• Fernando Gont, security researcher
• Eric Vyncke, Cisco Distinguished Consulting Engineer and author
• Joe Klein, security researcher
• TJ Evans, IPv6 instructor and engineer
• Jim Small, Sr. Consultant – Network/Security Architecture and Engineering, CDW
• Scott Hogg, Cisco Press author and Director of Technology Solutions for RMv6TF

The show runs about 90 minutes and is well worth a listen!

I’ve been asked this question lately by a number of people and unfortunately the answer to what is “best” is really…

“It depends.“

There are a lot of variables relating to the type of network you have – the architecture, the equipment, the applications, etc.

Thankfully, there are a good number of documents out there that can help with thinking about what mechanism will work best for your.  One of those is RFC 6180, “Guidelines for Using IPv6 Transition Mechanisms during IPv6 Deployment“, available at:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6180

It is an informational RFC (i.e. not a “standard” but a document intended to be helpful) that outlines four different deployment scenarios and how you might use them.  While it was published in early 2011 and a LOT has happened with IPv6 in the two years since, the document is still a good reference document and one I would encourage you to review.

Most importantly, just start getting IPv6 deployed!

• Business Ethernet customers have had full IPv6 service and support in place for them since the beginning of 2013.

• IPv6 trials are about to get underway for our Business Internet customers and we hope to launch full support shortly after completing the trials. Customers interested in signing up to participate in the trials can do so at http://www.comcast6.net/index.php/commercial-broadband-ipv6-form.

It is excellent to see Comcast offering these trials to their business users and we look forward to hearing of the success of those trials and the move to full IPv6 support.  Congrats to the team at Comcast for getting to this point.

If you are a Comcast Business customer, now is a time when you can sign up and get started with ensuring that your networks work fine with IPv6.   Why wait?

Video from the first ever INET Denver, organized with our Colorado Chapter, is available for viewing now! Themed “IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6,” the event was held at the Grand Hyatt Denver on the afternoon of Wednesday, 17 April. INET Denver was designed to complement the content presented at the co-located North American IPv6 Summit by focusing on the IPv4 side of the impending transition to IPv6.

INET Denver offered an all star line-up of expert speakers including John Curran (ARIN), Charles Lee (Addrex), Geoff Huston (APNIC), Owen DeLong (Hurricane Electric), Lee Howard (Time Warner Cable), Louis Sterchi (Kalorama Group), Einar Bohlin (ARIN), Paul Brigner (Internet Society), Richard Jimmerson (Deploy360), and myself, Chris Grundemann (CO ISOC).

These experts covered many aspects of IPv4 free pool exhaustion and IPv6 deployment. Specific topics covered included The State of IPv6,  IPv4 Exhaustion at ARIN, an Address Policy Workshop covering IPv4/IPv6 policy at ARIN and how to change it, a real-time Evaluation of the Current IPv4 Address Transfer Market, The Cost of IPv4-IPv6 Transition, and an update on the Internet Society and the Deploy360 programme.

We received an overwhelmingly positive response from folks who were able to attend and watch the event live, hopefully you enjoy it as well!

Chris Grundemann
Founding Chair
Internet Society Colorado Chapter

(NOTE: Need to include reference here to how WebRTC is designed to work with IPv6.)

Documentation

• RFC 6197, “IPv6 Transition in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)”

Presentation Slides

• IPv6 and SIP – Myth or Reality?  (SIPNOC 2013 – April 24, 2013)
• SIP and IPv6 – Can They Get Along?  (SIPNOC 2012 – June 26, 2012)

Communities

There is a good amount of discussion about IPv6 happening in various IPv6 communities around the Internet. More specific discussion about IPv6 and IP communications is happening here:

• SIP Forum IPv6 Task Group mailing list (open to the public)
• SIPv6 Facebook page and Twitter account (projects started by Olle Johansson)

Softphones

We are aware of the following softphones that support IPv6:

• Jitsi (open source) – see our interview with project lead Emil Ivov
• Linphone (open source)
• Counterpath Bria  (commercial)

Communications Equipment

Beyond softphones, we are aware of the following equipment that supports IPv6.

(NOTE: Links need to be added, ideally to IPv6-specific pages. Also, it is worth considering whether this list should be moved to a separate page.)

IP Phones (Desktop):

• Avaya (unclear on exact models)
• Mitel 53xx Series
• Mocet
• Siemens OpenStage
• Snom
• Yealink SIP-T2x

IP-PBXs/Call Servers:

• Asterisk 1.8+
• Brekeke SIP
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.1
• Freeswitch 1.1+
• Kamailio 3.1+
• Microsoft Lync Server 2013
• OpenSIPS
• Voxeo Prophecy and PRISM

Other SIP Devices

• Cisco SIP Gateways ( ISR 28XX & 38XX, AS5400 )
• Dialogic SBCs
• Mediatrix
• Mitel Border Gateway (MBG)

SIP Services (in the cloud)

• INUM.net

Additional resources will be added to this page as we become aware of them.

Know of additional resources related to IPv6 and IP communications that we should list?  Please let us know!

SIPNOC is an excellent conference that I’ve very much enjoyed over the past few years that brings together many of the key players involved with moving our telecommunications infrastructure from its PSTN roots into the world of IP communications. Its target is operators and so you have a good number of people there who are providing VoIP services to customers – typically using the SIP protocol.  The schedule is always an interesting mix of operational best practices, security concerns, new technologies, policy and other topics.  This year it’s good to see WebRTC being on the agenda in several places, as that will have an effect on the overall VoIP infrastructure.  (FYI, there is still time to register to attend the SIPNOC event.)

