Building an IPv6 Training Plan
Scott HoggPhases of an Enterprise IPv6 Transition
As enterprise organizations embark on their journey to deploy IPv6 they will be following this methodology moving through the various phases, preparing for IPv6 deployment. These phases are documented in the IETF RFC 7381 titled “Enterprise IPv6 Deployment Guidelines” and on our IPv6 project roadmap.
We assume that organizations will need to develop a business case to understand the benefits of using IPv6. This topic was covered in a previous video. At this point the company is now ready to pull together their IPv6 transition team and organize their staff to accomplish this goal.
Assembling an IPv6 Transition Team
Organizations begin assembling their IPv6 Transition Team as the group of individuals who will lead the organization’s IPv6 deployment. This group has many external interfaces with the IT industry at-large, gathering information from standards bodies, and interacting with Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), vendors, partners, suppliers, and customers.
The IPv6 transition team works closely with the internal enterprise to gather requirements, analyze dependencies, find roadblocks, and share IPv6 information and project status as the multi-year program proceeds.
The IPv6 Transition Team should be a cross-functional interdisciplinary team with participation from the various IT departments, IT leadership, and business stakeholders. The members of the IPv6 Transition Team will be leading the charge of IPv6 deployment, leading meetings, and will be developing the architectures, designs, and deployment plans.
Now this team and others within the IT department need to solidify their IPv6 knowledge before they can start to draft up technical plans to prepare for IPv6 implementation and long-term operations.
Providing Teams Training Early On
It is a widely accepted best practice that IPv6 training should be performed early in the project lifecycle. The more IPv6 knowledge that can be provided to IT teams, the more productive all subsequent IPv6 discussions and activities will be.
We also recommend a strategy of “Just in Time” IPv6 training. It is inefficient to train people too far in advance of when they will be actually working on IPv6. We don’t want them to forget what they learned by the time the design and implementation phases arrive. The training plan should be prioritized based on this IPv6 deployment methodology, so the training is sequenced accordingly.
IPv6 Training for Specific IT Roles
As with any new technology, IPv6 requires a learning curve for IT engineering and operations personnel. Existing IT staff must be trained on IPv6 to be able to deploy and operate it. This is because it is difficult to find and hire available IPv6-knowledgeable resources. A better strategy is to invest in existing IT teams because they will be required to deploy IPv6 and operate the IPv6-enabled environment in perpetuity.
IPv6 training must be customized based on the role of the various IT teams. We must consider who needs training, when the training is needed, and what those people need to learn about IPv6 to perform their job functions.
For example, training desktop support personnel early on may be a good idea. Those people are vital to support all the employees who are already using IPv6 when working remotely or using their mobile devices for work activities.
Here’s another example. It may be best to train network engineers early on because they must establish contiguous IPv6 connectivity across the enterprise. They will need training on IPv6 addressing, network design, and receive hands-on experience configuring IPv6 dynamic routing.
Now, security teams need training on IPv6 threats, risks, and protection measures. Security teams may need IPv6 hacking & defending type training. This training helps the security practitioners deploy IPv6 securely right from the start.
Application development teams could be trained later, once the network infrastructure is ready to connect their systems and applications.
Even IT leadership may need training on the business case for IPv6 and how to run a multi-year IPv6 deployment effort.
Considering the Dunning–Kruger Effect
Most people in enterprise IT organizations haven’t yet invested any time educating themselves on IPv6 and how it relates to their job role. Some may feel that IPv6 isn’t that difficult to learn or that they don’t need to learn it.
However, once they commit to learning IPv6 they realize there is more to IPv6 than they expected. IPv6 has subtle differences to the IPv4 they are familiar with. We don’t want them to be overwhelmed by the perceived complexity of IPv6 or intimidated by how IPv6 addresses are represented.
They just need some up-to-date education from a good instructor to pull them out of the “Valley of Despair” to boost their confidence and show them that they can achieve the IPv6 deployment goal.
This is why hands-on interactive training classes are so valuable to empowering IT teams. If done correctly, the training energizes the teams to accelerate their efforts around IPv6.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_Effect_01.svg
Utilizing Bloom’s Taxonomy
You want an IPv6 trainer who is not only a good teacher citing the protocol specifications and details, but someone who can distill the technical concepts into easy-to-understand ideas.
It is preferable to have a teacher who can explain the IPv6 technical details and show the students how these IPv6 functions actually work. This is the cognitive (or knowledge-based) learning objective. The teacher will show how to configure it based on leading best practices. This is the affective (or emotion-based) learning objective.
Participating in a hands-on training experience is essential to reinforce the theory. Our training, of course, covers the theory, the reasons for best practices, configuration details, and then how to confirm IPv6 is working. This is the third psychomotor (or action-based) learning objective.
Our training uses Bloom’s Taxonomy, first covering the technical details and explaining how IPv6 works. Then we apply that to how IPv6 is configured on actual IT systems and analyze how it is operating. Students then build upon this foundation to understand the reasons why certain design decisions and configuration options are preferred in different situations. This prepares the students to create their own IPv6 implementation.
