[May 27, 2008 Update: The E-Business Suite is now certified to be IPv6-compatible; see this announcement for details.]
[May 9, 2007 Update: As of today, this article still represents our latest status on IPv6 certification for the E-Business Suite, for both Release 11i and 12. We have been briefed on the US Federal requirements for the 2008 changeover. Aside from those US governmental organizations, if you haven't already contacted us about your IPv6 requirements, please drop me a line.]
IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4").
Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet.
IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.
Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet.
IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.
Certification Plans for the E-Business Suite
Certification of the E-Business Suite with IPv6 is in the queue for evaluation and feasibility analysis, but we don't have any commitments or timelines that we can share at this point.
Help Influence Our Priorities
If your organization is committed to migrating IPv6, please add a comment to this article or drop me an email with the details, including timelines and how you expect this to affect your E-Business Suite deployments. Your feedback helps us prioritize this certification for future releases.
Comments (12)
DoD is requiring full IPv6 support for the DoD networks June 30, 2008. We run the DoD civilian personnel system on eBS. We use HP hardware and will have to upgrade to Release 12 for Itanium support and need to have support for IPv6. Dual stack will be supported for a short period of time. I am surprised you have not had any other comments on this but IPv6 is required and there is a timeline we must adhere to.
Thanks,
David
Posted by David Long | October 16, 2006 9:04 AM
Posted on October 16, 2006 09:04
David,Thanks for the additional background on IPv6. We've been contacted offline by the Oracle account teams for various DoD divisions about this requirement, and we're taking that deadline into account as part of our planning and prioritization activities.I will post an update on our plans for IPv6 on this site as they become available.Regards,Steven
Posted by Steven Chan | October 16, 2006 11:26 AM
Posted on October 16, 2006 11:26
Thank you Mr. Chan. We are developing a test bed in Jan 07 for IPv6 to begin the process of wringing out our infrastructure and running eBS 11i in dual stack IPv4/IPv6 mode. Our customer is very interested in meeting the DoD schedules.
Thanks,
David
Posted by David Long | October 17, 2006 12:35 PM
Posted on October 17, 2006 12:35
I wanted to add that our Program Office has already required and procured Oracle eBS with IPv6 support. We are implementing a test sandbox and would be interested in being updated on your progress.
Posted by Matt Morrisey | December 5, 2006 2:41 PM
Posted on December 5, 2006 14:41
Matt, thanks for letting us know about your requirements. I've been tracking everyone's responses here, and will post an update on this certification as soon as I have more details.Regards,Steven
Posted by Steven Chan | December 5, 2006 2:43 PM
Posted on December 5, 2006 14:43
Any further movement on this?
Posted by David Long | March 29, 2007 12:12 PM
Posted on March 29, 2007 12:12
David, I don't have any notable progress to report on this front, unfortunately.One of the options that we're discussing is putting an Apache 2.0 (IPv6-compatible) listener in front of the E-Business Suite's Apache 1.3 (IPv4) listeners in a reverse-proxy configuration. Can you comment on how the US DoD would view such an architecture?Regards,Steven
Posted by Steven Chan | March 30, 2007 11:33 AM
Posted on March 30, 2007 11:33
Steven,
Thanks for keeping up on this. As the Chief Architect for our program, I think the architecture with a reverse proxy would be OK. However, I guess you mean to have the proxy translate the IPv6 addresses to IPv4. If that means the internal network would have to be configured with IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, that would not work. It looks like all networks will be IPv6 native so the reverse proxy for eBS applications (on the same server) would work as long as the database to eBS connections would be IPv6. Wouldn't that be an issue? Also, wouldn't the reverse proxy put an extra load on the applicaiton servers?
Thanks, David
Posted by David Long | April 12, 2007 3:57 PM
Posted on April 12, 2007 15:57
David,Thanks for your feedback on that option. I've passed your comment along to our architects for this area. Although there would be some additional load on the reverse proxy for this translation, the bigger issue is that the internal network will also be configured for the dual IPv4/IPv6 stack. Since you note that this wouldn't work, I suspect that this means that the proxy approach will be ruled out as the definitive solution. I'll provide more details on next steps as soon as possible.Regards,Steven
Posted by Steven Chan | April 13, 2007 11:03 AM
Posted on April 13, 2007 11:03
Steven,
It was nice to talk with you directly yesterday. As I said, the reverse proxy is ruled out as a solution for us. I will be interested in the architects for this area's next idea.
I find your blog extremely useful and point many people to the good information you provide.
Thanks,
David
Posted by David Long | April 26, 2007 4:50 PM
Posted on April 26, 2007 16:50
Hi Steven
do you have any latest update about IPv6 certification.
We sell our products to US Government and we need to certify our products on IPv6. We are storage solution provider. We also use E-Business Suite as our business application.
Please provide an update.
Thanks
shan
Posted by Shantanu Choudhury | January 15, 2008 5:26 PM
Posted on January 15, 2008 17:26
Hi, Shantanu,Our IPv6 certification efforts for the E-Business Suite are still underway. We're investigating two distinct options at this point, the first involving dual-stack reverse proxy servers, and the second involving a fully-native IPv6 rearchitecture. I don't have any more details that I can share at this point, but you're welcome to monitor this blog for updates. I'll post more here as soon as possible.Regards,Steven
Posted by Steven Chan | January 17, 2008 10:35 AM
Posted on January 17, 2008 10:35