The holiday season is here and so is the biggest and best US IPv6 Summit ever. By now many readers of 6Sense have registered for the IPv6 Summit (at www.usipv6.com) to be held at the Hyatt Regency, Reston, VA, Dec. 7-10, and are eager for the curtain to rise on a New Internet. Recently we were honored to add to our program Dr. Linton Wells, CIO for the Dept. of Defense; Lee Holcomb, CTO for the Dept. of Homeland Security; and Dennis Clem, CIO of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, DoD. Nearly two dozen leading executives and thought leaders in the Dept. of Defense will be in one place, an unprecedented wealth of expertise for the New Internet, and a total of 55 speakers and panelists will be sharing what they think, know, aim for, and predict over four days, all part of a package that may be the best bargain since Netscape started giving Navigator browsers away to kick off the Internet boom.

There are three very good reasons to take the time, even if you are very busy, to come and join us at the US IPv6 Summit: you will acquire state of the art knowledge, form dozens of new relationships that can turn into partnerships and friendships, and get a statistically greater chance to benefit from the wealth increase that attends each technology tornado.

1. Knowledge is Power: If you listen to each of the presentations and Q & A sessions and pay close attention to audience reactions and talk to the exhibitors, you will come away as one of the most informed 1/10 of 1% of people who are working with IT about the New Internet. I consider the cost of my (very) expensive MIT education to be well justified because I got multiple glimpses from world-class experts. The 55 speakers at the US IPv6 Summit will offer even more valuable insights because they are focused in one area, IPv6, which will grow a million-fold in terms of number of users, packets, etc. over the next five years.

2. How Successful You are Depends on Whom You Know and How Much They Like You: You have hundreds of opportunities to shake hands, exchange business cards (yes, bring hundreds) and speak with leaders and pathfinders in the New Internet industry, including those in the emerging Military-Internet Complex who are literally defining the future of the Internet. Trust is built by interacting face to face while working towards a common objective. Everyone who is attending this IPv6 Summit, just by showing up, is helping to make IPv6 more real, and building the Fellowship of the Protocol that carries IPv6 into even the darkest realms, like the battlefield. Your participation may end up saving the lives of America’s finest, if they can “See more, understand better, and decide quicker,” based on better Internet feedback loops throughout the military and the US government.

3. The First Few Hundred People to Understand a New Technology Tend to Reap The Benefits Disproportionately. The two dozen members of the Homebrew Computer Club, organized in part to share science fiction books, ended up being the pioneers in personal computing hardware, and most of them became millionaires. The same deluge of wealth and fame happened to the first few dozen people to commercialize web browser software. No technology has created more wealth in less time than the Internet once the World-Wide Web burst onto the scene, and no technology upgrade to the Internet since then is more significant that IPv6. Mark my words: you will see a surprisingly high percentage of the people who will be participating in the US IPv6 Summit next week in the news over the next few years for their professional and financial success, partly due to being in the right place at the right time in the right industry, backed up with powerful knowledge and tight relationships with similarly well-positioned people. As IPv6 succeeds, so will the people who joined forces at and after the US IPv6 Summit, where the leaders set the pace, and we experienced the Internet equivalent of the gun going off at the Homestead Improvement Act, sending people out to stake their claims.

In this issue of 6Sense, the journal of record for the IPv6 community’s leading thinkers, we are pleased to publish an article on a business comparison analysis between IPv4 and IPv6, by Prof. Pau of the Rotterdam School of Business, a great school based in the world’s greatest trading city and the country with the biggest international bandwidth (via SurfNet) in Europe. I challenge our business readers to take 20-30 minutes, read the article, and see if you agree with the conclusions. We will publish the best of your comments if you permit us to. We also present Chuck Sellers’ article on security aspects of IPv6; his company, NTT/Verio, has the largest internal IPv6 network in the world. If you can’t measure something you can’t manage it, and Bill Kline of Spirent, the leader in IPv6 related testing, gives us an overview of how the transition to IPv6 can be tested. I make the case for increasing the quantity, quality, and variety of stories about IPv6, and note that fictional stories inspire people and have value. Finally, John Lawitzke from Interpeak, a leading IPv6 software company, focuses us on virtual routing with IPv6. IP Infusion submitted an insightful article on “in-house” outsourcing, and Yurie Rich of Native6 talks about the importance of training for companies that want to succeed in dynamically changing business fields. We hope you enjoy these articles, and will be inspired to submit your own.

If you like 6Sense, we encourage you to forward it to your colleagues and suggest that they subscribe. We publish monthly, with Special Issues before our twice-annual IPv6 Summits, and over the course of a year you’ll find you know more about IPv6 from the 60 or so articles you’ll read than you might have imagined possible.

