Towards IPv6 Migration and Challenges

Abstract

The Internet, since its genesis in 1970's, has already become a global broadcasting potential for information dissemination and a channel for information collaboration and an interface between disparate users and their systems, separated by large geographical locations. The rate of growth of interconnected devices has been on exponential scale from the last decade. As of now, more than 5 billion devices are accessing the Internet. The Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) which is a three decade old standard internetworking protocol using 32-bit address, fails to cater such a large number of hosts. In February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the nodal agency for IP address allocation exhausted the central pool of IPv4 addresses completely. This rapid depletion of IP addresses was inevitable as a large number of devices are getting connected to internet. Also, inefficient utilization and remiss planning of IP address space acted as catalyst in the process of depletion. NAT, CIDR and Subnetting only serve as short interim solutions provided by IPv4. Moreover, IPv4 fails to scale up and bridge the security enhancements required by the modern Internet today. The only feasible option lies in unabridged transition to IPv6. Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) provides an address space of 2128 i.e. trillions of addresses, making the IP address space potentially inexhaustible. Thus, adopting IPv6 makes a paragon choice of replacement for IPv4. This article reviews the next generation internet protocol IPv6 and explicates the discussion over the need for migrating to IPv6. The article also presents technical as well as non-technical challenges related to migration and presents overall statistics regarding IPv6 adoption around the world.