RNP > RNP News > 2001 News

RNP receives IPv6 production addresses

Since its creation, the Internet has not stopped growing. And fast. According to the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil), the number of hosts in the country increased more than seven times only in the last three years. More than 11 million Brazilians access the web, according to the Ibope. The problem is that, for the machines to be recognized in the Internet, they need an address which is getting scarcer and scarcer.

This address is called IP (Internet Protocol), and, in its present version,its days are counted. According to an article published in O Globo newspaper (in Portuguese), some countries do not have any more IPv4 lots to distribute. The problem had already been anticipated, and the solution found by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was the creation of a new protocol, the IPv6 or IPng (Internet Protocol Next Generation). The IPv6 is being tested all over the world, including Brazil, where RNP leads the work.

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has just given RNP a set of IPv6 production addresses, which will be used in the implantation of RNP's IPv6 Service Pilot. The aim of this pilot is to provide services of high quality IPv6 native connectivity, thus permitting its introduction in production environments, as well as to carry out advanced experiments.

According to the technicians involved in the project, the implantation of the pilot network should be ready by the end of September, and it will involve four of RNP's Points of Presence: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and Rio Grande do Norte.

What is IPv6?

The need for a new version of the IP address has been discussed for almost a decade. Some proposals have been presented , and a commission has been formed in the IETF in order to discuss this issue. In 1994, this group recommended a 128 bit address, which was called Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

The main difference between versions 6 and 4 of the IP protocol is exactly the number of bits, which makes the number of addresses held by the new protocol four billion times greater than that allowed by the IPv4. But that is not all. Other important characteristics of the new protocol refer to the quality of the service and its security.

Security

Adailton Silva, RNP technician, says in the article entitled "What will change in your Life with IPv6" - in portuguese - (O que Vai Mudar na sua Vida com o IPv6) (NewsGeneration, vol. 1, n.º 1) that there are two security mechanisms defined to the new protocol: header authentication and security of the IP encapsulation.

"The header authentication ensures the receiver that the IP data really belong to the sender indicated in the original address and that the content was delivered without modifications" explains Adailton.

As for the security of the IP encapsulation, it permits the authentication of the data encapsulated in the IP package by means of a cryptographic algorithm. In this model, RNP's technician declares, "the transmitter and the receiver must agree with a secret key as well as other parameters related to security, only known by the members of the association."

Service quality

Two peculiarities of the IPv6 make it different from its 4th version in terms of service quality (SQ): the flow labels and the priority field. They are particularly important in the so-called Internet2 applications, where service quality is fundamental.

In the article The New Generation of IP Protocols (A Nova Geração de Protocolos IP) - in portuguese - (NewsGeneration, vol. 2 n. 8), the specialist Frank Ned writes that "the Flow Label and the priority fields in the IPng header can be used by a host to identify which packages require special manipulation through a router. This capacity is important so as to give support to applications demanding some degree of consistent processing, delay and/or velocity." That is what happens with multimedia or real time applications.

Br6Bone

In order to follow the evolution of the IPv6 technology in Brazil, RNP created the Br6Bone. It is a virtual IPv6 backbone, implanted on a pre-existing IPv4 infrastructure. Besides RNP, several universities, such as Unicamp and Unisinos, and commercial providers, such as the Pegasus Network, participate in the project.

"The great limitation of the project is the fact that it is not a service of native connectivity. In other words, it emulates an IPv6 backbone using the existing Internet infrastructure. It imposes serious performance restrictions to the service and prevents it from being used in production environments", explains Marcel Faria, from RNP's Engineering and Operation Center.

Br6Bone participates in the wordlwide project 6Bone by means of four links, known as IPv6 tunnels. These tunnels are connected to Cisco System (in the United States), to Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (in Japan), to RCCN - Rede da Comunidade Científica Nacional (in Portugal) and to the Laboratório de Ingeniería em Sistemas de Información of the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Facultad Regional La Plata (in Argentina). Nowadays, more than 50 countries are part of the 6Bone.

The IPv6 tunnels are virtual links on an IPv4 structure. That happens due to the need to transmit packages using the new protocol through the same network technology which uses the old protocol. This way, IPv6 packages are repacked with the IPv4 protocol and transmitted through the net until they get to their destination, where a router supporting the IPv6 protocol processes them.

Native IPv6 pilot

The network which RNP intends to assemble until September will offer new perspectives to the IPv6 studies in Brazil.It is being implemeted in the same equipment used to provide IP connectivity in RNP2 backbone, allowing the backbone's IPv4 production traffic and the IPv6 test traffic to happen parallelly, without mutual interference. Thus, the packages with the new protocol will not have to be converted to the old protocol as it happens in the IPv6 tunnels.

The initiative, the first of its kind in Brazil, is already being tested in other countries.

[RNP, 08.17.2001]