Don’t forget that we are hosting an IPv6 panel on Thursday, January 6, 2005, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the largest trade show in North American. This is the place to be for seeing the latest and greatest in cool gear – in many cases the prototypes which have not been seen by the public yet. Our expert panelists will be discussion how IPv6 will revolutionize this huge market.

If you are attending the US IPv6 Summit, Reston, VA, Dec. 7-10, please look me up and introduce yourself while you are there. Call me at 310 717 7745 or write me at alex@usipv6.com if you have any questions.

Respectfully,

Alex Lightman
Chairman, US IPv6 Summit 2004

Abstract

This paper gives an analytical business model comparison of the Internet IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, focussing on the business implications of intrinsic technical properties of these protocols .The technical properties modeled in business terms are: address space, payload, autoconfiguration, IP mobility, security, and flow label. Three operational cash flow focussed performance indexes are defined for respectively an Internet operator or ISP, for the address domain owner, and for the end user. Special considerations are made and modeling changes for mobile Internet traffic. The effects of technical innovation in the Internet services and protocols is taken into account, as are special considerations for N.A.T. and content owners. A numerical case is provided which mimics the current state of the Internet network and services ,and around which sensitivity analysis can be carried out, or such that additional service models can be added. It establishes in the Case the relative advantages or disadvantages of IPv4 and IPv6 for each of the three main parties, i.e. the ISP operator, the address domain owner, and the end user.

1 Introduction

Conceived in the mid-1990's by pioneers and IETF (Internet engineering task force) under the term "Next generation Internet protocol" [1] ,standardized since by IETF [2] , promoted by the IPv6 Forum [3] and recommended as the base protocol from of Release 2 of the third generation mobile standards 3GPP [4], the Internet Protocol version 6 ( IPv6) protocol suite [2,5] has been heavily debated and evaluated in technical fora .In such technical circles , it has more and more believers and supporters , but also some opponents with arguments in the installed bases relying on the older Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) , and in migration costs or technical difficulties . However, the debate and analysis regarding the intrinsic business benefits of IPv6 in communication services is by and large totally absent, or at best based on conjectures from some technical properties and on some market forecasts types of statements. Even worse, the situation of such a debate and analysis is about the same in other sectors, such as the computer software industry, the consumer electronics industry, and content providers. Actual deployment is mapped out e.g. in [6].

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to propose a business characterization of the intrinsic business implications of IPv6, in comparison with the today dominating IPv4 protocol. The point of view is that of an enabling evolving technology affecting a wide range of products and services .The methodology is analytical, so users can carry out parametric studies for various deployment assumptions and scenarios .These business implications can either be:-socio-economic benefits : direct or indirect-innovation benefits: affecting existing products and services , or enabling new products and services with some characteristics falling into the two above categories .Policy implications [7] are beyond the scope of this paper , and should rely primarily on the socio-economic and innovation implications . Likewise, organizational implications are outside the scope of this paper, although ultimately IPv6 implications will drive organizational evolution .Likewise, this paper does not consider higher level routing, flow control , interaction, streaming , and management protocols [1,7,8] with can enhance or reduce specific information flow attributes (quantitative or qualitative) . Are only considered the lowest levels of the IP packets, which set the intrinsic traffic, and thus revenue /cost attributes before transformations.

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As the publisher of this newsletter and chairman of the four IPv6 Summits in the US organized over the last two years, I’ve read or viewed over 100 articles and presentations related to IPv6. Something is missing from nearly all of these presentations. Where for goodness sake are stories that the average person, even a tech journalist, can relate to? Features are often covered, benefits less so. Even more rare are success stories related to IPv6. Without success stories, developers don’t envision future customers, and consequently don’t invest time to make related applications or take the risk of trying new things. Since most new products don’t succeed, it takes hundreds, even thousands, of new products or applications to allow the public to “explore the phase space” and end up with a few widespread application successes. Examples are still stories that all readers of this newsletter can relate to: The Apple II had VisiCalc. The IBM PC had Lotus 1-2-3. The Macintosh had desktop publishing. The iPod has iTunes. The Microsoft X-Box has Halo I and now II. Of course there were and are thousands of different applications for each of these devices (iPod can hold things other than music files), but many applications had to be made and tried out for the leading applications to be selected by Darwinian market forces as “memes” that could spread around the world.
 
