Practical issues IPv4 to IPv6 migration

Abstract

ABSTRACT When the vast population of the world which is over 6 billion people is taken into consideration with the necessity to introduce new applications demanding global Internet Protocol (IP) addresses like 3G mobile services, it is not surprising that there will be a shortage or IP addresses. /Apart from this, the available IPv4 address space too is not evenly distributed across the world. USA and Europe have been allocated more IP addresses and as a result some countries in Asia will be the first to face a shortage of IP addresses. In Europe it is predicted that the IPv4 address space would become exhausted in over three years time. Further, in late 2008 it is predicted that the IANA unallocated address pool will be exhausted in 2010 and the R1R unallocated address pool will be exhausted in 2011. IPv6 has been designed to use a 128-bit address scheme whereas in IPv4 it has been only a 32-bit address space that is used/ Japan's WIDE, US's 6REN/6TAP. and Europe's 6INIT are some of the major IPv6 projects around the world. As a developing country, Sri Lanka needs to follow in the footsteps of these economically advanced countries and adopt their approach at least to some extent. But perhaps due to lack of awareness, the development and deployment of IPv6 in Sri Lanka is at a very slow pace or it is not progressing at all The global transition of the IPv4 to IPv6 protocol commenced in 1995. The need for the change of the globally used IPv4 protocol came from the limitations IPV4 had, the most important of them being the limited address space available./ Other than solving the problem of inadequate address space, IPv6 has also introduced significant improvements in security, mobility and quality of service and address allocation mechanisms. It is expected that migrating to IPv6 environment will become mandatory in a few years time and this will be common to Sri Lanka as well. Many organizations do not find enough reasons to adopt IPv6 right now. However, it is very important for all organizations to pay attention to the introduction of IPv6 because it is essential in the long run.