Breaking 100K Entries is the Global IPv6 BGP Table

This year, 2020, around November I started to see the global IPv6 BGP Table is getting more than 100K entries. Although the number is going above and under 100K from time to time, starting from the end of November I can safely say it is breaking 100K entries right now.

This is an interesting milestone for IPv6. That means a massive majority of people are using IPv6 today. I want to note down this moment. And I want to share 3 of my own observations about the IPv6 BGP table.

Increase iPhones’ battery life by removing unnecessary IPv6 multicast Router Advertisements

I came across a new RFC 7772: “Reducing Energy Consumption of Router Advertisements”. I want to share my learnings after reading this RFC.

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Logo, captured on Wikipedia.

I intentionally mentioned “iPhone” at the subject to have your attention. Actually, the whole discussion applies to any mobile devices with limited battery capacity, such as smart phones and tablet computers.

It is quite obvious mobile devices will consume more power while awake than asleep. The question is how serious this problem is?

Cisco IOS IPv6 BGP configuration, using link local addresses as transportation

In this example, I am building two external BGP peering relationships. One is going from WAN and the other is going from LAN.

No more IPv4 unicast addresses in IANA's pool since Feburary 2011. Be cautious, but not panic!

It does NOT mean "the world ran out of ALL IPv4 addresses" now. It only means no more IPv4 unicast addresses are "as reserves". There are still some in five RIRs' pool today!

(However, it is quite close. When those in RIRs are also used up soon after, then we can really say "no more IPv4 addresses".)

This is just an important reminder for you to speed up your migration to IPv6! However, as I pointed out before, don't get panic about this!

Fw: The Day The Routers Died...

Take a break, and listen to some music!

Possible questions about IPv6 for home users

For Internet home users, you need to understand more about IPv6.

IPv6 address types reference sheet, from ICANN blog

ICANN released a free "IPv6 Address Types" reference sheet.

IPv6 hardware support: new Cisco Catalyst 4948E Ethernet Switch

Cisco's new hardware: Catalyst 4948E Ethernet Switch.

How many subnets are in your network? A quick estimate

A quick method to estimate the total number of subnets in your network.

Possible actions to begin with for entering IPv6 era

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is no longer a brand new technology. Internet communication system workers like us would be expected to do well on IPv6 deployment, without doubt.

After Microsoft Windows Vista was delivered, however, we could no longer excuse ourselves procrastinating on IPv6 deployment.

In fact, it would be quite difficult now to find non-IPv6-capable client hosts! From computers with FreeBSD, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple (OS X), and mobile phones such as Nokia phones (Symbian OS), Windows Mobile, Google Android, and even to game consoles such as Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3, all of them already support IPv6 right now!

We could have lived in a "Pure IPv6" world today, if the Internet were fully ready for IPv6. What a pity!

Dual Stack IPv6 and IPv4 configuration (CNA-04-006)

CCNA Exploration 4.0, Semester 4, "Dual Stack IPv6 and IPv4 configuration " Packet Tracer 5.0 practice file (CNA-04-006).

• CNA-04-006.pkt, (Backup Link)
• CNA-04-006-sol.pkt, (Backup Link)

This example is designed for you to practice basic IPv6 commands in IOS. You will also know the new fashion to start a routing protocol in IPv6.

Note: Packet Tracer 4.X does not support IPv6. Please use version 5.X and later to practice IPv6.

To simplify your task, I configured all the necessary IPv4/IPv6 addresses on the interfaces. You can just begin to observe and verify!

interface FastEthernet0/0
 ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0
 duplex auto
 speed auto
!
interface FastEthernet0/1
 no ip address
 duplex auto
 speed auto
 ipv6 address 2001:1:1:1::1/64
!
interface Serial0/0/0
 ip address 10.2.2.1 255.255.255.0
 ipv6 address 2001:2:2:2::1/64
 clock rate 64000
!

You have to configure "routing protocol" yourself. To verify "Dual Stack", we will enable both IPv4 routing protocol and IPv6 routing protocol.

The IPv4 part (in this case, RIPv2) is very easy for you. Remember the basic two steps to start any IPv4 routing protocols in IOS:

1. Use one "router X" command, to start one routing protocol process
2. Use one or more "network Y" commands, to specify at which interfaces will this protocol being enabled

So the configuration is this:

router rip
 version 2
 network 10.0.0.0
 no auto-summary
!

For this simple IPv4 addressing, it is not necessary to include an "no auto-summary" command. It is always a good habit to add "no auto-summary" in today's VLSM world.

As to IPv6 part (RIPng), steps are quite different from IPv4:

1. We need to start the routing protocol process first. In addition, we also have to create a TAG name for it. This is because in IPv6 IOS supports multiple instances on routing protocols
2. Go directly to interface configuration mode to assign which "routing instance" to be enabled on this interface.

interface FastEthernet0/1
 no ip address
 duplex auto
 speed auto
 ipv6 address 2001:1:1:1::1/64
 ipv6 rip CCNA enable 
!
interface Serial0/0/0
 ip address 10.2.2.1 255.255.255.0
 ipv6 address 2001:2:2:2::1/64
 ipv6 rip CCNA enable 
 clock rate 64000
!
interface Serial0/0/1
 no ip address
 shutdown
!
ipv6 router rip CCNA
!

In fact, the tag name "CCNA" is only locally significant. You can play by using different tags on two routers and verify it yourself.

How to describe 2^128, the total number of IPv6 addresses

I like the way described on Wiki about 2¹²⁸, the total number of IPv6 addresses:

... approximately 5×10²⁸ (roughly 2⁹⁵) addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion (6.5×10⁹) people alive in 2006. ...

You will get a share of "astronomical" number of addresses in IPv6: 5×10²⁸. I believe it is impressive enough for us all to imagine how large the number is!

I also found an interesting page questioning the correctness of some bold statements about this number, such as "IPv6 will let us individually address every proton on earth" or "the number of possible IPv6 addresses will be larger than the number of molecules in the universe".

I think this analysis is correct, so I won't use such statements anymore!