Since my recent article entitled “
No
IoT without IPv6” published by Computerworld, many people have provided
very good feedback and comments. They also have asked a very good question: Why
we are still talking about adopting IPv6 after so many years? It has been more
than a decade since the U. S. government first formally requested federal
agencies to adopt IPv6 and incorporate it in their enterprise architecture (EA)
as stated in the
2005
OMB Memo; and it has been more than two decades since many people first
started talking about the need to transition to IPv6.
Obviously, there are many reasons for the delays of IPv6 adoption worldwide.
On one hand, as I commented previously in some of my online postings, changes
are always difficult and many people simply don't like change. A lot of people
also consider that IPv6 is boring because it is related to the network
infrastructure.
On the other hand, many people don't understand it or simply don't care
about it because, at the end of the day, IPv6 is a technical matter. For
instance, IPv6 as part of the internet-layered protocols, is often, but not
always, considered roughly as a subset of the Network Layer of the ISO OSI
model. Not many people outside of the networking infrastructure or similar
domains are familiar with it or care enough about it.
To make things even more unnecessarily complicated, while some people with
non-technical background would like to constantly drag such a technical issue
into the messy geopolitical discussions and debates in the international
forums, many people involved with the research of IoT do not even think that
they will ever need to use IPv6 or IP at all, because they are only focusing on
different layers of the OSI model in their specific part of the world. Some
individuals even think that they can deploy IoT using IPv4 and NAT.
In addition, the message on this technical issue must be clear, precise, and
consistent, and it must be easy for the non-technical people to understand.
However, that is not always the case. In my opinion, for far too many years,
this technical issue of transitioning to IPv6 from IPv4 has become way too
complicated, whether intentionally by some people or not.
As I wrote in an article last year entitled “
IPv6,
It's Easier Than You Think!”, ultimately, enabling IPv6 is only a
configuration
change to the existing networking infrastructure! This is
especially true when we only enable the IPv6 in a dual-stack mode of operations
(using both IPv6 and IPv4) where there is NO impact on the existing IPv4 functions or operations during the transition period.
It cannot be more clear and simple than that. Consequently, one should ask:
when was the last time that the Board of Directors or the president of a
company has to decide and approve an IT configuration change request for its
network infrastructure, which not only does not impact its current IPv4
operations, but also is completely transparent to the end users?
In the final analysis, however, money is still one of the main reasons that
have hindered the global IPv6 adoption so far. In many cases, at least as in
the past, adopting and deploying IPv6 not only does not immediately generate
revenue, but cost money: It needs money to train the engineers and IT staff
about IPv6; it costs money to upgrade the existing network infrastructure and
systems to enable IPv6 if they are dated; it doesn't provide the immediate ROI.
For many companies, it doesn't help with the short-term share prices or meet
the Wall Street expectations for the quarterly earnings and revenues in the
short run...
As a result, there has been no particular incentive for many companies,
especially for those companies in the networking and security business, such as
network hardware manufactures and software application companies, to invest in
R&D to fully support IPv6 and to ensure that all of their current products
and services will support the full feature set of IPv6 as much as they would
for IPv4.
If the major networking manufacturers and security companies cannot ensure
that all of their current products and services will fully support IPv6, it
will undoubtedly prevent the customers from deploying IPv6 easily and smoothly
even if they want to. If the current security appliances and software cannot
fully support IPv6, how can you expect the customers to fully adopt IPv6
without the fear that their IPv6 deployment may not be secured or at least as
secured as the current IPv4 products and services, even though the level of
security in IPv4 is still questionable given what is happening on a daily basis
in cybersecurity breaches nowadays?
This all comes down to the point as I mentioned in my article that adopting
IPv6 requires long term vision and leadership from the top management of the
companies. They must realize that adopting IPv6 is a competitive edge for their
companies as well as for their shareholders in the long run, especially in the
global context.
Most importantly, the whole concept is simple, the goal is clear, the scope
of the task is precise, and it is worth repeating here again:
Adopting and deploying the new
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is only a configuration change to the
existing IT infrastructure.
By enabling a separate IPv6
stack in the current IPv4 computing environment (dual-stack) during the
transition period, it will not impact the existing IPv4 functions or
operations.
If we can all communicate consistently and precisely this
idea to the non-technical stakeholders as well as the regular Internet users,
I am confident that many people will be able to comprehend this issue and
eventually be supportive of this global initiative.
The good news is that for the past a few years, especially for the past year
or two, many companies started to realize the potential huge impact of IoT on
their bottom line. After all, IoT represents at least
several
trillion dollars’ new business opportunities for many companies around the
world.
That is why we have seen that worldwide IPv6 traffic have increased rather
significantly since 2014 based on some of the IPv6 indicators, such as the
information provided by
Google
– from less than 3% in 2014 to over 11% in May 2016.
It is for this reason that over two years’ ago I stated in my opinion
article published by Computerworld on May 1, 2014 that “
To
a large extent, the Internet of Things will be the ultimate driver of global
adoption of IPv6 in the coming years.”
Today, I still strongly believe that IoT will be the ultimate driver for
global adoption of IPv6 for the very same reason, just as passionate as I was
two years ago.
Only time will tell and history will be the judge.
Reference for this article:
Sun, Charles. “IoT Is the Ultimate Driver for Global Adoption of IPv6!”. 2
June 2016.
https://ipv6czar.blogspot.com/2016/06/iot-is-ultimate-driver-for-global.html
Disclaimer: The views presented are only personal opinions and they do not
necessarily represent those of the U.S. Government.
