In this post for the Internet Society Rough Guide to IETF 100, I’m reviewing what’ll be happening at IETF 100 in Singapore next week.
IPv6 global adoption rates passed 20% shortly after IETF 99, with a number of countries making substantial strides in IPv6 deployment in the past few months. Belgium still leads the way at over 60%, but India has shot up to over 50% which is extremely encouraging in such a large market. Adoption rates also exceed 40% in the United States and Germany, and with most major content and cloud providers now supporting IPv6, there’s a substantial amount of IPv6-related work happening in Singapore. In fact, there’s no less than five IPv6-related working groups on the first day alone.
The IPv6 Operations (v6ops) Working Group is always one of the key groups, and since the last meeting has published two RFCs on Host Address Availability Recommendations (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7934) and Local-Use IPv4/IPv6 Translation Prefix (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8215). The meeting kicks off on Monday afternoon and continues on Thursday morning, starting with a case study on IPv6-only deployment at Cisco.
There are also seven drafts being discussed including 464XLAT Deployment Guidelines for Operator Networks (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-palet-v6ops-464xlat-deployment), transition requirements for IPv6 customer edge routers (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-palet-v6ops-rfc7084-bis-transition), and IPv6 prefix delegation for hosts (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-templin-v6ops-pdhost-15). There are other drafts on DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation and Neighbour Discovery on a cellular connected IoT router (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-shytyi-v6ops-danir-00); common scenarios for connecting an enterprise network to multiple ISPs using address space assigned by an ISP, which remains an unresolved issue unless address translation is used (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-conditional-ras-00); and on using a /64 from a customer prefix for numbering an IPv6 point-to-point link (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-palet-v6ops-p2p-from-customer-prefix-01). There are a couple of other interesting drafts on an extension to the Happy Eyeballs protocol in order to report IPv6 failures that force the fall-back to IPv4 and facilitate the troubleshooting of IPv6 network, plus clarifications about what functionalities should determine whether a network is ‘IPv6-only’ (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-palet-v6ops-ipv6-only-03).
The IPv6 Maintenance (6man) Working Group is another key group, and since the last meeting has published two RFCs. One of course, is highly significant as it moved the IPv6 specification to a full Internet Standard (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8200), whilst the other defines Path MTU Discovery for IPv6 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8201). The meeting is being held on Tuesday afternoon, and has seven drafts up for discussion.
There’s one working group sponsored draft on IPv6 Node Requirements (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6man-rfc6434-bis) that specifies the minimum requirements for enabling effective IPv6 functionality and interoperability on nodes. There are also three recommendations on the security and privacy implications of IPv6 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gont-6man-address-usage-recommendations), temporary IPv6 interface identifiers (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gont-6man-non-stable-iids-01), and on the filtering of IPv6 packets containing extension headers (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-opsec-ipv6-eh-filtering). A further draft requests the creation of an IANA registry for the Prefix Information Option in the IPv6 Neighbour Discovery Router Advertisement (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-troan-6man-ndpioiana-01), whilst another specifies extensions to permit Route Information Options (RIOs) in IPv6 Neighbour Discovery messages (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-templin-6man-rio-redirect-05). A new draft up for discussion proposes an IPv6 signaling method to guarantee a certain level of service quality in bandwidth and latency (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-han-6man-in-band-signaling-for-transport-qos-00).
The IPv6 Over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) Working Group is working on enabling IPv6 connectivity with very low wireless transmission rates between battery-powered devices spread across multiple kilometres. This will meet on Monday morning and has a busy agenda with seven drafts being discussed including an informational overview of the LPWAN technologies being considered by the IETF (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-lpwan-overview-07), and others related to IPv6 header fragmentation and compression (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-lpwan-ipv6-static-context-hc-06 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-petrov-lpwan-ipv6-schc-over-lorawan-00), as well as ICMPv6 usage over LPWANs (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-barthel-icmpv6-schc-00.html).
