How often have you discussed your company’s short and long term network plans and the topic of IPv6 has come up. Should you start planning a migration to IPv6? Internal corporate networks, home based offices, public Internet connections? Most companies come to the conclusion there is no real reason to migrate at this time. It’s complex, resource intensive, and most importantly costly. But technological innovation has become the key to business success in the 21st century. From mobile apps to nontraditional computing devices populating the Internet of Things (IoT), businesses rely on IT’s ability to deliver new services to both end users and customers. But these services and the infrastructure used to support them require IP addresses — and that means an IPv6 migration. Those organizations that choose not to migrate to IPv6 risk constraining their ability to innovate and drive business growth.
IoT is a driving force in the acceleration of IPv6 deployments. Just a few IPv6 development projects at the IETF are listed below and they will affect every IT organization in the world, from the smallest to the largest. Let PEI plan a successful IPv6 migration.
“The development of “the Internet of Things” and networks of “smart objects” recently took a significant step forward as a new dedicated routing protocol was adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF — https://www.ietf.org/). Known as RPL, this new IPv6-based protocol will help to drive international standardization across the many companies working actively to promote the adoption of networks of smart objects.
The industry has for some time being working to develop new IPv6 protocols designed specifically for constrained networking environments such as IP smart objects. These smart objects typically have to operate with very limited processing power, memory and under low energy conditions, and as a result, require a new generation of routing protocols to help them connect to the outside world. When compared to computers, laptops or even today’s generation of smart phones, traditional IPv6 protocols tend to work less effectively or consume energy at too rapid a rate for these small, self-contained devices or sensors that are often powered by small batteries that are difficult to replace.”
Marc Musgrave, https://blogs.cisco.com/news/internet-of-things
“With the fast development of wireless sensor technology and IC technology, the concept of IOT (Internet Of Things) has been realized and promoted in the Information Industry. IOT intends to build a network to connect all devices, systems and services, which claims a vast need of IP addresses. Due to its inherent advantage of huge address pool, IPv6 has been chosen as the fundamental Internet protocol by IETF ever since the research of IOT.
Due to the constrained resource nature of devices in IOT, working groups in IETF mainly focus on low weight IPv6 protocols, which include 6LowPan working group, RoLL working group, and CoRE working group. Other standardization organizations, such as IPSO, Zigbee, ISA and etc., are dedicated in promoting the deployment of these protocols. With years of research and development, a number of application cases and solutions for IOT based on IPv6 have been proposed and deployed. In this draft, we will summarize the latest deployments and usecases of protocols about IPv6 in IETF.”
Deployment of the Low Weight IETF protocols In Internet of Things (IOT) – draft-fu-lwig-iot-usecase-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fu-lwig-iot-usecase-00
Hank Latham, PEI
