IPv6 Deployment Series Part 2: Routing Design
RYAN HARRIS?| Sr. Network Engineer?
This blog post is part of a series detailing the various parts of planning and deploying IPv6 for enterprise networks. It is meant as a primer for the network engineer or architect to understand the various concepts they may be unaware of when developing their IPv6 production design.?
If you have not read the previous posts, I highly recommend starting with Part 1 – Hierarchical Subnetting Design.?
Determining Routing Protocol?
It is tempting to use the same routing protocol that your organization is using in your IPv4 deployment in IPv6. After all, that decision was made for a reason. Your team has experience configuring and troubleshooting that protocol, and it is supported by the platforms that you currently run.?
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This thinking might be slightly flawed, though. Implementing IPv6 in a dual-stack environment while en route to an IPv6-only environment presents challenges, but also opportunities to simplify and improve your network architecture.?
Our goal with choosing an IPv6 routing protocol should be to simplify the network architecture, provide compatibility across the network and across vendors, and provide flexibility for future changes in network architecture. In most cases, I believe that OSPFv3 provides the best scenario for organizations as an interior gateway protocol, but your specific scenario should be evaluated to determine what is best for you.?
There are two schools of thought when determining how to migrate from IPv4 routing protocols to IPv6; the first is to migrate both protocols to a single compatible routing instance to reduce troubleshooting surface area and resource utilization. The other school of thought is that by retaining your existing routing protocol for IPv4 only and implementing a second IPv6-only routing protocol, it removes the need to migrate your IPv4 environment and makes the decommissioning of the IPv4 environment easier in the future.?
I do believe that both are valid; however, since the goal should be IPv6 only, the argument for spending a lot of time and effort to migrate IPv4 routing protocols does not hold a lot of water.??