Cisco Live San Diego 2015 – IPv6 “the wrap”

Cisco Live US landed back in San Diego this year and (together with 25,000 others) I packed my bags for a week of technology dialogue and professional excitement. Here is my personal summary of (what is always) one of my favourite weeks of the year.

As we entered the event, IPv6 deployment in the US was sitting at around 18% with the ARIN IPv4 free pool on the brink of total depletion.

Once again this year I was lucky enough to be closely involved in the event: as IPv6 Session Group Manager (together with my colleague Eric Vyncke) we are jointly responsible for reviewing all IPv6 content. Within Cisco Live, IPv6 has risen to a position where we are now reviewing and instilling content in almost every single Breakout and Techtorial that includes IP as a component part. This year our specific reviews touched:

30 Technical Breakouts

3 Techtorials

4 Hands-on Labs

There were many other sessions that made reference to IPv6 but these were the specific sessions Eric and I reviewed.

We also directly insert into the program, and this year we positioned 3 specific IPv6 sessions:

Always on visibility: In-band OAM for IPv6 – BRKRST-2606

Addressing Networking challenges with latest Innovations in IPv6 – BRKRST-2616

How to write an IPv6 Addressing Plan – BRKRST-2667

Here you see the audience listening to “Addressing Networking challenges with latest Innovations in IPv6 – BRKRST-2616” (one of the last sessions offered in San Diego):

This session created a particular “buzz” for a number of reasons:

Mark Townsley did a fantastic job of wrapping up all of the work we have been doing in IPv6-Centric networking since announcing the effort to the world just over a year ago. This was also formally the “debut” of IPv6-Centric at Cisco Live (expect more in future). Follow along via:

Cisco 6Lab

PIRL (Paris)

Cisco Blogs

The IPv6 Technical Breakouts reached a total audience of over 2500 attendees. Looking at the surveys, it seems everyone was very happy with the education delivered.

The audience feedback on these sessions was really nice to read:

A lot of very valuable info

Good info. Well presented.

Great content and great speaker.

Interesting and very well explain

Interesting developments coming in IPv6 with some slick solutions.

This was the best session in Cisco Live 2015.

Great idea having audience to do an address exercise

Liked the exercise at the end. Good content and explanation of things to avoid.

Loved the exercise

My congratulations to all of the Cisco Live IPv6 speakers and thanks to all for their great contributions. In case you missed anything and would like to review recordings of any of the content delivered in San Diego (or for that matter at other Cisco Live Events) then do not forget that content is all archived on line:

Cisco Live 365 Content Archive

San Diego content will appear in early July.

I was also involved in an excellent IPv6 Panel discussing “Experiences with IPv6 Deployment“.

This panel had some great external subject matter experts and practitioners including:

John Jason Brzozowski – Fellow and Chief Architect, IPv6, Comcast Cable

Rich Lewis – IPv6 Product Manager, Oracle Corporation

Stephanie Schuller – Global Infrastructure Architecture & Strategy, LinkedIn

Chip Popiviciu – President and CEO, Nephos6

Ed Horley – Principal Solutions Architect, Groupware Technology

Alain Fiocco – Sr Director, IPv6 High Impact Project, Cisco

Eric Vyncke – Distinguished Engineer, Cisco

Jon Woolwine – Distinguished IT Engineer, Cisco

The panel are all in the picture below:

Among the many interesting topics discussed were:

Address management and assignment

Security

Deployment Best practices

Speaking during the panel Jon Woolwine shared how Cisco rolled out IPv6 internally:

”We were able to absorb most of the cost of our IPv6 deployment by using our existing network lifecycle process to upgrade IOS versions and lay down the proper IPv6 configuration across thousands of network devices”

We asked the audience about the Industry they represented and their specific plans for (and roadblocks to) IPv6 deployment. Some of the feedback captured is shown below. We had a majority of Enterprises in the audience. Over half of our audience had deployed or would deploy IPv6 in the next 18 months with a third of those actually deploying IPv6 within the infrastructure itself.

Later I asked the panel for their personal observations on the session:

Ed Horley observed:

“It is exciting to see the interest in IPv6 that was present in the IPv6 panel session. The questions from the audience were excellent and my fellow panel members had incredible practical knowledge to share. Clearly, there is a shift happening where enterprises are starting to realize the impact that IPv6 might have and are starting to investigate a way forward.”

Chip Popiviciu said:

“The size of the audience, the questions, the interaction and overall energy displayed during this panel highlighted industry’s clear change in perception, interest and prioritization towards IPv6. It is exciting to see IPv6 finally being understood and appreciated for what it really is, a foundational enabler of IT transformation”

Alain Fiocco commented:

“The Internet is now a dual stack global communication system, the debate whether this is going to happen or not, is long over. We did not get questions about “why or when should IPv6 be deployed in my organisation”, it was mainly a discussion about “how”. I believe the audience really appreciated the unfiltered feedback from people who have “done the job” . There is a real sense of urgency, and the realization that it is a lot better to deploy IPv6 on your own terms”

Meet the Engineer was buzzing with meetings (both organised and ad hoc). I had personal involvement in 3 whilst in San Diego. I captured a view of the Meeting Hub area below:

Eric and I also drove IPv6 within the rest of the Cisco Live program. Our span of focus here included:

Ensuring the event runs on IPv6-enabled web platforms

Ensuring the event makes IPv6 available to attendees on the WiFi

Highlighting IPv6 usage in the World of Solutions and DevNet Zones

Leveraging Cisco infrastructures protocols and APIs that support IPv6 including Management, Monitoring, DDOS mitigation, Troubleshooting Configuration and Address Management, Cisco Partners products and solution offerings are critical to help our customers enable and leverage IPv6. Within the World of Solutions over 250 Cisco partners exhibited all that is new and innovative in the networking world and once again we were highlighting IPv6 Enabled demonstrations with the IPv6 Enabled Logo:

We specifically found IPv6 running in many demonstrations including:

Algosec – Security Policy Management

Apcon – Network Monitoring for Data Centres

Bluecat – IPAM, DNS and DHCP

Men & Mice – DNS, DHCP and IPAM Management Solution

Boson Software – Cisco Network Simulation

CPacket – DISTRIBUTED NETWORK VISIBILITY

LogicVein – Configuration Management

F5 – IP Traffic Management

Splunk – making machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone

Arbor – DDOS Protection

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all Partners who enabled IPv6 but these were the ones I personally visited and tagged.

I captured many of these on picture for you to enjoy here.

We also created brand new program for Cisco Live San Diego, which we called IPv6 Ambassadors. The idea was to spread awareness of IPv6 deployment status using the Cisco 6lab site as a vehicle for discussion and learning. Adorned with these cool shirts and jackets carrying the logo of the Cisco 6lab site were a number of my colleagues including Alain Fiocco (rear view !), Tim Martin, Fred Baker and Vernoika McKillop who are shown below:

In total we covered over 39 hours of “Ambassador time” socialising the overall state of IPv6 deployment. Please look for IPv6 Ambassadors in future Cisco Live events.

Cisco Live never stops and is back again in November in Cancun. My personal involvement will resume again shortly as we start planning our content program for Cisco Live Europe in Berlin in February 2016 and of course back in the US in Las Vegas in July where we will continue to raise the flag for IPv6.