Successful IPv6 Launch Could Pave the Way for Use in Internet of Things

The launch brought “24 hours of seamless deployment” and “24 hours of 0 impact, 0 cases” of problems attributable to turning on IPv6, Cisco Fellow Mark Townsley said. The company saw much more traffic moving on the new version than beforehand, he said. Google has seen a 70 percent increase in Web traffic over IPv6 since Wednesday, said Ipv6 Software Engineer Erik Kline. However, there wasn’t a dramatic increase in high-bandwidth traffic because YouTube videos have been available on IPv6 since last June, he said. More than 27 million active Facebook users now have IPv6 in their homes, a number 3-5 times higher than 12 months ago, said Senior Network Engineer Donn Lee.

Asked what’s being done to encourage additional content providers to make content available over IPv6, Daigle said that along with the many website operators participating in the transition, there are also content delivery networks such as Akamai and hosting companies such as Dreamhost making it easier for smaller websites to turn on IPv6. The technology has been around for some time, and people are gradually making it part of their normal business operations, she said. The global launch may impel other websites to do what they need to do, she said.

"Public embarrassment may be our friend here,” Cerf said. Some organizations may be shamed into taking up IPv6 alongside IPv4, he said. As equipment moves to the new version, providers will have to as well, he said. Some companies have enabled IPv6 quietly, the way Wikipedia did, said Alain Fiocco, a Cisco senior director. Many more enterprises, such as banks, will do the same, he said. The transition should be absolutely transparent to users, Cerf said.

Now that the big Internet industry is behind IPv6 to “fix the nitty-gritties,” it’s time to pursue other critical work in enabling the technology in the IoT, smart grids, cloud computing, smart cities, and other areas, IPv6 Forum President Latif Ladid told us. “The restoration of the end-to-end model is going to be a key innovation driver."

The smart grid program has adopted IPv6 as the preferred way of providing the large number of addresses needed for many devices, Cerf told the briefing. Mobile operators in the Third Generation Partnership Project also say they prefer IPv6, he said. But it’s vitally important that both protocols be able to run at the same time, he said, because if they don’t, website hyperlinks might not work.

Comcast views IPv6 as an enabler of the IoT, said John Brzozowski, chief architect for IPv6. The cable ISP hopes to embark on some innovations in this area, he said. Although proponents of the new protocol originally pushed people to adopt it because of the depletion of IPv4 addresses, the launch should catalyze other innovations, he said.

A large part of ISOC’s interest in IPv6 has to do with enabling the future Internet, Daigle said. It was important to show that the protocol is real so people can continue to build the Internet as a platform for new products and services, she said. IPv6 offers the potential to avoid network translation, allowing machines to talk directly to each other, Cerf said. It will spur growth of networks of sensoring, monitoring, and access and control systems, he said.

The launch was just the beginning, several speakers said. It will give companies the chance to learn more about how the networks function and how people use the protocol, said Microsoft Bing Program Manager Kevin Boske. The global rollout was a “running start,” said Townsley. It only takes one leader to step forward for others to fall in behind, he said. Cerf said he wants the Internet fully operational via IPv6 no later than 2015.

Preliminary data shows that the launch “was not simply turned on with one big flick of a switch” but merely served as a deadline that many websites have been working toward over the past year, Sandvine Chief Technology Officer Don Bowman wrote Thursday on the ISP vendor’s blog (http://xrl.us/bna5uk). While there was a noticeable uptick in traffic June 6, the majority of it came from Netflix and YouTube, he said. The latter accounted for more than half of all native IPv6 traffic in the U.S., while Facebook “leapt up the list,” he said. Netflix, rolling out IPv6 coverage over the last few weeks, moved to second on the list, he said.

By Wednesday evening, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange had witnessed an increase of 1.2 Gbps via IPv6 traffic compared to previous days, Incognito Software Chief Technical Officer Chris Busch told us. That shows that the ability of Web traffic to natively traverse the Web within the new protocol is already making an impact, he said Wednesday. Considering that the exchange also showed total traffic at around 1.4 Tbps, “this actually illustrates just how far of a journey remains for the worldwide implementation of IPv6,” he said. Incognito supplies broadband software provisioning products, while Sandvine’s products are used by ISPs to manage traffic.

The biggest issue for the industry will be “caused by the consumer electronics space,” Busch said. While newer operating systems in laptops and computers support the protocol natively, many consumer devices still tend to favor the earlier version, he said. “It may actually be the slow course of IPv6 transition mechanisms that ultimately pushes customer adoption” toward devices with native IPv6 support, he said. Some applications and services don’t work well when translated between IPv6 and IPv4, causing them to break or stop operating, he said. That “application brokenness” at the customer and end-consumer level is likely to be the real driver of IPv6 adoption and could also force a higher percentage of IPv6 native traffic across the rest of the Internet, he said.