As I wrote about over on Voxeo’s “Speaking of Standards” blog, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) came out with a great set of guidelines around IPv6. Formally titled “Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6“, the document follows the tradition of many other NIST docs in being more than just guidelines. It’s also a great tutorial around IPv6.

You can download the doc at:

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-119/sp800-119.pdf

UPDATE: Shortly after publishing this post, I was alerted that the URL does NOT work and I, too, have now been unable to retrieve the document from NIST’s website. I was able to view it just the other day, and my browser still has a copy in its cache (and I also have a local copy myself). The NIST news archive shows that as of Dec 28, 2010 this document was in fact live. Perhaps the NIST team pulled the doc to update it… I don’t know. Hopefully it will be available again soon, and if there is a new URL I will update this post.

It’s only 188 pages long, including the appendices and will definitely help if you’re just now trying to come up to speed on IPv6.

Kudos…

In 2011, I expect to be writing a good bit more about IPv6, in part because the reality is that we are getting closer to being out of IPv4 addresses, in part because I am doing more personal experimentation with IPv6, and in part because Voxeo is going to be releasing some new product versions that will work with IPv6… and yes, in part because the network geek in me just finds IPv6 interesting.

Anyway, to kick off my 2011 coverage of IPv6, here is a video of a tutorial given by a Voxeo engineer about the basics of IPv6… enjoy!

NetworkWorld is running an article today that talks about the announcement from ARIN (the American Registry for Internet Numbers) of the ARIN Board resolution calling upon ARIN to no longer be “neutral” in the IPv4 vs IPv6 space and instead work to actively encourage migration to IPv6.

For those not aware, ARIN is a non-profit organization that allocates IP addresses within North America and is one of the five Regional Internet Registries that allocate IP addresses on behalf of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). 

Think of it this way… let’s say you start a business and want to get an Internet connection where you can run your own web server.  You need a public IP address, so you are going to contact an Internet Service Provider (ISP), set up service, get an address, etc., etc.  If you are in North America, the public IP address you are going to get will have been allocated to your ISP by ARIN.  ARIN, in turn, was given blocks of IP addresses to give out by IANA, who is ultimately responsible for all IP addresses.  So it looks something like this:

IANA -> ARIN (and the other RIRs) -> ISPs -> You

(and yes, where I…