Transitioning Consumer Devices Called Biggest Challenge for IPv6 Deployment

Overall progress on the shift has been measurable, said an Akamai report this week (http://bit.ly/ZOwhXb). By November, 1 percent of Google’s users were accessing it over IPv6, the report said. More autonomous systems were added to the global IPv6 routing table in Q4 than in Q4 in each of 2008 through 2011, bringing the total to 6,603, the report said. Obstacles to the transition include the failure of many European organizations to adopt the technology and the reluctance of some ISPs to give up IPv4, said Ladid. Governments should make the business case for IPv6 by using it themselves, he said.

Most new computers, smartphones, tablets and their operating systems are IPv6-capable, but some other connected devices on the market are not, said Brian Markwalter, CEA vice president-research and standards. Some manufacturers of TV sets, cable set-top boxes and Blu-ray players that connect to the Internet haven’t adopted the shift, he said. “In the past, they would have been more resource constrained, so you were very picky about putting more computing power in them. Like everything else, you're getting more computing power and therefore it’s easier” to include IPv6 capability in the devices, he said. Device providers must also consider how expensive the capability will make a product, how much testing it will require and the cost of support and upgradability, he said.

Compounding the problem are the older devices in consumers’ homes that function well over IPv4, said David Belson, Akamai product line director of customs analytics, who edited the company’s report. “That’s part of the problem, what’s sort of been called the forklift upgrade problem,” he said of older devices. “You've got all this gear that’s sitting behind your couch or in your closet, and it just works.” Users “don’t really think about it, and it’s not IPv6-capable,” said Belson. “That’s a problem that will have to be solved in some fashion before we can bring more native IPv6 to subscribers.” Device makers are aware of the problem and, for the most part, working to address it, Markwalter said. IPv6 connectivity in many new home routers, for example, has improved in the last year or so, said Sandeep Harpalani, Netgear director-product marketing. All of the routers currently shipped from the company are IPv6-capable, he said.

Comcast will begin this year providing IPv6-capable routers to customers who choose to purchase them with service, said John Brzozowski, chief architect for IPv6. Many devices, including Comcast’s branded routers, can also be updated with IPv6 capability, saving consumers from having to purchase a new device, he said. Many routers running DOCSIS 2.0, last current in 2006, can support a software upgrade to IPv6 capability, he said. “We know that there is a fair amount of work in the CE space that has to be done,” Brzozowski said. “We have good momentum, and we hope soon to see the fruits of that labor."

Some carriers are reluctant to give customers their own IPv6 address because they want to control the network, Ladid said. Users whose addresses sit behind a network address translator (NAT) can’t control them, ruining the end-to-end promise of the Internet, he said. Operators won’t provide visible Internet addresses for, say, a virtual private network unless customers pay for them, he said. This raises the policy question of whether everyone should have the option to have their own secure network connection or remain in the pool of IP addresses, he said.

Mobile operators adopting 4G, which uses IP voice rather than GSM, are debating whether to stay with IPv4 with NAT or move to IPv6, Ladid said. With its “switchboard mentality,” the telecom world understands NAT, he said. Cisco describes NAT as a technology that allows a single device, such as a router, to act as an agent between the Internet or “public” network and a local or “private” network, meaning that only a single unique IP address is needed to represent a group of computers to anything outside their network. Where IP addresses are visible, there can also be end-to-end security, Ladid said. Many major Web content providers activated IPv6 last June as part of the Internet Society world IPv6 launch, and Facebook, Google, YouTube, Netflix and AOL had all enabled IPv6 by then (CD June 7 p3). But several high-traffic sites, including Twitter, Amazon and eBay, don’t support IPv6, said a report updated daily from IPv6 consultant Hurricane Electric (http://bit.ly/ZK2BLR). Those companies had no comment.

Cable operators are well-positioned on IPv6 deployment, industry representatives said. Most of CableLabs’ members have enabled IPv6, said Chief Technology Officer Ralph Brown. Brzozowski said Comcast has already enabled IPv6 to half its residential customers, and they hope to reach 100 percent of its customers by 2014. Internet and cable companies especially have been working in the CE space to encourage deployment because they're farther ahead, Brown and Brzozowski said. Markwalter said it was the cable industry that first pushed the device manufacturers to address IPv6 deployment, and the industries have worked together to educate home and business customers about the importance of upgrading the system.

Manufacturers, having joined the conversation on IPv6, seek a clearer set of standards for the capability, since ISPs may choose to implement IPv6 in slightly different ways across different regions, Markwalter said. A CEA working group, chaired by Brzozowski, was set up last year to address IPv6 implementation, and is working on a profile document to address the need for standards, Markwalter said. Harpalani said there “are certain differences in terms of implementation, and what we are looking for is a standards-based solution that isn’t dependent on a particular service provider or geography. It should be something that can work all across” regions and companies.

Obstacles to IPv6 deployment include those ISPs not moving toward the technology, that are instead shifting toward an extended version of NAT, said Ladid. Carrier-grade NAT is network address translation at the carrier/ISP level, he said. Each NAT has up to 65,000 ports, which operators divide among customers, he said. If, say, Google needs 250 ports to bring clear data images to users, but the ISP refuses to give it that many, user experience suffers. Some ISPs believe IPv4 technology will be around for a long time, so NAT issues are resurfacing and getting more complicated, he said. European mobile operators and universities also lag far behind the U.S. in takeup, he said. The U.S. is also way ahead in IPv6 logo certifications, although China has now emerged as a key player, he said.

"Glitches” in IPv6 adoption can be found among some ISPs, especially in Europe, that haven’t deployed it because many CEOs are “bean-counters” focused on the cost of implementing the technology, rather than engineers, Ladid said. But there’s a business case for IPv6, and that’s the real carrot to get more companies to implement it, he said. The value of IPv6 lies in employee productivity, asset utilization, innovation, customer experiences and supply-chain and logistics efficiencies, Cisco has said. It predicts the Internet will touch all sectors and spark value creation of $14.4 trillion by 2022, according to a slide Ladid showed at a recent IPv6 summit in Beijing. Ladid said the Internet of Things, smart grids and other technologies will dwarf the Internet and mobile sectors together.

Awareness of the transition among companies and consumers continues to improve significantly, Brzozowski said. Evidence of implementation has come more slowly, he said. “We're waiting for the return on the investment. CEA, Comcast and others have really spent a lot of time with the consumer electronics ecosystem, we've worked closely with them, and we think soon we'll start seeing implementations for v6. But the work is only just over a year old there, so ... at this stage of the game, we're waiting to see implementation appear.”