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IPv6 in RFIs/Tendering Processes

In one of our customer environments each vendor offering an IT product/solution is asked to fill out a questionnaire collecting information on a number of technical parameters with regard to their product[s]. We were recently asked to come up with a proposal of 8 to 10 IPv6-related questions to be added to the questionnaire/process. Here’s what we suggested:

When displaying, storing or exporting IP addresses, can your solution correctly handle IPv6 addresses of all types (link-local, ULAs, GUAs)?
When receiving IP addresses as input or processing them (e.g. in a database), can your solution correctly handle IPv6 addresses of all types (link-local, ULAs, GUAs) and of variable length?
Does your solution implement RFC 5952 in the sense that input (of IPv6 addresses) can be in any format, but output (e.g. in log files) follows the RFC 5952 recommendation?
Can your solution handle both A and AAAA records from DNS?
Does your solution use link-local or GUAs/ULAs for intra-subnet communication? Which is the default and can both types of addresses be configured?
Does your product/offering comply with any of the profiles in the ripe-554 requirements specification?
[http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-554]
Do all security-related functions of your solution (e.g. traffic filtering/ACLs, blacklisting, logging) fully support IPv6, with performance being equal to that of IPv4?
Do all implementations of management interfaces & protocols (SNMP, syslog etc.) used within your solution fully support IPv6?
Does your solution have a built-in webserver? Can this be configured to listen on an IPv6 address and has it been tested to successfully work in an IPv6-only or dual-stack setting?
Has your solution been thoroughly tested in an IPv6 only or in a dual-stack setting? Please provide proper test documentation.
In dual-stack settings which approach (e.g. Happy Eyeballs as of RFC 6555) does your solution follow as for preferring IPv6 over IPv4 or vice versa? Can this be configured/adjusted if needed?

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Maybe for some of you this may serve as initial input when being confronted with the same task. Feel free to provide any feedback or further additions used in your organisation.

Best

Enno

Comments

  1. Hey Enno,

    Very nice – thanks for sharing. One question on the last item:
    In dual-stack settings which approach (e.g. Happy Eyeballs as of RFC 6555) does your solution follow as for preferring IPv6 over IPv4 or vice versa? Can this be configured/adjusted if needed?

    Wondering why you didn’t include RFC 6724? Perhaps something like:
    In dual-stack settings which approach (e.g. Happy Eyeballs as of RFC 6555 and default address selection as of RFC 6724) does your solution follow as for preferring IPv6 over IPv4 or vice versa? Can this be configured/adjusted if needed?

    Apologies if I’m missing the obvious,
    –Jim

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