IPv6 Essentials

Acknowledgments

I want to thank all the people who have contributed to this book. First of all, I’d like to thank Hannes Lubich, who is responsible for IT security and architecture at a well-known Swiss private bank and who has taught courses on TCP/IP, Unix, IT security, and IPv6 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology for more than ten years. He is the author of Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. Also many thanks to Stefan Marzohl, who is a Cisco- and Nortel-certified instructor and the author of Chapter 8. A big thank you goes out to Anja Spittler (Maggy). She has spent hours, days, and weeks in our lab setting up SuSE Linux, getting BIND and other services to work, and writing parts of Chapter 9 and Chapter 11. I also want to thank the technical editors who have made this book much better with their invaluable comments, corrections, and clarifications. They were great resources when I was struggling with a topic and needed some answers. The technical reviewers were Patrick Grossetete, who works as a product manager for the Internet Technology Division (ITD) at Cisco, and Neil Cashell, who is a great TCP/IP guy at Novell. He works for the worldwide connectivity support team. Last but not least, thanks to Brian McGehee from Native6Group, who has been working with IPv6 for over two years and has written numerous courses for IPv6. He did the final technical edits and added a lot of useful information to this book. I want to thank Axept AG, a professional Swiss integrator who sponsored this book and supported me in the writing process. Axept AG understands that getting familiar with IPv6 will be an important requirement in the near future. I’d like to thank Cisco for providing an updated router and access to their technical resources, the guys at SuSE for providing software and supporting us in getting our SuSE host ready for IPv6, Microsoft for providing software and information about their implementations, Network Associates for providing Sniffer Pro Software for the trace files, Bob Fink for running the 6Bone web site, Cricket Liu for answering my DNS questions, and Peter Bieringer for running a great Internet resource site and for answering my questions with lightning speed. I also want to thank all the guys at Cyberlink in Zurich. Cyberlink hosts my web site and is working hard to make it accessible over IPv6. So check back on my web site; soon you will find a link to the IPv6-accessible version. I also want to thank all the people in the international working groups. Without their visionary power, enthusiasm, and tireless work, we would not have IPv6 ready.

The events of September 11, 2001 hit the world during my writing of this book. I believe that ultimately, mankind can solve the problems in this world only by understanding that we are all one and that we are all connected. This understanding creates a genuine feeling of responsibility for everything and tolerance for other viewpoints. Connectedness manifests on different levels and in different realities. TCP/IP is the protocol that connects mankind on the physical level of the Internet, which opens the way to being in touch and sharing information and viewpoints all over the world. IPv6 will be the protocol that provides the scalability to take this connectedness and span it even further around the globe, to the countless people in parts of the world who today may not even have a telephone.

A special thank you goes to Jim Sumser at O’Reilly. He has been guiding me through the whole writing process with a lot of enthusiasm, patience, trust, and experience. Thank you, Jim, for being there and thank you for never hassling me when I was already struggling. You made a difference! I also want to thank all the other folks at O’Reilly who contributed to this book, especially Tim O’Reilly, for making this book possible.

I want to thank everybody who was involved when I got into writing books. They helped me get started with something new that now is an important and rewarding part of my business life. These people include Laura Chappell, founder of the Protocol Analysis Group; Stephanie Frank-Lewis, coauthor of my previous TCP/IP book; and Michael Ganser, from Cisco.

I thank my daughter Marina for being patient and supportive when I spent countless evenings and weekends hidden behind my computer and she had to cook her own meals. I wonder whether she is ever going to write a book. And I also thank all my friends and neighbors who were there when I needed them.