IPv6 in the Enterprise: Exploring Business Opportunities

11/04/2023

IPv6 in the Enterprise: Exploring Business Opportunities

By Carlos Ralli Ucendo, chairman of IPv6 Council Spain

IPv6 adoption can become a drawback and represent additional costs for a company’s continued operation, without bringing in any other return at the business level. An efficient evolution requires starting the implementation process as soon as possible, considering the benefits that IPv6 will bring to our business and the lessons learned from the experience of others.

Why IPv6 can be good business. We are changing the rules of the Internet game. In the case of IPv6, Darwin’s theory of evolution applies — companies and organizations that best adapt to change will survive. If we don’t get an early start with IPv6, we will be developing platforms that do not support new features and that will soon become obsolete.

Companies that focus on innovation will have a competitive advantage. Within the IETF (the Internet Engineering Task Force, a working group responsible for Internet standards) all innovations are being defined with IPv6.

For example, recent developments in IoT (Internet of Things) in the home are IPv6 only. Some tech giants use IPv6 only for their home devices, with the Matter and Thread/6LowPAN standards.

Those that apply innovation in network automation through IP segmentation also have an advantage. The IETF has defined an end-to-end mechanism (SRv6) that allows segmenting the network from host to cloud. In these cases, IPv6 must be used, as there is no other possible alternative.

Another example is web 3.0, which identifies digital assets that can be transacted. The Blockchain BSV working group focuses on peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries, based solely on IPv6. This is why adopting IPv6 means getting behind innovation and emerging solutions.

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Added value. All these companies will generate enough efficiencies, added value, and competitive advantages to allow this evolution to be identified as a business opportunity. This opportunity, however, will not fall out of the blue. Instead, it will require taking the risk to explore the new model firsthand and being among the first to develop a competitive advantage. Ultimately, it is about following the IETF model when, as described above, it decides to develop the IoT for low power mesh networks (LowPANs) with IPv6 only, not IPv4.

As early as 2015, companies such as Meta/Facebook identified that an almost entirely IPv6-only corporate network (90% then, 100% today) was more efficient and allowed them to better innovate, as described in the article linked below the following image taken from the Internet Society (ISOC).

Source: ISOC-2015: Facebook News Feeds Load 20-40% Faster Over IPv6 – Internet Society

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