Still apprehensive about IPv6?

If you heard that DirectAccess or Unified Remote Access uses IPv6, then that is correct. However, even if you know nothing about IPv6, don't fret. Unified Remote Access does indeed use IPv6, but it also has several transition technologies, which means that you do not have to change anything on your network. Unified Remote Access works seamlessly with virtually any resource, whether it is fully IPv6 capable or IPv4-only. In addition, you do not have to learn a lot about this new technology to deploy, use, or support Unified Remote Access. We would still encourage you to learn the basics of IPv6, and we will discuss this in the first chapter of this book, but strictly speaking, you can get by fine without this.

In case you're wondering, the reason for going with IPv6 is not just to be cool. One of the goals of Unified Remote Access is to allow remote clients to be managed by the administrator as long as they are powered on (even with the user not logged on to the system). This should be possible with the clients in a variety of public and private networks, and behind different firewalls. IPv6 addressing gives the administrator the ability to reach to those clients no matter where they are, and without the user initiating any connection. This allows the administrator to reach to those remote clients and keep them updated with corporate policies, and ensure the clients stay healthy. Another advantage of this technology is that it takes care of the age-old problem where a user's home network uses the same IP subnet as the corporate network. With IPv6, this situation no longer causes problems with the remote connection.