Customer Reviews

IPv6 Essentials

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

i recently wrote a review of this book on openbsd journal at [web page] overall, this is the best ipv6 book i have read so far. hagen covers the standards with clarity and skill, and presents the information well. the illustrations are pretty good at showing the structure of the packets and the formats.

ipv6 essentials does well with explaining the internals of ipv6. routing, control messages, structures, advantages. this is fantastic, and if you're looking to learn ipv6 internals or thinking about migrating a network to support ipv6, this is a great book.

however, this book isn't for a typical user of a network. if you're at home and want to start on ipv6 (ie by tunneling to the 6bone), you're going to be at a loss. this book is slim on how t get up and running on ipv6 on windows, linux, bsd, etc ... this is its biggest weakness. other weaknesses include a lack of solid material for configuring routers for ipv6 (ie QoS, the intricacies of the routing protocols and integration), migrating applications (ie DNS zones), and security (it focuses only on IPsec).

as such, i give this book a "fair" review. it's good at what it does, but it really left me wanting a lot more useful information. not a typical oreilly book (which usually focuses on actually using stuff). 3.5 stars or so ...

having spoken to the author, recently, it turns out that a detailed protocol level discussion, as opposed to implementation, was her goal. and it was well met, so i'm bumping this to 4 stars.

I read and reviewed "IPv6 Network Administration" (INA) in August 2005 and "Running IPv6" (RI) in January 2006. I gave those books 5 stars, so I had high expectations for "IPv6 Essentials, 2nd Ed" (IE2E). INA and RI are very hands-on, implementation-specific books. IE2E is more concerned with explaining protocols and IPv6 features. In this respect, IE2E is the perfect complement to INA and RI.

Silvia Hagen is clearly an IPv6 fan. I was initially skeptical about IPv6 adoption after reading comments by Daniel J. Bernstein and Renesys' Todd Underwood. I still have concerns, but reading case studies in Ch 10 of actual IPv6 deployments helped me understand the author's enthusiasm. Sylvia is less critical of IPv6 than INA and RI, which share recommendations for real-world usage. I still have serious concerns with security vulnerabilities in autoconfiguration (one of the major "cost savers" of IPv6) and IPSec key management (the other major "improvement" in IPv6, basically requiring PKI). I also believe the emphasis on "end-node protection" (security models, pp 122-3) at the expense of network-level protection is insufficient. Transitioning to IPv6 is also not as easy as IE2E implies, especially for multihomed sites with provider independent address space. (SHIM6 might not be sufficient or workable, and IPv6 doesn't have PIAS.)

The strongest aspect of IE2E is the thorough coverage of IPv6 protocols. Plenty of people like to point to very old TCP/IP books as "the Bibles" of networking, but the world has changed during the last decade. IE2E offers a very strong chapter on Mobile IPv6 and explains how that version is superior to IPv4 (mainly due to Route Optimization). Sylvia's SSH port forwarding trick (p 277) was obvious but something I hadn't considered previously -- very cool. IE2E manages to keep a readable size of around 400 pages by citing plenty of RFCs and drafts, which is smart given the state of the protocols. The book is also very up-to-date and technically accurate, as far as I could tell. I had a minor problem with the author's perceptions of threats and vulnerabilities at the start of the security chapter. She uses the former term but means the latter term.

If you want implementation details, such as commands to run and techniques to try, I recommend INA or RI. If you want to really understand IPv6, I recommend IE2E. Since you should ideally want both sets of skills, you should have at least two IPv6 books on your desk.

Postscript: I suggest the third edition offer the set of network traces featured in IE2E for download, so readers can look at them individually.

I am an engineer who has some know how in IPv6. This book is the best out of what available today in explaining all IPv6 major subjects. Reading this book can give a whole and a clear picture of what is underneath the hood. I used it to read on a topic and only afterwards I referred for the RFC for the details. Other books that I came across do not do a good job as this book is doing. If you want to really understand how things are working in IPv6, this is the book to go!

The book details the IPv6 protocol in excruciating detail, with packet diagrams, etc. It shows the details of addressing, routing, etc. A good book for a developer who is creating an IPv6 protocol stack or an application developer.

However, for system administrators there is only ONE chapter of interest - and that chapter should have been made into an entire book. This chapter details how to start to use IPv6 with Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and others. Each OS is described in a page or two: each should have an entire chapter to itself. Now THAT would be a book worth reading.

If you're a developer, this might be a good book. If you're a sysadmin, forget it.

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

The book is very nicely written! It can be used as a good self-taught text book. It's easy to understand and to learn about IPv6. It can also be used as a reference book. I highly recommend it!

This is an excellent book on IPv6 that does not shy away from providing details at every corner of the protocol. I've seen books in the past with twice the pages but hardly provide a fraction of the information you will find in this book, presented in a concise but comprehensive manner.

It is an excellent resource for IPv6 particularly to readers with background in IPv4. Not only does the author try to highlight the differences between the two protocols (take for example how the new header format has evolved), she also explains the motivation behind each change along the way.

Of course, the author's diligent quotation of all relevant RFCs, including the ones being obsoleted where applicable, turns the book into a valuable "hypertext style" reference for IPv6, where the reader can delve further into particular areas of interest.

This is a very useful book. The Liu book is easy to read, well organized and contains everything you want. You should have some IPV4 background before you start with any IPV6 book, but this is just the right book. If you're new to IPV6, start here.

This book has become required reading for our IPv6 transition team at SRI International. It is one of the newest books which means it is one of the most up to date on the emerging set of IPv6 protocols. Sylvia Hagen throroughly covers all aspects of IPv6 including a very good chapter on security that even goes beyond just covering IPSEC. If you are new to the IPv6 transition, grab this book and begin to familiarize yourself with it. [...].