Why the Web may not be kind to IPv6 laggards

This is the last post of a five-part series based on an interview with Latif Ladid president of the IPv6 Forum, discussing the enterprise challenges and issues relating to enterprise deployment including: pain points, security, best practices and future predictions.

Putting it all together on the IPv6 front, organizations should by now fully understand buy-in strategies, IT endpoint security, and best practice implications surrounding the Internet protocol.

Looking ahead in 2013 and beyond, the days of address exhaustion and an IPv4-only user being effectively “locked out” of Internet resources may be coming sooner than one thinks. That said, that notion is a minor one and doesn’t focus of the larger network picture: Ladid offers that what is more important is the promise of IPv6 in boosting the power and the promise of a largely network streaming/mobile-centric Internet world. Keep in mind, he adds, that the IPv6 Internet went live last June.

“I would expect that by 2015, all mobile smartphones are going to be using v6. And that is even without users noticing it,” says Ladid. Indeed, according to recent predictions from IT research firm Gartner, 17 per cent of worldwide Internet users will use IPv6 by 2015, with approximately 28 per cent of new Internet connections operating on the protocol.

IPv6 is growth, it is innovation and it is coming: What does the IP address management situation look like in light of IPv6? What does your certification and testing cycle look like when it comes to hardware support? And is your vendor providing IPv6 support for device update and upgrades? These are the issues all managers and IT decision makers should be mindful of, remarks Ladid.

In addition, a lot of service providers, ISPs and device makers are finally coming around – expect 2013 to see more traction around leveraging IPv6’s virtually limitless amount of IP addresses, he added. Ladid reiterates that implementing a dual-stack network solution – an environment in which IPv4 and IPv6 operate simultaneously until the older IPv4 is phased out – represents an ideal IT framework strategy for network managers thinking about future-proofing the organization.

On a global scale, Ladid firmly believes that organizations and enterprises are finally coming around when it comes to IPv6 uptake this year: “Uptake in IPv6 will double every five months.”

Learn more by downloading our free white paper, ‘Planning the Transition to IPv6,’ today.