Imagine a nightmarish scenario where a telephone company in a city runs out of numbers to allot for its new subscribers! Well, that is the situation on the ground today as far as the Internet is concerned. Most of today’s Internet uses IPv4 (Internet Protocol, version 4), which is now nearly twenty years old. Although resilient in spite of its age, IPv4 is beginning to have problems.

With every passing day there are more and more PCs connecting to the Internet along with a plethora of devices such as PDAs, mobile phones, and set-top boxes. Increased automation in the appliances we use at home and office, ranging from office copy machines to kitchen appliances will also connect to the Internet. This is putting a tremendous strain on the existing 32-bit IPv4 protocol and this has led to an acute shortage of IPv4 addresses.

Transition period required

Technical minders of the Internet, the IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force) have stepped in with the IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) to replace the current version, the IPv4. The 128-bit long IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IP addresses. IPv6 improves on the IPv4 in areas such as routing and auto-configuration of networks. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.

Since IPv6 was designed to cope with the increasing Internet traffic globally, there will be extra emphasis on real-time transactions. This is because the Internet and intranets are not simply data networks any more. They have become complex transmission systems carrying a vast amount of data, video, and other services. Routing in the 128-bit IPV6 is simpler because you can create multi-level hierarchies of address allocation. Without an address hierarchy, backbone routers have to store routing table data on how to connect to every network in the world.

IPv6’s 128-bit address space will allow businesses to deploy a huge array of new desktop, mobile, and embedded network devices in a cost-effective, managed manner. Further, IPv6’s advanced autoconfiguration features will make it feasible for large numbers of devices to attach dynamically to the network, without incurring maintenance costs for making additions and deletions to the network.

The robust autoconfiguration capabilities of IPv6 will benefit network administrators. When you change your Internet Service Provider, as an enterprise you are bound to renumber your IP address. Using the IPv6 autoconfiguration feature, you get new IP addresses without manual reconfiguration of workstation addressing. You can appreciate the power of autoconfiguration in mobile computing because it allows mobile computers to receive valid IP addresses automatically, no matter where they connect to the network.

Although there persists a feeling that the IPv6 relates more to backbone routers, and less on end-user applications, there are some tangible benefits for every one. For instance, IPv6 allows for efficient multitiered routing hierarchies that effectively limit the complex bookkeeping of backbone router tables. Also, many of the advanced features of IPv6 also bring direct benefits to end-user applications at the workgroup and departmental levels. Simply put, if an enterprise cannot supply unique IP addresses to the Internet, it can only offer private, isolated addresses that are opaque to the Internet. This will result in a delay in communicating with that enterprise. Now, this won’t happen with the IPv6 protocol.

Network security and stability

Encryption, authentication, and data integrity safeguards are major issues with the IPv4 protocol. Vendors have struggled and stumbled in adding robust security features to networks based on IPv4, largely due to the lack of interoperability caused by proprietary security extensions. Native-date security capabilities of the, IPv6 provides addresses these issues.

Security features inherent in the IPv6 security, give applications encryption and authentication services that are an integral part of the IP stack. For mobile business users and dynamic departmental staffs, the automatic configuration components of IPv6 will allow the efficient assignment of IP addresses without the delays and cost associated with manual address administration, which is common in many current IP networks.

IPv6’s built-in quality-of-service (QoS) features allow for more deterministic end-to-end service levels in time-sensitive interactive and multimedia applications. Quality of Service gets a boost in IPv6 because flow labels can be used to identify to the network a stream of packets that needs special handling above and beyond the default, best-effort forwarding. Flow-based routing could give networks some of the deterministic characteristics associated with connection-oriented switching technology and telephony virtual circuits. This could benefit real-time data transactions involving the stock exchange, banks or even the HK Jockey Club.

The IPv6 internetwork protocol standard is of central importance to the continued viability of enterprise networks and to the ongoing competitiveness of all types of network-dependent businesses. In the past few years, Internet alone has enabled distributed commerce and computing that allows people to work together inside enterprises with access to the world businesses. From a business perspective, networked enterprises that invest in IPv6 planning now will have a decided competitive advantage as the information age advances.