Deepak Jain wrote:
I would think if you find something that tracks IPv6, that's all you need. You can represent the whole IPv4 space with IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, :ffff:a.b.c.d.
This is certainly true. Let's not forget that a simple thing that strips the :ffff: and converts the remaining bits from hex to decimal (at least visually) would be needed to keep the clue impaired up and running. :)
Any application which is visualizing IPv4 adresses using either ::ffff:x.x.x.x or ::x.x.x.x is wrong(tm). Those addresses should never ever be shown to the user or used in any way as a textual representation (that includes for instance logfiles, XML files, and other such things). Using them for internal storage (thus so that you only need a 128bit item in your structs) is of course perfectly fine and most likely a smart thing to do. If you find an application which does this, don't hesitate to kick the coders to fix their stuff.
The point remains, IPv6 is clearly becoming an operational topic for NANOG so the standard suite of tools we've finally gotten to some level of decency need to be upgraded or adjusted to support v6.
As for the tool do to this, the best tool is the one you will write yourself and which fully integrates into your existing management setup (people do have those I hope for them, the point for IT after all is to make our work less by creating a lot of stuff ;) Greets, Jeroen