Demystifying IPv6

For nearly 20 years now, the Internet has been based on Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). As IP address allocation becomes limited there are now estimates that the IPv4 addressing will be exhausted sometime between 2010 and 2012. Transition to IPv6 is being touted as the answer to this problem.

Internet users are becoming more sophisticated. General users can now create their own websites, blogs and other information to share through the Internet. But it’s much broader than that; our homes are becoming connected as well. The ability to control your cable box remotely through the Internet, using technology like ‘slingbox,’ requires each device to have its own IP address. New homes are being built with technology to enable owners to remotely turn on their ovens, monitor the temperature of their refrigerators and homes, turn on lights and more – again, each device requiring a unique IP address. Our mobile phones, with Internet, video and email capabilities require IP addresses, and we haven’t even touched on the requirements of businesses small and large around the world. With each new connected device that is ‘born,’ an IP address is required. With this type of growth and end-user adoption it is no wonder that industry experts think the IPv4 address system will be exhausted.

So what is IPv6 and how does it solve problems for Internet communication?

In 1991, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recognized that IPv4 has limitations and would need to be updated to meet the growing demand of users. At the time, the new version of IP was called IPng (Next Generation) or IPv6 (version 6). By 1994, the IETF provided a clear direction for IPv6 development and ultimately targeted the deployment for 1998. This deployment was delayed many times because people more effectively used the IP addresses they had and used NAT (Network Address Translation) to limit the addresses needed.

“IPv4’s dependence on and success with NAT within the consumer or SOHO marketplace has been at a cost,” says Martin Levy, Director IPv6 Strategy for Hurricane Electric. “Most commercial peer-to-peer applications, such as WebEX, Skype, Xbox LIVE or similar programs go to enormous efforts to work around NAT’ed networks.  IPv6 resolves those issues and provides a clean mechanism to facilitate that kind of networking.”

IPv6 serves the same inherent functions as IPv4 but without some key limitations. In a nutshell, there are five major differences between IPv4 and IPv6:

• Addressing and routing
• Security
• Network Address Translation
• Administrative Workload
• Support for Mobile devices

These key changes allow for IPv6 to provide the functionality outlined in Table 1 (next page).

According to ARIN’s IPv6 online WIKI, the following is a list of native IPv6 Global Service Providers:

• Hurricane Electric (US, Europe, Asia)
• Global Crossing
• NTT Communications (fka NTT/Verio) (Asia, Europe, US, Australia)
• Teleglobe
• Tiscali : selling IPv6 worldwide
• Flag (Asia)
• TeliaSonera IC (native in select cities, via Layer2 tunneling in others)
• LambdaNet Communications
• Tele2 / SWIPNet (Europe, US)

You can also get IPv6 services from companies like Telx who resell the services of other IPv6 providers.

IPv4 managed address allocation inefficiently, manually and with limitations associated with a 32-bit address. IPv6 addresses (pun intended) this issue by expanding addresses from 32-bits to 128-bits. This new address system should be able to provide enough addresses to every customer so that every IP device has a truly unique address.

Since 128-bit addresses are larger to manage than the traditional 32-bit addresses, it was important for IPv6 to provide a simplified process to read and write these addresses. One of the features that IPv6 offers is the ability to create its own unique address. In addition, with the introduction of Service Location Protocol (SLP), which allows computers and other devices to find services in a local area network without prior configuration, this feature provides network administrators with a simplified ‘plug and play’ model for their corporate local area networks (LANs).

“The demand for IPv6 is coming from research networks, government and government contractors,” states Paolo Gambini, CMO of Tiscali International Networks (TINet). “There is some adoption among corporate customers but there is no clear business case.  Most telecom companies and ISPs are just waiting for a stronger market demand.” 

But Gambini says the transition to IPv6 should not be ignored.  “Planning for IPv6 should begin now,” he adds. “We recommend that companies do not invest in new equipment that cannot do IPv6.  We see too many telecom companies and ISPs already behind schedule in planning for an efficient transition to IPv6.  We predict that by 2020 the Internet will be all IPv6.”

IPv4 was not designed to handle the astronomical user base growth and its associated addressing needs that we are seeing today.  “End-users, when joining the global Internet via their local ISPs, require unique addressing with some reprieve coming from technologies like NAT, as baroque as it is,” says Levy of Hurricane Electric. “Only IPv6 provides the full relief required to overcome this amazing growth of customer base. IPv6 also provides end-users, enterprises, web-properties and telecom companies added capabilities that don’t exist within the realm of IPv4.  IPv6 has well defined multicast support, IPSEC at the packet level, Mobile-IPv6 addressing models and more!  Any-node-to-any-node IPv6 communications, using its massive addressing scheme, also provides solutions and new business models for applications like distributed sensors or monitoring.”

To move to IPv6 you need both a transition plan and a way to run IPv4 at the same time. At the end of the day, the transition to IPv6 will happen; it’s just a matter of when. So be prepared: know that your equipment can support IPv6, put IPv6 in your plans, pay close attention to regulations in this area, begin to do some testing and stay abreast of entities like the IPv6 taskforce that try to keep ahead of the trends in this area. IP

Rose Klimovich is vice president, product development and product management at telx. She can be reached at rklimovich@telx.com.