With the exponential growth of the Internet since the mid 90s, IP address space depletion has increasingly become a pressing concern. The reason that this issue has become more of a concern now than before is that the number of devices that can access the Internet has significantly expanded as compared to 10 years ago; the most notable of which are mobile devices. This, in turn, means that many more IP addresses will need to be allocated to handle these new devices, which has recently dwindled the total number of available IPv4 addresses to below 10%, as reported by the Number Resource Organization (NRO).
Many ISPs are already planning ahead by purchasing blocks of IPv6 addresses to ensure they’re prepared for the next generation of the Internet – especially since industry experts are claiming that IPv4 addresses will be diminished by 2012. Yet, despite all of the talk about IPv4 running out, is it really critical that organizations make the transition to IPv6 in the near term? According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), by the year 2012 there will be approximately 1.9 billion users accessing the Internet globally – a staggering figure considering this would account for nearly 30% of the world’s total population! Additionally, many analysts are claiming that by 2012 there will actually be more users accessing the Internet from mobile devices than computers.
Consequently, this is fundamentally changing how the Internet must scale to satisfy this increased demand.
Even though the IPv4 address space is rapidly being diminished, it seems that this is the only real driver that is prompting the IPv6 movement. Thus, it begs the question: what are the real benefits of migrating to IPv6 other than resolving the address space issue? Engineers from Internet Society (ISOC) conducted a survey about IPv6 and found that businesses are still skeptical about performing an IPv6 migration because there are no concrete business drivers that would entice an organization to make the move. What’s interesting to point out as well is that the survey found the main driver for IPv6 is almost entirely based on customer demand, not IPv4 depletion. Nevertheless, more and more businesses are gearing up for IPv6 because they believe that it’s the next major development in the Internet. This survey also found that even though IPv6 provides several advantages over IPv4; namely features like auto-configuration, mobility support, and built-in security features, more than half of the survey respondents indicated the main reason was attributed to address space.
Another growing concern for organizations is being able to support hybrid IPv4/IPv6 networks. The IETF has admitted that not making IPv6 backwards compatible with IPv4 was a significant oversight on their part and could complicate IPv6 rollouts. To this end, organizations need a way to test and deploy mobile applications, business services and various network configurations so as to ensure they can support IPv6 on the network. Fortunately, Shunra provides both software and hardware testing solutions that fully support IPv4 and IPv6. This enables network teams to fully model a hybrid network with both IP versions and all of the pertinent network characteristics that would define their network environment. This type of testing can even be leveraged by way of Shunra’s Professional Services team as a managed turnkey service – which many customers utilize because they typically derive significant value from this approach with a minimal upfront investment.
In closing, there seems to be a consensus amongst many industry experts that even though there isn’t a compelling business case to move to IPv6, this movement will inevitably occur and more importantly, if you’re not prepared the business could pay dire consequences.
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