DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management (IPAM) Software Appliances | Technical Blog

Wednesday, 16 May 2012 13:53 Juha Holkkola

In my previous blog, I stated that the business case supporting the IPv4 roll-out in the late 90s was the Internet. Although IP depletion will slowly become a reality, the chances are that due to mitigating technologies such as NAT and DNS64, it may take quite a while before organizations in the developed economies will get serious about IPv6.

So where should we look to find a business case for IPv6?

Over the last year or two, the shift towards cloud computing paradigm has started to make some pretty impressive waves. Although still at a relatively early stage, we are seeing both service providers and enterprises coming out with brand new strategies for public and private clouds. Based on the recent developments, we estimate that by 2015, the way in which applications and network services are consumed will be very different from what it is today. The discontinuity here will be just as big as the Internet was some 15 years ago.

As far as the IPv6 business case is concerned, not many people have realized how critical IP addresses and DNS is for the cloud orchestration process. To commission or decommission a virtual machine, one needs to reserve or to free an IP address, preferably within a window of 300 milliseconds. Further, in order for that newly commissioned virtual machine to be easily accessed, a DNS entry is also needed. With Infrastructure 1.0 utilizing IPv4 spaces managed with Excel spreadsheets, the cloud doesn’t scale.

To address this issue, anyone serious about cloud computing will have to come to accept that Infrastructure 2.0 is required in order for the cloud computing paradigm to work as intended. If someone is to make a considerable investment in cloud environment, protecting the investment for at least the next 10 years becomes essential. And the way I see it, this is where IPv6 comes in.

In this light, IPv6 can be viewed as a similar enabler to the cloud as IPv4 was for the Internet. From the business perspective, IPv6 enables the cloud to scale into the foreseeable future. Furthermore, by making IPv6 a standard feature in clouds, organizations investing in them can make sure that their basic architecture will stand the test of time, thereby optimizing the cloud ROI.

Business Case for IPv6 - Part 1

Monday, 07 May 2012 09:59 Juha Holkkola

When discussing IPv6, it is easy to forget that we are ultimately talking about an enhanced version of an existing network protocol. Sure, it brings about a number of technical advantages. But when viewed in isolation – without a business case – there really are not that many drivers that would place IPv6 on the agenda of the top decision makers looking after budgets. For IPv6 to gain serious momentum, this has to be changed.

As IPv4 started getting traction during the 90s, there probably were not many organizations out there that were dying to make an investment in IPv4. Rather, the compelling business case they saw related to the Internet, for which IPv4 was the enabler. Twenty or so years down the road, I find it hard to believe that the decision making process in itself would have changed dramatically. Without a powerful trend providing support, the IPv6 train will remain stuck at the station.

A case in point is the service providers in emerging economies. In our experience, the reason they have been actively experimenting with IPv6 isn’t related to technological advantages. Rather, the problem these entities are tackling with IPv6 relates to the amount of available IPv4 space they have at their disposal, and its disparity with the addressable market they are looking at. If the market potential you are looking at is hundreds of millions of subscribers, yet your organization is stuck with a couple of class B networks, you have no choice but to embrace IPv6 if it is to grow to its full potential.

In the more mature industrialized countries, a driver like this does not exist, at least not in the short to mid-term future. Sure, the number of IP devices is on the rise. Yet with stagnating subscriber base, aging population and the proportionally large address spaces that were allocated to these organizations back in the day, it is not as if shortage of IP addresses would be a bottle-neck for the growth of their business. Coupled with private network spaces used by most enterprises, it is hard to find a genuine business case for IPv6 in the form of IP shortage. So perhaps we should be looking elsewhere (to be continued in Part 2).

Business Case for IPv6 - Part 2

Business Case for IPv6 - Part 1

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