Enterprise Features

D-Day is Coming for the IPv6 Transition: Are You Prepared?

by admin

This is a guest post from Asif Hazarika, Senior Director Product Management at IP Infusion Inc.

The Internet as we know it today is in many ways now a legacy system unsuitable for the demands of the continuing exponential growth of users, traffic and traffic types. In fact, the original design for the Internet Protocol (IPv4) is already more than 20 years old. IPv4 is based on 32-bits and little did the founders know that in the next two decades, the meaning of the Internet would change dramatically. It has become a highway of information exchange.

The number of IP devices has experienced incredible growth over the years and thus we are close to using up all of the addresses that IPv4 addressing can support. IPv4 depletion has long been discussed amongst Internet service providers as a problem we’ll deal with in the future. But just this week, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigned two of the remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Asia Pacific Network Information. Although this announcement doesn’t signal the end of the world for IPv4, we know that when it comes to transitioning to Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), the future is upon us.

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) has been developed to support the growing need for additional IP addresses brought about by the decreasing availability of address space for IPv4. Today, we are seeing a substantial increase in demand for more IP addresses, and the adoption of IPv6, due to the exponential growth of smartphones and new wireless technology such as LTE and WiMAX. As the Internet quickly runs out of available IPv4 addresses, there is a need for IPv4 and IPv6 networks to coexist, giving network providers’ legacy support for IPv4 and rapid transition and deployment to transition to IPv6.

We understand that the transition to IPv6 is a must, as most of the regions of the world will run out of IPv4 addresses in the coming year due to the worldwide growth of the Internet and the increasing use of information appliances, especially in ASEAN countries. IPv6 addressing provides an important solution as an alternative to IPv4, and has brought about the diversification of IP address environments.

The success of IPv6 adoption relies on a seamless mechanism for transporting IPv6 over IPv4 and IPv4 over IPv6. Operators urgently need not only to introduce new IPv6 infrastructure, but also to manage the traffic in mixed IPv4 and IPv6 environments. As networks transition to IPv6, legacy support for IPv4 is imperative.

Companies such as IP Infusion will help enable this transition for network providers through innovative tunneling technologies. Tunneling enables the interconnection of IP clouds so that separate IPv6 networks can be integrated through a native IPv4 service by means of a tunnel.

IPv6 packets are encapsulated by a border router prior to transportation across an IPv4 network and decapsulated at the border of the receiving IPv6 network. Eventually, these tunnels will be used to link the outstanding IPv4 clouds through the IPv6 infrastructure. IPv4 tunneling increases the latency as it traverses the packet through an IPv6 network for latency sensitive traffic, such as mobile backhaul networks, a translation protocol works better since it can be done with minimal time delay.

IPv6 has a bright future. The question is when, not if it will arrive. From our point of view…the future begins now.

Since its inception in 1999, IP Infusion has pioneered the development of solutions for IPv4 and IPv6 technologies, and has carried out extensive testing with Japanese carriers. IP Infusion’s ZebOS Rapid Deployment forwards IPv6 traffic though IPv4 networks, and vice versa and is based on 6rd (IPv6 rapid deployment) and 4rd specifications which are published as a Request for Comments (RFC) by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

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