The challenge in making IPv6 ubiquitous is that we need, say, 10,000 people to dedicate themselves for a year or two to make new applications, or to port current applications, or to add IPv6 to devices that aren’t usually associated with the Internet (like cars, kitchen appliances, RFID tags, mobile phones, etc.). To motivate an army of developers to drop what they doing and start (awkwardly at first) to make v6 apps these developers will have to have stories that will make them think that there is a potential payoff down the road.
 
An industry doesn’t have to be based on real products or companies in order to have 10,000 people dedicate their lives to it for years, as long as there are good stories. Examples include nanotechnology and staples of science fiction. K. Eric Drexler coined the term “nanotechnology” in the early 1980s, and science fiction writers went to town, starting with Greg Bear’s Blood Music and continuing with what must be at hundreds of short stories and dozens of nanotech novels (Ventus and The Diamond Age are among the best) that collectively explored the phase space around nanotech R & D. Fast forward to 2004, and the US government is plowing $500 million a year into nanotechnology, based on stories rather than actual, measurable results. The space industry, the laser industry (Martian death rays were in the Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds radio play), the robot industry, and even the computer industry all had hundreds of stories that sketched the possibilities of the field before the first authentic successes were publicized.

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The migration to IPv6 will be an evolutionary process. Users will not abandon their existing reliable IPv4 networks overnight; instead, a prolonged transition period can be expected. Many industry pundits (including DoD experts) predict that this period could easily last five to ten years. During this transitional stage, a whole new set of challenges will emerge. Routers, switches, servers, and sometimes even end-users' workstations will need to handle double duties - supporting both IPv4 and IPv6.

Up until now, most IPv6 testing has occurred in pristine lab environments and has focused on the fundamental conformance, performance, scalability and functional aspects of the IPv6 protocol. However, the initial deployment scenarios for IPv6 will not consist of pure IPv6 networks; they will probably be unwieldy hybrids that include both versions of IP. The next phase of IPv6 testing must address these mixed environments in order to ensure the success of the next decade of DoD networks.

Transition Methods:

There are three likely transition mechanisms for supporting concurrent IPv4 and IPv6 networks. Each of these methods can also be subdivided into several different variations, but the three macro mechanisms are sufficient for the purposes of this discussion. These transition methods include tunneling, translation, and dual-stack support.

Network Tunneling: Network tunneling solutions were designed to provide connectivity between remote IPv6 destinations over the traditional IPv4 Internet. Conversely, when IPv6 ultimately gains the upper hand on IPv4, a similar technique can be used to interconnect remote IPv4 clusters over the IPv6 Internet.

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Equipment vendors are in a constant struggle to keep up with the massive number of changes in the industry’s RFCs and drafts. In 2003 alone, the IETF issued 263 new RFCs. Furthermore, discontinuous changes abound, such as the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, which requires a complete code re-write in some cases. How is an equipment vendor supposed to keep up? Vendors face a number of choices. Hiring ever increasing numbers of R&D staff, unfortunately, is not an option in our new age of cost- conscious, rapid time-to-market development mandates. Rather than outsource overseas, why not try to outsource “in house?”

Outsourcing “in house” means getting single components of the system from third-party vendors, to reduce the overall R&D effort. Don’t send everything to a difficult-to-manage offshore location, but rather keep it under your control and in house. Vendors are familiar with off-the-shelf operating systems, such as Wind River, MontaVista, etc.; network processors; and switching chips. IP Infusion offers off-the-shelf layer-2 and layer-3 IP routing and switching software. The ZebOS® Advanced Routing Suite is a scalable, robust, and standards-based Layer 2 and Layer 3 carrier-class routing and switching software solution that allows OEMs to rapidly add networking capabilities to their new and existing lines of communication products. Its modular, platform-independent architecture enables OEMs to pick from among an extensive array of protocols and solutions to add to their equipment. The ZebOS Advanced Routing Suite supports industry standard and best-of-breed operating systems, control and data plane processors. Although a control plane network software solution, it has been architected to take advantage of separate data plane processors (NPUs and ASICs) to support highly modular and scalable communications equipment.

Equipment vendors typically face two development approaches when they build a new system leveraging third-party components: 1) build on existing code base; or, 2) start over from scratch. The first approach is to build on top of their existing software code base. This ensures compatibility across the entire product family, a common management interface, reduced training for the sales and support staff, and a sense of reduced risk (the base code is stable, so now if we just add these few extra components…). IP Infusion’s modular architecture is ideal for these situations. Down to the protocol level, IP Infusion has the industry’s first truly modular routing and switching software platform. Each protocol (BGP-4+, OSPFv3, RIPng, etc.) is a stand-alone product with its own software libraries and APIs. A protocol can be licensed as an individual component (such as only OSPFv3) or as a group of individual components (such as RIPng, OSPFv3, BGP4+, etc). The vendors can take only those protocols they need, and add on the extra protocols they required on top of their base code. An example of a vendor that took this approach is Foundry Networks. Foundry Networks licensed IP Infusion’s IPv6 protocols for use in its line of high performance Layer 2 - 7 switching and Internet routing products.

