IP Upgrade-Engineering Exercise or Necessity?

Abstract

IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol designated by IETF and is a successor of Internet Protocol version 4. It is predicted that Internet Protocol version 4 addresses will get exhausted by end of 2012[1]. The main driving force for the redesign of Internet Protocol - was the foreseeable IPv4 address exhaustion because of its limited address space (which is 2^32 addresses) coupled by the growth of Internet and Internet enabled services. IPv6 provides flexibility in meeting the addressing needs necessitated by the exponential growth of Internet and Internet enabled services. However, migrating from IPv4 to IPv6 is not a trivial task and requires Internet service providers to upgrade their network, systems and services infrastructure which needs time and money. Hence, today majority of the Internet service providers are not able to arrive at a decision on when is the “right time” for them to deploy IPv6 in their network and services. This whitepaper provides a view of typical timelines and high level approach involved in IPv6 migration considering residential broadband service as an example. This coupled with the kind of rolled out services, geography and the availability of IPv4 address space will determine when the Internet service provider needs to migrate to avoid revenue and market share loss.