The Home Networking (homenet) Working Group develops protocols for residential networks based on IPv6, and is meeting on Monday afternoon to discuss a variety of updated and new drafts. How the Babel routing protocol can be used in conjunction with the HNCP protocol in a Homenet scenario (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-babel-profile-03) is currently in Working Group Last Call, whilst there’s a new version of the name resolution and service discovery architecture for homenets (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-simple-naming-00). The use of home.arpa. as special use top-level domain to replace .home (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-dot-14) has been agreed and is currently awaiting publication as an RFC.
There are also a couple of other agenda items to discuss support for HNCP in IPv6 Customer Edge routers (based on https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-palet-v6ops-rfc7084-bis-transition-01), and on general Homenet security including a draft on adding authenticity to Babel messages so as to prevent malicious tampering or black hole attacks (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lemon-homenet-babel-security-latest-00).
Running in parallel is the IPv6 over the TSCH mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH) Working Group. TSCH is the emerging standard for automation and control over low-power and lossy wireless networks, and this group is working on how to use IPv6 in industrial standards. The main items for discussion are related to the 6top protocol that enables distributed scheduling (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6tisch-6top-protocol-08 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6tisch-6top-sfx-00), and to define the security functionality (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal-security-02 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6tisch-dtsecurity-zerotouch-join-01).
The relatively new IP Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (ipwave) Working Group will also be meeting later on Monday. It’s yet to publish its agenda, but there are a couple of working group-sponsored drafts including a specification for transmitting IPv6 datagrams over IEEE 802.11-OCB in Vehicle-to-Internet and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communications (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ipwave-ipv6-over-80211ocb-11), and defining the use cases for IP-based vehicular networks (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ipwave-vehicular-networking-00). Other related drafts include DNS Autoconfiguration for IoT Devices, IPv6 Neighbour Discovery in Vehicle Networks, and on advanced features such as proximity awareness, autonomous driving, and platooning/convoys.
The IPv6 over Networks of Resource Constrained Nodes (6lo) Working Group will meet on Thursday evening. The agenda has also yet to be published, but the group has recently been working on IPv6 Neighbour Discovery on node networks with limited power, memory and processing resources, and IPv6 over low-power Bluetooth mesh networks.
The week is rounded off with the Dynamic Host Configuration (dhc) Working Group on Thursday evening. This will be discussing three drafts related to DHCPv6, as well as the possibility of re-chartering the group.
At the Internet Society, we continue to promote IPv6 deployment. You can check out the World IPv6 Launch measurements for our latest measurements of IPv6 around the globe: http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements
You can also check out the Deploy360 online resources for getting started with IPv6 deployment:
And you can read more about other topics of interest to the technology programs of the Internet Society in the rest of our Rough Guide to IETF 100 posts.
IPv6-related Working Groups at IETF 100:
LPWAN (IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks)
Monday, 13 November 2017 0930-1200 UTC+8, Padang
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/100/materials/agenda-100-lpwan/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/lpwan/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-lpwan/
V6OPS (IPv6 Operations) Working Group
Monday, 13 November 2017 1330-1530 UTC+8, Padang &
Thursday, 16 November 2017 0930-1200 UTC+8, Collyer
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/v6ops/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-v6ops/
6TISCH (IPv6 over the TSCH mode of IEEE 802.15.4e)
Monday, 13 November 2017 1550-1720 UTC+8, Bras Basah
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/100/materials/agenda-100-6tisch/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/6tisch/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-6tisch/
Homenet (Home Networking) WG
Monday, 13 November 2017 1550-1720 UTC+8, Collyer
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/homenet/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/homenet/charter/
IPWAVE (IP Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments)
Monday, 13 November 2017 1740-1840 UTC+8, Sophia
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/ipwave/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-ipwave/
6MAN (IPv6 Maintenance) WG
Tuesday, 14 November 2017 1330-1530 UTC+8, Canning
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/6man/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/6man/charter/
6LO (IPv6 over Networks of Resource Constrained Nodes) WG
Thursday, 16 November 2017 1330-1530 UTC+8, Sophia
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/6lo/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-6lo/
DHC (Dynamic Host Configuation) WG
Thursday, 16 November 2017 1810-1910 UTC+8, Collyer
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dhc/documents/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-dhc/
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