Hogg Networking demonstrates its philosophy of empowering our customers with our technical IPv6 training classes. Through the knowledge transfer process, we prepare IT teams to independently proceed with deployment and the long-term operations of their IPv6-enabled environment.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy#/media/File:Bloom's_revised_taxonomy.svg
Take Advantage of Free and Low-Cost IPv6 Learning Resources
To maximize the organization’s training budget, yet still acquire some initial IPv6 training, the strategy should be to leverage the free and low-cost training options early in the schedule. Later in the schedule, teams can be provided deeper-level hands-on IPv6 training closer to the design, testing, and implementation phases.
The Wikipedia page on IPv6 is a surprisingly good way to get introduced to the protocol. You can freely read all about the protocol and explore many links to the protocol specifications.
There have been many IPv6 books published, but now many of them are a decade old. IPv6, the protocol itself, hasn’t changed over that time so many books are still relevant, but the latest best-practices guidance is available from newer sources.
There are many CBTs on IPv6. These don’t offer hands-on training but are a good way to get introduced to the protocol.
The 5 RIRs periodically offer free online virtual training sessions and sometimes they even have a hands-on configuration component.
Vendor conferences and events may have IPv6-related sessions, and some might even include some hands-on learning options.
There are thousands of articles written about IPv6 that you can learn from. The RIRs have excellent IPv6-related blogs. Use your favorite web browser and search engine to find these.
I’ve written a book on IPv6 Security, created CBTs, delivered numerous free training presentations, and written hundreds of articles on IPv6 dating back to 2007. You can freely get links to these items on my website hoggnet.com.
Hogg Networking IPv6 Training Classes
Once IT teams have absorbed some introductory IPv6 knowledge then they are ready for more in-depth practical hands-on configuration classes.
HoggNet provides technical IPv6 training to teams based on their specific role and job function. Technical teams must understand recommendations and reasoning behind different IPv6 architectural and design decisions as they prepare for implementation.
Hogg Networking offers a wide range of standard IPv6 classes to suit a variety of IT roles, responsibilities, and topics of interest. Our training is virtual, live, and includes hands-on configuration in our world-class IPv6 testing and training laboratory.
We customize the course content to cover specific topics that suit the IT products, services, and software your enterprise uses. We want to maximize the effectiveness of the training and make it as applicable as possible. And we don’t charge extra for these customizations.
IPv6, as a protocol, has been evolving. And how it is being used has changed in the recent decade. Therefore, you want current training that is modern and includes IPv6 best-practice recommendations based on actual implementation experience.
For example, you wouldn’t want the training to include outdated tunneling methods or old advice that is no longer applicable for modern IT environments, topologies and architecture.
Our training covers dual-protocol configuration and testing & troubleshooting and we provide training on implementing IPv6-only networks and environments including DNS64/NAT64, 464XLAT, and IPv6-Mostly deployment configurations.
Selecting an IPv6 Training Partner
You want an expert with at least 10 years of experience consulting and teaching IPv6-specific classes. You want lively demonstrations in an IPv6-enabled network environment.
You want a trainer who is able to customize the training and tailor it to the types of software and equipment that your organization uses. You don’t want to waste your team’s time learning IPv6 configuration on equipment you don’t use in your production environment. Our hands-on lab uses equipment and software from Cisco, Juniper, Arista, HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, F5, Infoblox, Splunk, VMware, AWS, Microsoft, Linux, Apple, Google Android, Intel, and many more vendors and open source software.
Some training companies use training labs that are based in public cloud infrastructure, which doesn’t permit some IPv6 configurations. Cloud-based labs certainly don’t allow for in-depth hacking/defending IPv6 security labs where students are creating crafted packets. Those cloud labs are typically rigid and don’t lend themselves to topology reconfiguration or experimentation. In our classes we encourage students to be adventurous and try new things in our safe isolated sandbox IPv6 lab environment.
Hogg Networking provides these virtual training courses over the Internet using web-based collaboration services. Our classes are live instructor-led, not recorded or canned. Our classes have attendees perform hands-on lab exercises following an extensive student guide that reinforces the presentation materials. Our instructors also perform numerous live demonstrations of working configurations, verification tests, and troubleshooting activities. Attendees not only learn theory but learn actionable configuration skills and methods for verifying the configurations are working as intended.
The IPv6 lab environment is accessible over the Internet. Attendees do not need to install any software on their computers as part of the classes. Each student has their own virtual systems they configure so they do not need to “work as a team” or “with a partner” nor share access to resources. Each student learns at their own pace, and they are also free to explore configurations beyond the student guide instructions.
After the IPv6 training is complete, the attendees are prepared to proceed with developing their architecture and designs. Following the class, the students can begin to build out their proof-of-concept test environments to prepare the low-level configurations that will ultimately be deployed in production.
Feel free to share this article with your colleagues who may be interested in IPv6 training. This article accompanies our video “Building an IPv6 Training Plan”.
Scott Hogg has over 30 years of network and security experience and is president of Hogg Networking (HoggNet.com). Scott Hogg specializes in teaching Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and providing implementation guidance to large organizations. Scott is CCIE #5133 (Emeritus) and CISSP #4610. Scott is Chair Emeritus of the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force (RMv6TF), a member of the Infoblox IPv6 Center of Excellence (COE), and co-author of the Cisco Press book on IPv6 Security.