IPv6 Essentials

Books Details :

Author : Silvia Hagen
Paperback: 418 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 2 edition (May 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0596100582
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches

Book Description
IPv6 Essentials, Second Edition provides a succinct, in-depth tour of all the new features and functions in IPv6. It guides you through everything you need to know to get started, including how to configure IPv6 on hosts and routers and which applications currently support IPv6. The new IPv6 protocols offers extended address space, scalability, improved support for security, real-time traffic support, and auto-configuration so that even a novice user can connect a machine to the Internet. Aimed at system and network administrators, engineers, network designers, and IT managers, this book will help you understand, plan for, design, and integrate IPv6 into your current IPv4 infrastructure.

Beginning with a short history of IPv6, author Silvia Hagen provides an overview of new functionality and discusses why we need IPv6. Hagen also shares exhaustive discussions of the new IPv6 header format and Extension Headers, IPv6 address and ICMPv6 message format, Security, QoS, Mobility and, last but not least, offers a Quick Start Guide for different operating systems. IPv6 Essentials, Second Edition also covers:

1. In-depth technical guide to IPv6
2. Mechanisms and Case Studies that show how to integrate IPv6 into your network without interruption of IPv4 services
3. Routing protocols and upper layer protocols
4. Security in IPv6: concepts and requirements. Includes the IPSEC framework and security elements available for authentication and encryption
5. Quality of Service: covers the elements available for QoS in IPv6 and how they can be implemented
6. Detailed discussion of DHCPv6 and Mobile IPv6
7. Discussion of migration cost and business case
8. Getting started on different operating systems: Sun Solaris, Linux, BSD, Windows XP, and Cisco routers

Whether you're ready to start implementing IPv6 today or are planning your strategy for the future, IPv6 Essentials, Second Edition will provide the solid foundation you need to get started.

"Silvia's look at IPv6 is always refreshing as she translates complex technology features into business drivers and genuine end-user benefits to enable building new business concepts based on end to end models." Latif Ladid, President IPv6 Forum, Chair EU IPv6 Task Force

Spotlight Reviews :

Reviewer: calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va)
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer standard used by electronic devices to exchange data across a packet-switched internetwork and is intended to provide more addresses for networked devices, allowing, for example, each cell phone and mobile electronic device to have its own address. IPv6 is actually capable of supporting 5×10^28 addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people alive today.
This book covers a broad range of information about IPv6 and is an excellent resource for both managers and system engineers, since this book discusses economic and strategic aspects as well as technical details. This book is not a detailed guide for program developers. The book assumes that you already have a good understanding of network issues in general and a familiarity with IPv4. It makes generous use of tables and illustrations and is very accessible. Amazon does not show the table of contents so I review this book in the context of the table of contents:

Chapter 1 WHY IPV6?
Briefly explains the history of IPv6 and gives an overview of the new functionality. It shows that the large address space and the advanced functionality of IPv6 are much needed.

Chapter 2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE IPV6 PROTOCOL
Describes the new IPv6 header format with a discussion of each field and trace file examples. It also describes what Extension headers are, what types of Extension headers have been defined, and how they are used.

Chapter 3 IPV6 ADDRESSING
Explains the new address format, address notation, address types, international registry services, and prefix allocation.

Chapter 4 ICMPv6
Discusses how the health of the network is maintained and reported using ICMPv6. This chapter describes the new ICMPv6 message format, its error and informational messages, and the ICMPv6 header in the trace file. All of this leads to making a network administrator's life easier.

Chapter 5 SECURITY WITH IPV6
After a short discussion of basic security concepts and requirements, this chapter discusses the security elements available in IPv6 for authentication and encryption. Since future networks will require new security architectures, this chapter includes a description of a new model.

Chapter 6 QUALITY OF SERVICE
QoS elements available in IPv6 are presented as well as how to implement them. Different QoS architectures are also discussed.

Chapter 7 NETWORKING ASPECTS
Layer 2 support for IPv6 (Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM, frame relay, etc.), the mapping of multicast addresses to Layer 2 addresses, and the Detecting Network Attachment (DNA) working group are discussed.

Chapter 8 ROUTING PROTOCOLS
The advanced routing features of IPv6 and the available routing protocols such as RIPng, OSPFv3 for IPv6 are presented. Also mentioned are the BGP extensions for IPv6, IS-IS, and EIGRPv6.

Chapter 9 UPPER LAYER PROTOCOLS
Starting with changes for TCP and UDP, this chapter continues with a detailed discussion of the DHCPv6 specification, DNS extensions for IPv6, SLPv2 in IPv6 networks, FTP, Telnet, and web servers.

Chapter 10 INTEROPERABILITY
The different transition mechanisms that have been defined, such as dual-stack operation, tunneling, and translation techniques are explained. A broad variety of case studies show that IPv6 is mature enough to be used and how this can be done. The chapter also discusses what is still missing from the standard and the cost involved in implementing IPv6.

Chapter 11 MOBILE IPV6
This chapter explains why this technology will become the foundation for a new generation of mobile services.

Chapter 12 GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
How to get started with IPv6 on different operating systems, such as Sun Solaris, Linux, BSD, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Mac OS, and a Cisco router. The most common IPv6 tools available for each operating system are discussed along with the author's lab activities and trace files.

Appendix A RFCs

Appendix B IPv6 RESOURCES
Summaries of all indexes, protocol numbers, message types, and address allocations.

Appendix C RECOMMENDED READING

Reviewer: Jase T. Wolfe (Seattle, WA USA)
If your day to day involvement with IP consists only of managing WINS, DNS, DHCP and subnet configurations, then this book is not for you. Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting sections worth reading that go far in introducing administrative aspects of IPv6, and no time is wasted reading them. This title, however, is for those of you who daily get really dirty with IP and want to know everything there is to know about the new version, the differences between the versions, the features and behaviors of IPv6, and the new tools for configuration, management and tracking.

The book starts of with a very brief and concise history of IPv6, and then jumps right into well explained sections on packet structure, addressing, and ICMP. Each of those sections are written clearly and interestingly, make good use of figures to visually illustrate the information being discussed. Once the structure and hardware-related management points have been driven home, the author provides many chapters that serve as an excellent reference guide and will prove useful well after your initial read. Chapters on IPv6 security, QoS, Upper-layer and routing protocols proceed extended reviews and demonstrations of real-life networking design aspects, protocol version interoperability, co-existence configurations, and toped off with platform specific utility demonstrations.

If you are planning on moving your environment to IPv6, increasing your understanding of the technology for more informed decisions, or looking for a reference guide to assist in your current administration of an IPv6 environment, this is the title for you.