As shown on the SIPNOC schedule, I’ll be participating in these sessions:

IPv6 And SIP – Myth or Reality?
Wednesday, April 24, 10:45-11:45am

In this session we’ll be exploring what is really going on with VoIP and IPv6 and seek to answer questions such as:

• What’s going on with SIP over IPv6?
• What are the main challenges to using SIP with IPv6?
• What do we know about the status of current equipment working with IPv6?
• What are the SIP Forum and others in the industry doing to help advance the state of the art?
• Where do we see SIP and IPv6 going?

I’m very much looking forward to the session and have several panelists joining me in a discussion-style panel that should be quite educational and interesting.

Who are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help
Thursday, April 25, 9:30-10:00am

My goal with this session is to explain what DNSSEC is all about and to look at how it can potentially help to secure a few aspects of VoIP communication.  As I wrote in the abstract:

When Alice calls Bob, how does she know that she is really communicating with Bob’s SIP server? Sure, her software grabs a SRV record for Bob’s server from DNS, but how does Alice’s systems know whether that is the *correct* DNS record for Bob’s server? What if an attacker were able to inject DNS records that redirect Alice’s call to another system? What if there were a way that the SIP endpoints could be certain about the address of the other system they want to call?

I’ll also be talking about the Jitsi softphone that now supports DNSSEC as I wrote about in the past and more recently interviewed Emil Ivov, the Jitsi project lead.  I hope to get some people thinking about the possibility of using DNSSEC and looking into how it can work more with their VoIP infrastructure.

Beyond those sessions, I’ll also be engaging the “VoIP security” side of my background and moderating two sessions on Monday, April 23:

• 5:15-6:15pm – Panel Discussion:  Anatomy of  a VoIP DMZ
• 7:30-8:30pm – VoIP Security Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF)

The BOF, in particular, should be interesting as last year it was a very frank and open conversation between operators about the security issues they were facing.  Much good information – and solutions – were exchanged.

I’m very much looking forward to this event and if you are going to be at SIPNOC please do say hello.

At the current time the event is not being livestreamed, but I’m planning to record at least my sessions and make the video available through the Deploy360 YouTube channel.

If so, you can watch the livestream of the INET Denver event happening today, April 17, starting at 1:00pm US Mountain time (3:00pm US Eastern, 12noon US Pacific) at:

http://www.internetsociety.org/events/inet-denver/inet-denver-livestream

The INET Denver agenda includes sessions on:

• IPv4 Exhaustion Update
• IPv4 Exhaustion at ARIN
• Address Policy Workshop
• Evaluation of Current Transfer Market
• TCO of IPv6
• Internet Society Initiatives and How To Get Involved

The event has an excellent set of speakers who are extremely knowledgeable in the field – it should be a great event!

Note that if you cannot view the event live, it will be recorded so that you can watch the sessions later.

As we mentioned previously, Richard Jimmerson and Jan Zorz from our Deploy360 team will be there and would be glad to meet with anyone there to talk about what we are doing here and to get feedback on how we can help get IPv6 deployed even faster.

http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/

One of the most interesting statistics to me was that IPv6 traffic on Verizon Wireless’ network has now climbed to 26.25%.  This reflects the fact that IPv6 is part of Verizon’s rollout of LTE, as documented in a Verizon Wireless presentation about IPv6 and LTE given at APNIC 34 in August 2012.

Congratulations to Verizon Wireless for passing the 25% mark! They are the first to do so of the mobile operators that are being tracked as part of the World IPv6 Launch measurements.

I’ll note, too, that when you go to that IPv6 measurements page and click the column headed “IPv6 traffic” twice you wind up with a list sorted by highest percentage of IPv6 that is quite interesting:

Somewhat predictably a number of universities are leading the way with Gustavus Adolphus College having an outstanding 62.17% of all traffic being IPv6. Great to see the U.S. Navy’s SPAWAR network in there, too, with 41.30% IPv6 traffic. It’s also nice to see webhosting providers Dreamhost and Hurricane Electric in the top 10 with just over 29% (Dreamhost) and 25% (HE) of all their traffic being IPv6.  I admit that I do find it a bit fascinating to scroll through the lists and see who is doing what with IPv6. The graphics further down the page are also interesting to see.

Note that these measurements are only from network operators that ask to be included in the World IPv6 Launch.  If you are a network operator providing IPv6 connectivity and are interested in being included on this list, please fill out the form on the World IPv6 Launch site.

Now, the question in my mind is, who will be the next mobile operator to climb over 25%?  And how soon will Verizon Wireless pass other prominent marks?

• IPv6 on LTE (Li Haijun, China Mobile)
• Enabling IPv6 in last miles (Shinichi Yamamoto, Chubu Telecommunications)
• IPv6 in China (Zhao Wei, CNNIC)
• Monitoring IPv6 deployment (Miwa Fujii, APNIC)

If you’d like to listen in remotely, information can be found on the IPv6 workshop web page about how to listen remotely in several different languages.

Note: our Communications team has now published a “Rough Guide to ICANN 46′s Hot Topics” that highlights what is going on at ICANN that is of interest not only to our Deploy360 team, but also to our other teams involved with public policy and Internet governance issues.

Jitsi is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from:  http://jitsi.org/  It used to be called the “SIP Communicator” but when they added support for XMPP (Jabber) and XMPP/Jingle back in 2011 they changed the name to be Jitsi.

Given my own personal interest in VoIP / IP communications, I’m planning to write a bit more about Jitsi as I get a chance to do so.  If any of you use Jitsi and create any screencasts about its IPv6 or DNSSEC support – or write up any articles about those capabilities – please do let us know as I’d like to include more on our site about this great project.