IPv6 Study Guide for the CCNP Route Exam

What You Need to Know about IPv6 Implementation for the CCNP Route Exam

There are certainly a large number of topics that need to be studied to successfully ROUTE exam to help you better prepare for this portion of the 642-902 exam.

I hope that this article will give you some direction when studying IPv6 for the Cisco ROUTE exam. Let’s take a brief look at the main topics that you will have to be familiar with to be successful with the IPv6 material that is covered on the ROUTE exam.

IPv6 Address

The IPv6 address is a whole new beast compared to the much more familiar IPv4 address that has been used for the last 30 years; it is 128 bits, is notated in hex and just looks confusing. When studying for the ROUTE exam, it is very important to be familiar with the IPv6 address, its structure and how it can be notated; keep in mind a single IPv6 address can be notated a number of different ways using substitution and omission rules. Be familiar with all of these as questions will be asked about this specifically.

The other part of IPv6 addresses that will definitely be on the ROUTE exam is how to enable IPv6 routing and configuring IPv6 addresses (statically and dynamically). IPv6 addresses can be assigned in a number of ways including methods that are not provided with IPv4 (stateless autoconfiguration), make sure to be familiar with these for the exam.

IPv6 Address Types

If you’re familiar with IPv4, then you’re used to seeing unicast, multicast and broadcast address types. IPv6 makes use of the unicast and multicast address types in the same ways as IPv4; it does however differ in that it does not support broadcasts. The duties that have traditionally used the broadcast address type in IPv4 have been substituted either by directed unicast or the new Anycast address type. The Anycast address type is used to locate and use the closest device utilizing the anycast address.

Inside these three main address type categories there are also sub-types that a candidate must be familiar with including: Global Unicast Addresses, Link-Local Addresses, and Site-Local Addresses.

IPv6 Routing Protocols

Just as a candidate must be familiar with IPv4 routing protocols they must also be familiar with IPv6 routing protocols. Most of the concepts that have been learned for these protocol implementations using IPv4 are the same so learning the additional requirements for an IPv6 implementation should not be that much of a stretch. Make sure to reserve some amount of time to configure these concepts in a lab environment (or dynamips).

IPv4/IPv6 Address Transition

Part of a wider scale implementation of IPv6 is transitioning IPv4 networks to IPv6 and providing a communications method between IPv4 and IPv6 devices. There are a number of different methods that can be used to provide this capability; many of these are covered in the ROUTE exam. The following topics are covered on the exam; ensure a familiarity with the concepts and application (configuration) of these concepts.

• Dual Stack
• Manual IPv6 Tunnels
• GRE Tunnels
• 6to4 Tunnels
• IPv4 Compatible Tunnels
• ISATAP Tunnels
• NAT-PT

Summary

Hopefully, the content in this article will help you get a good direction when studying for the IPv6 portion of the Cisco ROUTE exam. Keep in mind that while there is a lot of material covered on this exam, it is an achievable task and can be completed successfully.

More Related Posts

1. Cisco CCNP ONT (642-845) Exam Guide
2. How to Implement IPv6 and Configure a Cisco Router to Use IPv6
3. Do You Have What It Takes To Pass Your CCNP ISCW Exam?
4. Cisco Revises CCNP: BSCI, BCMSN, ISCW and ONT Exams Retire
5. CCVP vs CCNP Voice: Exam Comparison