IPv6 Administration Guide

Transition Requirements

The transition does not require any global coordination. Your sites and Internet service provider (ISP) can transition at their own pace. Furthermore, an effort has been made to minimize the number of dependencies during the transition. For instance, the transition does not require that routers be upgraded to IPv6 prior to upgrading hosts.

Different sites have different constraints during the transition process. Also, early adopters of IPv6 are likely to have different concerns than production users of IPv6. RFC 1933 defines the transition tools currently available. The rationale for transition is either the lack of IPv4 address space or the required use of new features in IPv6, or both. The IPv6 specification requires 100 per cent compatibility for the existing protocols. Compatibility is also required for existing applications during the transition.

To understand the transition approaches, the following terms have been defined.