After more than a decade of forewarning, the IPv4 to IPv6 transition has finally reached critical mass. On Feb 1, 2011, the AINA allocated the last freely available block of IPv6 addresses. At the same time, the number of users and "endpoints" requiring Internet access - and thus a unique IP address--continues to explode. With exponential growth in global broadband deployments, next-gen wireless rollouts on the horizon, and fast-growing smart phones in the field, the industry is predicting an increase of 5 billion unique endpoints by 2015. In the meantime, service providers are struggling to prepare their networks for the influx of IPv6 addresses.
While the Internet is rich with IPv6 content and services- Google is already supporting IPv6 on its search, news, docs, maps and YouTube- IPv4 won't just "go away" as IPv6 comes on board. This creates a challenging situation for service providers that must upgrade their network infrastructure to handle IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence.
Network cores are well equipped for handling both IPv4 and IPv6, however broadband access networks are not. IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence puts tremendous stress on the underlying network systems, which can potentially introduce latency, degrade network responsiveness, and compromise service level agreements. The biggest transition concern is the impact on customers: will introducing IPv6 endpoints, forwarding tables, and services affect connectivity speed, service quality, and network reliability?
IPv6 Solutions for Broadband Access
An abrupt transition of the legacy IPv4 infrastructure to IPv6 is not practical because most Internet services are still based on IPv4 and many customers are still running operating systems that do not fully support IPv6. Service providers must support both IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints and service in order to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) defined in their service level agreements (SLA).
There are different methods that can be used to achieve this goal across broadband access networks including:
* Translation
* Tunneling
* Dual-Stack Network
Translation
The easiest way to conserve the depleting IPv4 address space is to use translation so that the outward facing interface uses a public interface while the private network uses IP addresses that are not routed on the Internet. However, the known performance and scalability issues compel most service providers to deploy either tunneling or dual-stack transition mechanisms in broadband access networks.
Information is shared by www.irvs.info
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