IPv6 Network Administration (Paperback)

by David Malone (Author), Niall Richard Murphy (Author)
Key Phrases: deployment plans, hop limit, address architecture, Red Hat, Packet Too Big, Programming Example (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
What once seemed nearly impossible has turned into reality. The number of available Internet addresses is now nearly exhausted, due mostly to the explosion of commercial websites and entries from an expanding number of countries. This growing shortage has effectively put the Internet community--and some of its most brilliant engineers--on alert for the last decade. Their solution was to create IPv6, a new Internet standard which will ultimately replace the current and antiquated IPv4. As the new backbone of the Internet, this new protocol would fix the most difficult problems that the Internet faces today--scalability and management. And even though IPv6's implementation has met with some resistance over the past few years, all signs are now pointing to its gradual worldwide adoption in the very near future. Sooner or later, all network administrators will need to understand IPv6, and now is a good time to get started. IPv6 Network Administration offers administrators the complete inside info on IPv6. This book reveals the many benefits as well as the potential downsides of this next-generation protocol. It also shows readers exactly how to set up and administer an IPv6 network. A must-have for network administrators everywhere, IPv6 Network Administration delivers an even-handed approach to what will be the most fundamental change to the Internet since its inception. Some of the other IPv6 assets that are covered include:

• routing
• integrated auto-configuration
• quality-of-services (QoS)
• enhanced mobility
• end-to-end security

IPv6 Network Administration explains what works, what doesn't, and most of all, what's practical when considering upgrading networks from the current protocol to IPv6.

About the Author
Murphy has been involved with the Internet since 1995, when he and many others founded the UCD Internet Society. His current abiding interest is using wireless networking to fix the doldrums that are fixed-line end-user telecomms in Ireland.

Malone is a researcher in Maynooth University. He has been involved with Unix systems administration since 1994 and has been a committer on the FreeBSD project since 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (March 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009348
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009342
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #463,034 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The IPv6 book for those waiting to learn about IPv6, August 10, 2005

By	Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity.com" (Metro Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

IPv6 Network Administration is an absolutely first-rate technical guide. It is refreshing to read a book that doesn't waste time by assuming the reader has no networking background. IPv6 Network Administration achieves just the right balance between history, theory, and practical application to serve the needs of administrators and interested readers. If you've been waiting for the right resource from which to learn IPv6, this book is it.

The preface, a less than useful part of many books, offers an interesting history of IPv6 development. Rather than assume IPv4 is worthless, ch 1 and 2 debate IPv4's merits; ch 1 is anti-IPv4 and ch 2 is pro-IPv4. In ch 3 we learn IPv6 details, and here the authors' writing style and judgement shines. They avoid describing every detail of IPv6, and instead summarize or present just the important parts of the protocol. This technique could have earned the book the title "Practical IPv6".

Another smart choice made by the authors involves relating IPv6 concepts in IPv4 terms, where possible and appropriate. For example, ch 3 shows how neighbor solicitation fulfills a role similar to ARP. It will be many years before any student of networking will have to ignore learning IPv4, so I appreciate authors who speak in familiar terms.

Beginning in ch 5 and elsewhere, the authors make a third excellent decision. Rather than just present a Linux command reference and a Windows command reference, they present syntax for many operating systems and networking devices. This must have taken a decent amount of research, but such level of detail makes the work accessible to a wide audience. I found the use of FreeBSD in repeated examples to be particularly appealing.

The authors are not shy about saying what works and what doesn't when IPv6 is involved. In ch 7 they present some novel ways to work around certain issues, e.g., using netcat6 for port forwarding IPv6 traffic. They even show programming examples and outline new aspects of the sockets API to handle IPv6 addressing in ch 8.

Finally, IPv6 Network Administration presents workable ways for admins to give IPv6 a try, such as 6to4 and other tunnel methods. Almost anyone with a public IP address should be able to experiment with IPv6 thanks to the book's directions. Given that I operate multiple IPv6-capable systems in my lab, I was able to test some of the book's commands using link-local addressing (described in the text).

In brief, this is a must-have book for all network administrators. Even if you never intend to deploy IPv6, you should understand it as a professional technician. As a personal observation, I see many opportunities for intruders to exploit misconfigurations, poor coding, and various complexities in IPv6 (such as the huge variety of addresses assigned to single machines). IPv6 Network Administration will help get an IPv6 network running, at least to the point where administrators can begin becoming familiar with this new network protocol.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book contains no info on OpenBSD OS and its dual stack, February 28, 2007

By	David Feustel (Fort Wayne, IN USA) - See all my reviews

I'm reading both this book and _IPv6 Essentials, 2nd Ed._
Both of these books are good. but those interested in
IPv6 for OpenBSD will probably find IPv6 Essentials more
useful since this book does not mention OpenBSD at all, whereas the Essentials book
describes details of enabling optional ip6 features in OpenBSD (OpenBSD comes with
both ip4 and ip6 enabled by default) and even mentions OpenBSD
in the index.

Proofreading at OReilly is slipping. I have encountered
grammatical errors in the text that make me wonder if
English is the native language of the proofreader(s).

Also, note that O'Reilly appears to have severed
all email links to the rest of the world. The email addresses given in OReilly books no longer work,
(I tried to send this info to O'Reilly using the email address given in the book but the email bounced.)

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor treatment of IPv6 itself, halfway decent for IPv4 to IPv6 transition options, June 11, 2009

By	Alfred S. Jones "Networking Geek" (Falls Church, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book to understand IPv6 so I know the meaning behind the various vendor-specific IPv6 knobs I will have to tweak in the near future, e.g. Cisco, Microsoft, *nix etc. I was misled by the "..Network Administration" in the title. Which, to me, usually represents a book with how-tos - and relevant rationale - pertaining to IPv6 on various platforms. A better title for this book is: "IPv6 - Planning Your Transition".

What I got instead was sort of a relaxed technical rambling from a couple of guys that clearly know IPv6 but don't know the next thing about how to teach others about it. (Think of two super-qualified IPv6 experts musing aloud about IPv6 while sitting in comfy leather chairs, wearing cardigans with elbow patches, beside a crackling fireplace, in a mountain cabin, in snowy weather.) I suffered through two whole chapters of the obligatory pros and cons of IPv4 at the beginning only to see IPv6's workings disposed off in a single chapter. Albeit with promises that we would "..get down to the juicy details later in Chapters 4 and 6." No such luck I'm afraid.

The book also suffers from a particularly acute case of let-me-tell-why-this-is-great that most engineers suffer from when asked to explain what they've come up with. Here's a quote from chapter 3's second paragraph to illustrate the point:

"When we talk about networking protocols in general it's important to understand the difference between specification and implementation."

Ummm, yes, if you are implementing the blasted thing. Not so much if you are a technical user of it. I knew I was in trouble after this point in the book.

So I excused myself, left the mountain cabin and took the cable car back into town. I hightailed it to the nearest bookstore and bought myself "Understanding IPv6, Second Edition" by Joseph Davies from Microsoft Press. Now here is a book that disposes off the obligatory IPv4 pros and cons in a couple of pages and gets to the meat of the matter in no time, i.e the actual workings of IPv6, its fields, their meanings and how they are used. As an added bonus, this book also does a great job of covering IPv6 transition options.

Buy "Understanding IPv6, Second Edition" and save your money. Or better, send me a postage paid book envelope and I'll send you my copy of "IPv6 Network Administration".