As IPv6 adoption ramps up, there aren't nearly enough experts and trainers to fulfill the demand. Here's how to start educating yourself.

Edward Horley, Practice Manager, Cloud Solutions, Groupware Technology

July 23, 2014

4 Min Read

The adoption rate for IPv6 has picked up dramatically in the last year. That's the good news. The bad news is that the skills of operators who have to deal with the protocol are not keeping up at all. We are in a serious situation where skills do not match operational requirements.

The hard reality is that there are nowhere near enough IPv6 trainers and educators to fulfill the inevitable demand for IPv6 expertise. This should concern both the operators of networks and the businesses that use them. The knowledge requirement for IPv6 cuts across IT disciplines: Help desk, systems, storage, databases, networking, and application developers all need to know at least something about it.

The California IPv6 Task Force that I co-chair has identified education for IPv6 as one of the key roadblocks preventing adoption of the protocol.

[IPv6 will play a big part in making IoT happen. Read IoT, IPv6 Coming To The Connected Home.]

This year one of our principal goals is to improve the education situation. One way we are accomplishing this is to encourage our IPv6 colleagues to get out on the road at major conferences to talk about IPv6.

I presented Getting Serious About IPv6: Go Big or Go Home at Interop in Las Vegas earlier this year, and I'm excited Interop invited me to New York City in October to present the session IPv6 Bootcamp: Get Up To Speed Quickly.

The goal is to continue to move the ball forward for Interop attendees and help them gain some quick, tactical knowledge about IPv6. They'll understand what IPv6 is doing, why it behaves the way it does, and what options they have to control its behavior.

IPv4 has been around for a long time. There's a large body of knowledge around operating and maintaining networks that run IPv4, and many people are comfortable with the protocol. Our challenge is to get all those people to the same comfort level with IPv6.

A single session at Interop isn't enough to learn everything about IPv6, but I hope it will be your first step to gain more skills and get more comfortable with the protocol. Perhaps it will jumpstart your interest in IPv6.

Over the years I've talked to a lot of people about why they are (or aren't) deploying IPv6. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of good educational resources. So I've put together a list of IPv6 resources, including books and websites that might help you. This isn't a complete list, but it will get you started.

In the interest of full disclosure, titles with an asterisk indicate I was either an author, a technical reviewer, or involved in the book in some way. I've listed titles by publication year starting with the most recent.

  • IPv6 Address Planning by Tom Coffeen (O'Reilly Media, out in late 2014) *

  • IPv6 Essentials, Third Edition by Silva Hagen (O'Reilly Media, 2014) *

  • Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators by Ed Horley (Apress, 2013) *

  • Understanding IPv6, Third Edition by Joseph Davies (Microsoft Press, 2012) *

  • IPv6 Fundamentals: A Straightforward Approach to Understanding IPv6 by Rick Graziani (Cisco Press, 2012)

  • IPv6 in Enterprise Networks by Shannon McFarland, Muninder Sambi, Nikhil Sharma, and Sanjay Hooda (Cisco Press, 2011)

  • Planning for IPv6 by Silvia Hagen (O'Reilly Media, 2011)

  • Day One: Exploring IPv6 by Chris Grundermann (Juniper Networking Technologies Series, 2011) 

  • Day One: Advanced IPv6 Configuration by Chris Grundermann (Juniper Networking Technologies Series, 2011)

  • IPv6 Network Administration by Niall Richard Murphy and David Malone (O'Reilly Media, 2009)

  • IPv6 Security by Scott Hogg and Eric Vyncke (Cisco Press, 2008)   

  • Deploying IPv6 Networks by Ciprian Popoviciu, Eric Levy-Abegnoli, Patrick Grossetete (Cisco Press, 2006)

  • Running IPv6 by Iljitsch van Beijnum (Apress, 2005) (This is an older book -- there have been a lot of updated standards since it was published -- but it's a great reference.) 

  • Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning by Patrick Grossetete, Ciprian Popoviciu, and Fred Wettling (Cisco Press, 2004)

Here are some links to excellent online content:

Best of luck in your IPv6 journey, and I hope to see you at Interop New York this fall.

In its ninth year, Interop New York (Sept. 29 to Oct. 3) is the premier event for the Northeast IT market. Strongly represented vertical industries include financial services, government, and education. Join more than 5,000 attendees to learn about IT leadership, cloud, collaboration, infrastructure, mobility, risk management and security, and SDN, as well as explore 125 exhibitors' offerings. Register with Discount Code MPIWK to save $200 off Total Access & Conference Passes.

About the Author(s)

Edward Horley

Practice Manager, Cloud Solutions, Groupware Technology

Ed Horley is the Practice Manager for Cloud Solutions and the Practice Lead for IPv6 at Groupware Technology in the San Francisco Bay Area and is the author of Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators from Apress. He is actively involved in IPv6 serving as the co-chair of the California IPv6 Task Force (http://www.cav6tf.org) and additionally helping with the North American IPv6 Task Force (http://www.nav6tf.org). He has presented at the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Summit, the North American IPv6 Summit, and the Texas IPv6 Summit in addition to co-chairing and presenting at the annual gogoNETLive IPv6 conference in Silicon Valley. He has also presented on IPv6 at Microsoft TechEd North America and Europe, at Cisco Live in North America and Europe, at TechMentor, and at Interop. Ed is a retired Microsoft MVP (10 years from 2004 to 2013) and has spent the last 18+ years working in networking as an IT professional. He enjoys Umpiring Women's Lacrosse when he isn't playing around on IPv6 networks. He maintains a blog at http://www.howfunky.com/ where he covers technical topics of interest to him and is on twitter at @ehorley.

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