN meetings.  Each respondent will be entered into a raffle to win a Google Nexus 10!  (The winner will be chosen at random and notified via email.)

Save the Date

It might be early, but now that ARIN 31 has concluded, make sure to save the date for ARIN 32.  It has been announced that our second Public Policy and Members Meeting of 2013 will be held in Phoenix, Arizona from 10-11 October 2013.

We post all of our meeting materials and presentations online in case you missed something or you want to revisit any session again.  Take a moment to read today’s daily recap below.

Day 2 Daily Recap

We kicked off Day 2 with another warm welcome, and then jumped into some information on ARIN’s Consultation and Suggestion Process, a NRO Number Council Report, and a brief glimpse of ICANN’s next meeting this July.  We got updates on NRO activities, delegated RPKI and the ARIN Command Line Interface (CLI).  We also heard more about ARIN’s new fee schedule which will go in effect this summer.

In the afternoon, we had guest presentations on the Internet Protocol Best Current Operation Practices efforts and the Internet Society’s Deploy360 Programme.  We also heard from a panel on Internet governance as it relates to the stakeholders in the ARIN region, including those in the Caribbean.

Draft policy discussions today featured draft policies ARIN-2013-2: 3GPP Network IP Resource Policy and ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs.  Finally, the Public Policy portion of ARIN 31 concluded with an open policy hour and open microphone session.

Whether you participated in person or remotely, we hope you will take a moment to fill out a quick survey about the meeting either today or tomorrow. Your feedback is important to help us improve all aspects of future ARIN meetings.

Tomorrow we’ll be back again in the morning for the Members Meeting portion of ARIN 31. These sessions are open to everyone and will include important updates about the inner workings of ARIN as an organization.  If you don’t happen to be with us in here here with us in Barbados, please join us remotely via one of these convenient remote participation options, including live webcast, audio, and text transcripts.

Day 1 Daily Recap

First thing in the morning, we hosted a First Timers’ Breakfast so people who have never come to an ARIN meeting could meet ARIN staff and leadership and get ramped up to participate.  The first timers’ handout given out at this breakfast is available online (pdf) which includes commonly used acronyms and details on how to stay active in ARIN.

Then we opened the meeting with a warm welcome to all our participants and some relevant announcements, followed by the ARIN Advisory Council on-docket proposals, Regional policy development, and Internet number resource status reports, as well as an update on IPv6 IAB/IETF activities.

We heard the latest news from  IANA and in each of the other four RIRs, including AFRINIC, APNIC, LACNIC, and the RIPE NCC.

The ARIN community also discussed two draft policies: ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement and ARIN-2013-1: Section 8.4 Transfer Enhancement.

Shortly after a report on recent policy implementation and experience, we had time to squeeze in an extra agenda item—an update on resource transfers. We rounded out the day with an open microphone session.

Thanks to all of you who took part today. We’ll see you again tomorrow here or online for the live webcast, audio, and text transcripts. Be sure to review the full agenda to help determine exactly when you ought to tune in!

You can listen to John’s segment below!

Remember, networks should be dual-stacked for the foreseeable future to ensure all services are fully reachable by both IPv4 and IPv6. More information about the IPv6 transition can be found in our IPv6 Information Center.

Let us know how you are doing with your IPv6 transition in the comments section below.

Comment, vote and ask questions

We consider in-person and remote participants to be equal contributors to the Policy Development Process, so we try to make it easy for you to follow along and take part in discussions no matter where you happen to be.

To participate from your office or home computer, you just need to register as a Remote Participant here (it’s free!) Just make sure you have a Jabber client installed on your computer and a Jabber Identifier (JID) when you register so we can set up your access to the ARIN 31 chat rooms.

During the live discussions you can submit comments during normal Q&A periods and “raise your hand” to be counted during polling. We’ll be discussing several draft policy proposals, including:

• ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement
• ARIN-2013-1: Section 8.4 Inter-RIR Transfers of ASNs
• ARIN-2013-2: 3GPP Network IP Resource Policy
• ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

This is also your chance to hear the latest about happenings at ARIN, in Internet Governance, and reports from ICANN, IETF, and the other RIRs.  Check out the draft agenda for a complete listing of all the scheduled presentations.

The added bonus? We’ll send verified remote participants an ARIN travel mug as a thank you for participating!

Follow the conversation

If you cannot register for ARIN 31 remote participation for any reason, you may still view the webcast or live transcript on the ARIN website during general session hours. The live transcript will record all presentations and discussions from the meeting floor.

So even if you can’t make it out to Barbados, we hope you will participate remotely, and take this opportunity to be involved with the Internet number resource policy development process along with your peers and colleagues. We are looking forward to some invigorating discussions!

Plus find us on Facebook and Twitter

As a remote participant of any type, you’re also welcome to join our ARIN 31 Facebook event page to connect with others who will be participating in the meeting activities and to follow the #ARIN31 hashtag on Twitter to make sure you won’t miss a beat.

Will you be participating in ARIN 31 remotely?

Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) are making a lot of progress, and to encourage continued IPv6 adoption, ARIN President and CEO John Curran gave a keynote presentation at WISPAmerica on 3 April at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Kentucky. He explained the urgent need for IPv6 and even mentioned how transitioning to IPv6 can be a competitive business advantage, because there will come a day when customers will change ISPs if they are not able to reach the full Internet.  Consumers will want a provider that offers access the full IPv4 and IPv6 Internet.  John’s presentation slides are posted on our WISPAmerica calendar event for you to view.

ARIN also had a booth in the exhibit hall where we had great discussions with many wireless Internet service providers who had lots of questions for us.  The two most frequent were:

How do I get a direct IPv4 allocation from ARIN so I don’t have to rely on an upstream service provider for my IP addressing needs?

The first thing to do is review the current Internet number resource policy requirements to qualify for address space with a standard or multi-homed network.  We maintain a Quick Guide to help you do just that!

How can I get IPv6 from ARIN?

If you already have IPv4 from ARIN (or even if you don’t), it is easy to get an IPv6 allocation thanks to community developed policies which encourage IPv6 adoption.

Others had questions about ongoing discussing they’ve been following along with in our Public Policy Mailing List and about the current status of IPv4 depletion.  Many told us they believe that IPv6 migration is important for WISPs in both rural and urban areas, and they are working toward planning their deployment.

As a follow-up to WISPAmerica, we thought it would be a good idea to pull together list of resources to help the wireless community learn about best practices for their IPv6 migration and to know where to obtain additional information for their transition.

Here are a few options our members may find to be helpful:

• Cisco IPv6 Knowledge Base Portal
• Hurricane Electric’s IPv6 Portal
• ARIN IPv6 Wiki, especially our section on Broadband CPE
• IPv6 Google+ Community

Also, here are some key publications we follow to keep up with the latest IPv6 news in the wireless community.

• Multichannel News
• SearchTelecom
• LightReading
• FierceWireless
• Broadband Technology Report
• Wireless Week

Can you think of any more resources or publications to add to the list?