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“The virtual router feature creates a paradigm shift in today’s requirements to insert and deliver value-added services at the edge of the network. This unique capability reduces service providers’ capital investment and operational costs, dramatically altering network economics and enabling new wholesale services.” -- Jennifer Liscom, principal analyst, Gartner Inc.

IPv6 – A Landscape of Opportunity

If you’re reading this newsletter, you already know some of the reasons for the switch to IPv6 and what they will mean for the connected world. We can count on increasingly easy peer-to-peer communication, secured in part with the mandatory implementation of IPSec. We can look forward to the phasing out of Network Address Translators (NATs). We anticipate freed-up resources and bandwidth that will be used for increasingly complex transmissions (for example, streaming video). There will be true mobility without service interruption (mobile IP), and real-time services will benefit from increasingly effective QoS. As for address space – we all know that IPv6 provides trillions of addresses per square inch of the earth’s surface.
 
The IETF’s RFC 2547 applies to IPv4 as well as IPv6. It is important to address this RFC in an IPv6-oriented forum, as it is one of the documents that will guide the next-generation IP network infrastructure. Router makers are already building in MPLS and BGP along with virtual routing, and carriers are increasingly building networks – specifically VPNs – using RFC 2547 guidelines. This article will give a brief overview of RFC 2547 and then discuss virtual routing, an essential component of building effective VPNs using MPLS and BGP.

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Today, discussions about IPv6 are generally not about what it is, or when it will “be here,” but how to deploy it. The most common question we get is, “What is the best way to integrate IPv6 into my network?” The response is the infamous, “It depends,” It depends upon your integration goals. It depends on your timeline for integration. It depends upon your economic resources. It depends upon the abilities of your support staff. It depends upon too many factors for a one-size-fits-all approach. There doesn’t seem to be any universal constant for a transition to IPv6 – with the exception of one item. Knowledge.

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Looking back, security precautions were not thought about in the development of IPv4 and have continued to be a challenge for application developers since then: IPsec was an afterthought, and Network Address Translation (NAT) - which has been widely deployed to solve the address depletion problem and for perceived security benefits - makes true end-to-end, secure applications extremely difficult to deploy. The integration of secure point-to-point networking is one area that today holds great promise for the IPv6 "killer app," and is expected to help drive widespread consumer adoption.

IPv6 solves the IPsec and NAT dilemmas. Since IPsec is designed into the v6 protocol, the need for NAT is eliminated, opening up a new networking paradigm currently not on the radar screen in the v4 world.

NAT was first defined in RFC 1918 to reduce the consumption of IPv4 address space, a task that it fulfilled well. However, NAT was not designed to and does not provide security. NAT functions more like pseudo-privacy in hiding the number of nodes behind a NATed network, either behind a firewall or a router that maps the private address to a publicly routeable address. NAT breaks end-to-end connectivity by introducing additional hop(s) or node(s) (i.e. gateways) in the data path. NAT violates the IP architecture that states that every IP address uniquely identifies a computer/node. These NAT gateways typically rewrite the IP headers to masquerade systems on the internal network. If a NAT device (e.g. typically a firewall) breaks, all connections are lost.

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Publisher's Intro

An Analytical Business Performance Comparison of the IPv6 and IPv4 Protocols in Fixed and Mobile Communication Services
Prof. L-F Pau, Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands; and Ericsson Core Networks, Sweden

What can you do to promote IPv6?
Collect and create v6 success stories
Alex Lightman, Chairman, US IPv6 Summit 2004

IPv6: Testing the Transition
Bill Kine, Product Manager
Spirent Communications

Supporting IPv6 - The Easy Way
IP Infusion

Virtual Routing, MPLS and BGP
The VPN and its components mature with RFC 2547 and a burgeoning IPv6
John Lawitzke, Senior Field Application Engineer, Interpeak

IPv6 Integration: The Value of Knowledge
Yurie Rich, President, Native6

IPv6, An Enhanced Security Network Protocol
Chuck Sellers, CISSP, Senior Product Engineer, Verio Network Services

Wireless Tech Radio

United States IPv6 Summit
December 7-10
Reston, Virginia
Military and Industry Technology Leaders Gather for New Internet Summit in Reston, VA.

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IPv6 Panel
2005 International Consumer Electronics Show
Las Vegas
Thursday, January 6, 2005

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