Many organizations have deployed IPv6 but are not adequately prepared to manage it.

“Organizations should also develop the ability to troubleshoot IPv6 as they are deploying [it] so that they can make the IPv6 deployment sustainable,” noted a recent blog post by networking author, Scott Hogg.

“There are many organizations that have deployed IPv6 at their Internet perimeters, yet they lack the ability to manage the usage of this new protocol. Having the right IPv6-capable management tools will give us the visibility to our IPv6 deployments,” he noted.

There’s the need for an external system on the IPv6-enabled Internet to connect back to validate reachability over native IPv6 transport, and there are several possibilities.

One possibility is an IPv6-capable hosting provider and an IPv6 Internet connected server that can perform this external monitoring. Common tools can then be used, such as Wget, ping, traceroute, nmap, and a host of other tools to validate end-to-end IPv6 reachability. The other option is to use a service that can make IPv6 connections to the IPv6-enabled site.

Also helpful in diagnosing IPv6 issues are looking glasses, which can assist with BGP routing problems. Looking glasses show an external view of the BGP routing advertisements and can test reachability to the IP addresses. Looking glasses are now IPv6 capable and show IPv6 BGP routes and test native IPv6 Internet reachability.

Monitoring that IPv6-enabled e-mail servers are operating properly is also important. Businesses can test their IPv6-enabled e-mail server with several E-mail reflectors that can check for IPv6 connectivity.

While these solutions bring IPv6 visibility, it is also necessary to have network management tools that are IPv6 capable. These tools typically communicate to the network devices and servers over IPv4 or IPv6 transport and can perform communications to those devices and servers regarding their IPv6 configuration, performance and status. ManageEngine (News - Alert) is one notable network management provider for this task.

An IPv6-capable management system is just one piece of the puzzle, though. For many businesses, their management system is located on IPv4-only administrative networks.

“These admin and Out-of-Band (OOB) networks are IPv4-only and do not have direct connectivity to the perimeter systems that are actively using IPv6,” noted Hogg. “Therefore, the NMS (network management system) is not able to natively test connectivity to the DMZ. However, this is not necessarily a show-stopper because the NMS could still make SNMP queries over IPv4 transport for IPv6 MIB information.”

However, NetFlow flow export data that includes information about IPv6 flows can be sent over IPv4 UDP (News - Alert) to the NetFlow collector system, according to Hogg. SSH over IPv4 transport can be used to reach a router configured for IPv6, and the system can communicate to the IPv6-enabled devices over IPv4 transport if the system is able to discover that the device is using IPv6.

It is thus not enough to have IPv6 in place. It also needs proper troubleshooting and maintenance, and a network management system can be tailored to do just that.