Following World IPv6 Day, which marked the worldwide commercial launch of the new Internet Protocol on June 6, many questions came up since IPv6 is more complex and involves telecom operators, content providers and manufacturers in promoting the large scale use of the new protocol that will replace IPv4. Major ISPs, home router vendors and websites will begin offering their services using IPv6, while still supporting the current IPv4 standard.
Follow RCR Wireless Americas on Twitter: @RCRAmericas and subscribe to our free periodic newsletters
According to Chris Busch, chief technical officer at Incognito Software, the impact will be huge. “From a high-level perspective, the size of IPv6 is directly related to the size of worldwide broadband—both fixed and mobile markets combined,” he said.
It is difficult to place a price tag on how much investment would be necessary for every player to update their infrastructure to IPv6, but Busch believes that tens of millions of dollars have already been spent. “The reality for operators across the industry seems to be that core network systems are IPv6-ready now,” he said. “Most access networks are prepared to operate in dual stack, meaning that they support both IPv4 and IPv6 service.”
Busch agrees with Lucas Pinz, manager at PromonLogicalis, who said, in a previous interview, that the big issue is not really with carriers, because they have their infrastructure ready to deploy, but with domestic users’ terminals. “The principle issue will likely stem from the end-customers and their legacy devices, which are largely not going to be IPv6-ready,” Busch said.
If end-users needing to upgrade their devices presents the biggest challenge to IPv6, the question is how the industry is addressing that need. “The industry has a number of IPv6 transition technologies that it has created to improve the customer experience and the impact of legacy devices unable to support IPv6,” said Busch. “However, the introduction of these technologies will, in many cases, cause certain applications to break.”
