For much of the Internet’s existence, Internet Protocol version 4 – or IPv4 – has been the foundation for most Internet communications. However, in part due to advances in Internet-capable technology, IPv4 has essentially reached its limits.
To deal with this, IPv6 will replace the existing system. Alan Gardiner, Cox Communications vice president of engineering, recently spoke to PBN about the impact of the new protocol on the Internet provider’s operations.
PBN: What exactly is IPv6?
GARDINER: IPv6 is an acronym for Internet Protocol version 6. The reason we’re talking about it today is that it is currently being used to replace the previous version, IPv4. Data is shared over the Internet in small packets, whose paths are determined by Internet Protocol, which is an international communications protocol. Each packet contains two numeric values – a starting point and a destination. Those numbers correspond to specific Internet-connected devices and are known as IP addresses. So if I was to send an email to a friend, the data shared over the Web would contain the IP address of my PC and the IP address of his iPhone. This ensures that the email ends up in the right place.
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PBN: Why is it important?
GARDINER: The world has essentially reached the limits of the capabilities of IPv4. Think about the number of Internet-connected devices in your home just five years ago. An Internet customer probably had a personal computer and maybe a cell phone or video game system that could connect to the Web. Now we have tablets, e-readers, TVs, Blu-Ray players, netbooks … even refrigerators and cars, all connected to the Internet. In fact, forecasters predict that by 2015, there will be more than 15 billion Internet-connected devices in use. So basically we were running out of IP addresses. In a way, the transition to IPv6 is similar to the move that many metropolitan areas have had to make from seven- to 10-digit phone numbers. IPv6 addresses contain 128 bits as compared to 32 in IPv4. This translates to approximately 340 undecillion (5 x 1038) IPv6 addresses versus the 4.2 billion available through IPv4.
PBN: Cox Communications participated in the World IPv6 Day. What did the test reveal?
GARDINER: World IPv6 Day took place on June 8. It was coordinated by the Internet Society to encourage adoption of IPv6 and ensure 100 percent functionality. Several Cox Business customers participated across the country, and locally, InsureMyTrip took part. Basically, each business was asked to access multiple websites running the new protocol on World Day and to monitor interoperability with their internal systems. The anecdotal evidence collected that day will be used to identify successes and highlight opportunities for improvement. Overall, the day went without incidents or outages. And although overall IPv6 traffic was miniscule compared to IPv4, it was the highest it had ever been. The expected growth rate of IPv6 traffic is much higher than originally anticipated, so for World Day to take place without any major issues was significant.
PBN: How could IPv6 impact local businesses?
GARDINER: The ability to communicate via IPv6 is important to all businesses, but especially to those that do a large percentage of their business over the web, particularly internationally. It’s very important for companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, etc. to be ready for the increasing level of IPv6 traffic. Right now, that traffic still makes up a very small piece of the overall pie, but that is going to change rapidly. Businesses need to be able to provide a consistent experience to all of their end users. To that end, Cox has made available dual-stack IPv6 to allow customers to continue leveraging IPv4, but also begin to add the new protocol support that will ultimately be required for the next generation of network devices and applications.
PBN: What is Cox doing to prepare for the new protocol?
GARDINER: IPv4 address space is expected to be depleted in 2012, when all Internet customers must begin slowly migrating their devices and content to IPv6, and Cox is ready. Our core network is fully IPv6 compliant so that we can meet customer demand. The bulk of the work done by our network engineers was in ensuring that IPv4 devices that are currently connected to the Web via Cox High Speed Internet service are able to communicate with IPv6 addresses as those become more and more prevalent. So we’ve been focused primarily on our infrastructure and testing it to verify IPv6 connectivity. The global transition will take years to complete, but Cox has already been able to meet the requirement that we simultaneously support both IPv4 and IPv6.
