This post is short and essential.

The are two Internets now: the IPv4 Internet and the IPv6 Internet.

The IPv6 Internet is not related to the IPv4 Internet as you have configured it inside, outside, or at the edge of your Enterprise.
IPv6 is not the next version of the Internet protocol; it is the next Internet.

This is the best way to think about it in order to have a more intuitive feel of what is happening underneath it all.

AND – the two Internets never meet. Meaning they are side by side, and applications can move data between them, but in their essence they are different Internets.

Both Internets move across the same layer 2 and physical links, and the protocols above them largely work the same on both, but they are distinct at layer 3, where addressing and naming and routing and firewalling and flow control and many other Internet-y things happen.

A computer may exist on either or both Internets concurrently; an application may bind a network socket to either or both; but they are entirely separate and unrelated.

You will hear about NAT64 (and some NAT46) and the implicit description that addresses are being translated from 6-to-4. I am sure that is the name that will “win” in the industry, but this is a place where we will stand apart. We are calling it Proxy64 and Proxy46, as that is a more realistic and familiar description of what is actually happening. It is not address “translation” in the long standing sense, it is packet TRANSMOGRIFICATION* (according to rules which are in some ways “NAT-like.”) It pulls the payload out of an IPv6 packet and creates an entirely new IPv4 packet. (Some concepts don’t even translate well between the two; these cases are handled by different sofware anywhere from “poorly” to “confusingly.”)

Cohesive’s VNS3 6.6.x is moving out into customer’s hands and with it, our Proxy64 and Proxy46 plugins for communicating between the two Internets.

Let us know how we can help your teams get connections up and running at cloud edge using IPv6.

(ps. If you are just coming up to speed on IPv6 here is a good primer from Microsoft. The “producer-centric” nature of IPv6 comes through, but is a good summary of the industry description and belief systems (don’t let the ‘dotnet’ in the URL scare you).

*Yes that is a C&H reference