IPv4/IPv6 transition with Route Through RRs

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



Basic abstract of the e-mail:
In RFC 1183, an experimental DNS RR type is defined called the Route Through (RT) RR. Although not its original purpose, could this be expanded and used to ease the IPv4 to IPv6 transition?
---

A simple state table gives us 9 possibilities:
# | Endpoint A | Endpoint B
---------------------------
1 | IPv4 only  | IPv4 only
2 | IPv4 only  | IPv4/6
3 | IPv4 only  | IPv6 only
4 | IPv4/6     | IPv4 only
5 | IPv4/6     | IPv4/6
6 | IPv4/6     | IPv6 only
7 | IPv6 only  | IPv4 only
8 | IPv6 only  | IPv4/6
9 | IPv6 only  | IPv6 only

You might argue that some of the entries on the list are duplicates since #4 is just #2 reversed, etc. But I'll leave it as is for now.

Assuming some way to route the native networks:
Case #1: No connectivity problems.
Case #2: Can connect with the IPv4 addresses.
Case #3: Uh-oh.  Need some way to connect.  See below.
Case #4: Can connect with the IPv4 addresses.
Case #5: Can connect with either the IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. (Which one is a different topic and should be branched off from this thread.)
Case #6: Can connect with the IPv6 addresses.
Case #7: Uh-oh.  Need some way to connect.  See below.
Case #8: Can connect with the IPv6 addresses.
Case #9: No connectivity problems.

So, concerning Case #3 and Case #7, which is basically a IPv4 host on one end and a IPv6 host on the other:

If a IPv6-only host wants to connect to a IPv4-only host, could an RT record be used to point the IPv6 machine to a suitable IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway? * Perhaps a company would rather not (or cannot) change over their production IPv4 machines, but don't want to leave IPv6 customers in the dark. They would perform a simple DNS addition along with a gateway of sorts. (Maybe the "gateway" is a paid service of the ISP?) The "gateway" would have an IPv6 address and know how to simply bridge/relay traffic to and from a particular IPv4 address. This would make it very simple to "upgrade" existing IPv4 services to allow IPv6 traffic, without modifying existing systems.

(1) Would something like the above work?
(2) If yes, what would it take to implement?
(3) If no, what is a workable idea that can be implemented? (no reason to respond unless you can suggest an alternative or improvement)
I view those as separate, yet related, discussions.

On the other hand, if an IPv4-only host wants to connect to a IPv6-only host, could an RT record be used to point the IPv4 machine to a suitable IPv4-to-IPv6 gateway? * This scenario is a little trickier since one probably couldn't be able to provide a IPv4-to-IPv6 bridging service for all of their hosts. Plus, I doubt the IPv4 hosts are going to be updated to look for RT records anyway. So, this RT idea doesn't really cover this situation... Perhaps a relay system could be built where a single IPv4 address maps different ports to different IPv6 boxes. For example, port 25 -> IPv6 SMTP server, and port 80 -> IPv6 HTTP server. Either way, that's just a thought and perhaps should be split off into a different thread. There's probably already a name I don't know for what I just described there.

(4) What is the best way to handle IPv4 connecting to IPv6 services? [new thread]


Well, that turned out to be much longer than I thought and took me much too long to write. Let's break this into a bunch of smaller threads so we don't have to read so much with any replies.

Willie

_______________________________________________

Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Index of Archives]     [IETF Annoucements]     [IETF]     [IP Storage]     [Yosemite News]     [Linux SCTP]     [Linux Newbies]     [Fedora Users]