centre of attention
THE JOY OF SIX
Nathalie Künneke-Trenaman of RIPE NCC explains why IPv6 is the only option for securing the future of the Internet .
Last year 3.2 billion people used the Internet according to the ITU , connecting a total of 4.9 billion devices ( Gartner ). Most of these used IPv4 addresses , but IPv4 is running out – and fast . That means there ’ s a big problem looming , with Gartner predicting 20 billion devices will be using the Internet in 2020 , and Ericsson predicting 70 per cent of the world ’ s population will be online using a mobile phone by then . Consumer behaviour is changing , and people are spending more and more time online , as well as expecting to connect more devices than ever before . This increasing demand on Internet infrastructure is only going to grow , making the need for IPv6 increasingly pressing .
The state of the Internet today Every device which connects to the Internet needs an IP address to identify it . This was originally done using IPv4 , which was designed to supply 4.3 billion addresses , but in most of the world it ’ s already completely exhausted – including North America , which announced in 2015 that it had absolutely no IPv4 addresses left .
IPv6 , the replacement for IPv4 , has space for 340 trillion , trillion , trillion addresses which is enough to tide us far beyond the foreseeable future . The only real barrier to adoption is that IPv4 and IPv6 do not speak the same language , which means a customer using just one won ’ t be able to connect to a business using the other .
IPv6 use is growing . Eleven per cent of worldwide users access Google via IPv6 at present , and this number will increase quickly , with tech heavyweights like Apple making IPv6 support essential in iOS 9 , and the two largest UK Internet Service Providers intent on making the transition – Sky has already made massive progress towards full IPv6 deployment and BT has committed to switching all of its UK customers onto IPv6 by the end of the 2016-17 financial year .
Workarounds and temporary solutions Amid all this positive change towards IPv6 , some businesses – telecoms providers included – remain locked in the old mindset of relying on IPv4 . These businesses rely on workaround measures such as Carrier-Grade NAT and IPv4 trading to try and extend their IPv4 supplies , believing these workarounds to be cheaper and easier than deploying IPv6 . However , each of these workarounds is flawed , and businesses should be wary of continuing to rely on these temporary solutions for much longer .
CG NATs have been used for many years now to stretch the life of IPv4 , typically sharing a single IP address between thousands of customers . However , the technology cannot scale indefinitely , and each time a NAT is layered it adds complexity and increases the chance that something will break . This may sound innocuous but the consequences could be serious . When a NAT breaks , lots of people are affected ; whereas if an end-toend connected IPv6 address breaks , only one person is . Businesses who keep using NATs in the long term run the risk of incurring needless management fees . Not only this , but some services , such as video conferencing and business sharing tools , simply won ’ t work over NATs because they rely on end-to-end connectivity , one of the founding principles of the Internet .
IPv4 trading is a newer solution , involving countries and organisations selling IPv4 addresses to others who need them . It ’ s a dangerous market , with the price entirely driven by demand ; as IPv4 addresses become scarcer , the price will continue to
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