BHEL Chennai’s Successful IP v6 Migration

The company had to comply with stringent Govt of India guidelines on IP addressing, so it undertook this arduous task of migrating their network from IPv4 to IPv6

The Challenge

As per Government of India guidelines, and their corporate directions, BHEL Chennai planned to migrate their network from IPv4 to Ipv6. 

Thangaraj-Maruthupillai

The permanent solution was deemed to be a redesign of the Internet Protocol itself. The company’s CTO was faced with the task of maintaining the uptime 99.999 percent

in addition to ensuring data security, while achieving business goals and customer satisfaction (both internal and external).

The Implementation

The address size was increased from 32 to 128-bits or 16 octets. The new address space provides the potential for a maximum of 2128, or about 3.403×1038 addresses. BHEL Chennai is the first among all BHEL units to complete the IPv6 migration on all areas listed below:

WAN (Public) Side:

• Email Server

• Webserver

• Firewall

• Antispam Appliance

• Proxy server

LAN Side:

• ADS Servers

• Intranet Webserver

• PCs

• Switches, Routers, etc.

All the above were made possible by:

1. Establishing Firewall Technology: A dedicated firewall with high availability has been established in the network to achieve the following:

• Avoid external threats through ISP lines.

• Intrusion prevention.

• IP spoofing can be prevented.

• Content Filtering and unwanted ports can

be locked.

• 99.9% assured uptime.

2. Establishing Email SPAM Filter: A dedicated SPAM Filter Appliance has been established in the network to achieve the following:

• 100% SPAM free Incoming and Outgoing Mail is assured.

• Virus free Email is also assured

• 99.9% uptime assured.

• Black listing of domain name is avoided since virus and spam free environment has been achieved.

• Attachment scanning and filtering can also be done.

3. Establishing Anti-Virus Server to improve threat free Desktop and Server environment to achieve the following:

• 100% virus free Desktop and Server environment

is assured.

• Data security is assured and vulnerability attacks can be prevented.

• 99.9% uptime assured.

• Hardware safety and data transfer control also assured.

• User satisfaction is assured.

4. IPv6 Enabled Servers & Services @ BHEL Piping Centre:

In order to support IPv6 services, the application servers need to be enabled for supporting IPv6. Initially at-least DNS and Web Server(s) should be configured to support IPv6.

The Benefits:

After IPv6 implementation, the entire network works on WAN concept and unique identity. So all threats are covered and the network became 100 percent free from all threats. Only very few companies have enabled complete email communication through IPv6 channel and BHEL Chennai is the first among BHEL units to accomplish this.