becarpenter-book6/20. Further Reading/20. Further Reading.md

# Further Reading

There are massive amounts of information about IPv6 "out there" on the
Internet. Readers should be aware that not all of it is reliable. Very
often, it is out of date, because IPv6 was originally designed in the
1990s and the Internet as a whole has evolved a lot since then, and IPv6
has been updated in consequence.

The definitive source of IPv6 standards, best current practices, and
other technical information is the *latest* RFCs (Requests for Comments)
from the IETF. RFCs are freely available from the
[RFC Editor](https://www.rfc-editor.org/).

*Warning:* obsolete RFCs are never modified or deleted. It is essential
to look at the current status of an RFC before trusting it. For example,
the current status of the 2017 version of the main IPv6 standard is
shown at [this info page](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8200). If
an RFC is marked as "Obsoleted by" it should be ignored - look instead
at the newer RFC that replaces it. Thus, any reference to RFC 2460
should be treated as a reference to RFC 8200.

Even if not obsoleted, an RFC may be "Updated by" one or more newer
RFCs. You need to look at those in addition.

If an RFC is marked as "Proposed Standard", "Draft Standard", "Internet
Standard" or "Best Current Practice (BCP)" it is the result of rough
consensus in the IETF and is a definitive specification. However, that
doesn't override "Obsoleted by" or "Updated by".

If it's marked "Informational", "Experimental", or "Historic", those
words mean exactly what they say.

Any RFC may be marked as having *errata*, the Latin word for errors.
Check them! Often they are trivial, but sometimes they are important.

Here's an attempt to explain this with a diagram:

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    R[RFC x] --> I[Info page]
    I --> O[Obsoleted by RFC y] --> GT[Go to RFC y] --> R
    I --> H[Historic] --> IG[Ignore]
    I --> U[Updated by RFC z] --> AS[Also see RFC z] --> R
    I --> C[RFC is current]
    C --> ER[Has errata] --> V[View errata] --> C
    C --> F[Informational] --> J[Apply judgment]
    C --> E[Experimental] --> J 
    C --> S[Standard] --> L[Follow specification]
    C --> B[BCP] --> L
```

An important RFC is the latest version of
[IPv6 Node Requirements](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp220), which
cites numerous other RFCs. However, at the time of this writing, there
are already at least 12 more recent IPv6 RFCs from the IETF since the
last update of the node requirements. The documents of the main IETF
working groups concerned with IPv6 are listed at the
[6MAN](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/6man/documents/) and
[V6OPS](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/v6ops/documents/) web pages.
Beware of the fact that these pages list unapproved drafts and obsolete
RFCs as well as current RFCs.

In a few cases in this book, we refer to unapproved drafts (usually
known as Internet-Drafts or I-Ds). Officially, it is inappropriate to
use I-Ds as reference material. While sometimes very useful and
up-to-date, such drafts do not have the same status as RFCs and should
not be relied on as stable documents. They have not been thoroughly
reviewed, they may be wrong, and there is a high probability that they
will never be published as an RFC. A draft whose file name starts
"draft-ietf-" has been adopted by an IETF working group, so it has
passed a preliminary review, but it is still a draft, it may still be
wrong, and may never become an RFC.

Drafts whose names do _not_ start "draft-ietf-" are named according
to an agreed
[convention](https://authors.ietf.org/naming-your-internet-draft),
but they have almostly certainly not been adopted by an IETF working group
and should be read with caution. The definitive source of information
about I-Ds is the [IETF data tracker](https://datatracker.ietf.org/).

All I-Ds are open to comment and contain contact information. Feel free
to email their authors or the relevant mailing list.

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    D[draft-*] --> IETF[draft-ietf-*] --> WG[In progress in IETF WG] --> J[Apply judgment]
    D --> IRTF[draft-irtf-*] --> RG[Internet Research Task Force] --> J
    D --> IAB[draft-iab-*] --> B[Internet Architecture Board] --> J
    D --> EDIT[draft-editorial-*] --> E[RFC Series WG] --> J
    D --> X[draft-xyz-*] --> P[Personal work] --> J
```

There are also numerous books, book chapters, and other documents about
IPv6. However, any source that is more than one or two years old is
likely to be out of date in some aspects, and discuss obsolete
deployment options. Here are some starting points:

- [Inessential IPv6](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WohukYWdlFcEaSm-SQtX5Zgrkr-FZiZnfhlvoFi5Bl0/edit).
  This project overlaps in intent with book6 so we will attempt to
  coordinate.

- [The JANET technical guide to IPv6](https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/8349/1/janet-ipv6-technical-guide.pdf)
  (2021)

- [The APNIC IPv6 Fundamentals Course](https://academy.apnic.net/en/course/ipv6-fundamentals)

- Olivier Bonaventure's
  [Computer Networking : Principles, Protocols and Practice](https://beta.computer-networking.info/syllabus/default/protocols/ipv6.html#ip-version-6)
  (2019)

- ISOC's
  [IPv6 Security for IPv4 Engineers](https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/deploy360/ipv6/security/ipv4-engineers/)
  (2019)

- ISOC's
  [IPv6 Security FAQ](https://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/ipv6/security/faq/)
  (2019)

- Graziani, Rick. IPv6 Fundamentals: A Straightforward Approach to
  Understanding IPv6 (2nd edition), Cisco Press, ISBN 978-1587144776
  (2017). A very good book, but 5 years' worth of progress has happened
  since then!

- Great IPv6 blogging from
  [Iljitsch van Beijnum](https://ipv6.iljitsch.com/)

- van Beijnum, Iljitsch.
  [Internet Routing with BGP](https://www.iljitsch.com/2022/11-18-new-e-book-internet-routing-with-bgp.html)
  (2022). This contains a lot about IPv6 inter-domain routing.

- more TBD

## [RFC bibliography](RFC%20bibliography.md)

<!-- Link lines generated automatically; do not delete -->

### [<ins>Back to main Contents</ins>](../Contents.md)