Daily Network Monitor

IPv6 was created a decade ago by the Internet Engineering Task Force to solve the anticipated address space crunch with IPv4. IPv6, which uses a 128-bit addressing, supports an almost abundant number of uniquely identified systems on the internet, while IPv4 supports only a few billion systems because it uses a 32-bit addressing scheme. Furthermore, the United States has consumed the majority of available IPv4 addresses, leaving countries like China to speculate about forcing citizens to share IP addresses.

IPv6 techies IT professionals are interested in the additional authentication and security services built into IPv6 but few but few networks have committed to migrating to IPv6 because it lacks a measurable return on investment when compared to other initiatives like convergence.

The IPv6 wave is coming to our shores after notable success in Japan, China and South Korea. Stern minded industry experts say network professionals in the USA can expect trickles of IPv6 deployments by 2008…maybe.

Japan considers IPv6 key for the ubiquitous computing initiative called “u-Japan,” which is targeted for realization over the next five years. The Chinese Government has established a group led by eight ministers, which funds 50% of the cost to transition from IPv4 to IPv6 and there is an initiative to power the 2008 Olympics in Beijing with IPv6. The Korean Government has been successful too, with aggressive participation from vendors and ISPs, and the creation of a road map for nation-wide IPv6 adoption. Korea currently has various IPv6 networks, ranging from research and experimental through commercial (KOREAv6). Korea’s roadmap for IPv6 adoption calls for expanding IPv6 pilot networks and commercial services continuously toward the realization of all-IPv6 based services by 2010.

Closer to home, IPv6 is driven by the United States Government with the Department of Defense leading the initiative. President Bush’s 2003 National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace stated that, “The United States must understand the merits of, and the obstacles to, moving to IPv6, and based on that understanding, identify a process for moving to an IPv6-based infrastructure.”

As a network administrator, you are likely dealing with issues of higher priority than IPv6. When you are ready, rest assured we will be ready too with WhatsUp Gold which supports IPv6 out-of-the-box.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under Network Management, Weird Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.