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| United States IPv6 Summit reveals
new Internet opportunities in North America
But why on Earth would you spend months studying thousands of slides that talk about IPv6? In this case there was a combination of professional interest, excitement and respect. Anyone in the Internet industry can easily project professional interest. The excitement comes from IPv6 astounding address space, which allows networking virtually the whole known universe from molecules to stars. A marvel of that magnitude surely inspires respect. Even better it enthuses to an instant participation. Here it goes. Broad up-to-date collection of IPv6 material produced by the U. S. IPv6 Summit over the last 2.5 years and posted at http://www.usipv6.com shares plenty of IPv6 ideas and opportunities with the wide Internet community from developers and implementers to end users. IPv6 Summits that meet twice a year have been organized by Alex Lightman who is a chairman and CEO of IPv6 Summit, Inc. Since June 2003 five summits have hosted speakers from around the world discussing IPv6 progress. In addition there was IPv6 Day at Las Vegas CES in January 2004 and IPv6 Panel at CES in January 2005. During these events over 170 industry experts have delivered 244 presentations flipping over 6200+ slides. Assuming that volumes fairly represent the amount of effort devoted to IPv6 emerging trends help painting North American IPv6 adventure. Figure 1 below shows the total volume of IPv6 materials presented at a particular summit. Overall volumes increase at an annual compounded growth rate of (rounded) 6% with a prominent spike in June 2004.
Summits' speeches vary in their topics reflecting the vastness of IPv6 that ranges from protocol specifications through a country or an organization transition to specific implementations. At the same time four major areas of interest surface from the rich menu of discussions, namely Mobility, Security, Transition and Protocol. Mobility includes everything related to Mobile IPv6 from tutorials to individual products. Absolute majority of Mobility slides has been produced by two or three individuals. Absence of even one of them at the summit would have had a major negative impact on volumes as seen in Figure 2 below. Security is another category discussed by a limited number of experts primarily in a tutorial like form. Figure 2 indicates that interest in IPv6 Security experiences the fastest growth at 62% ACGR. Transition absorbs the broadest range of topics such as customer requirements; transition mechanisms; test and production networks; interoperability; deployment; business solutions; IPv6 enabled hardware and software; implementation status; research roadmaps etc. Protocol covers all materials related to IPv6 mechanics specified in IETF drafts, RFCs and standards; items addressed by IETF WGs as well as administrative aspects of the Internet.
About one hundred organisations have told their stories during IPv6 Summits. This small yet courageous community accounts for meagre 0.002% of the world active establishments (conservative projection based on the data from Statistics Canada as well as the U.S. Census Bureau). Figure 3 shows top ten entities by the presented volume. Consulting company Native6 Inc. keeps the first place generating 12% of the total slides. The Department of Defence with its subsidiaries, i.e. DISA, DoD Transition office, JITC, etc. have produced the second largest volume of 11%. Both IPv6 Forum and North America IPv6 Task Force together occupy the third place with 8% of the volume. Three hardware vendors combined (Booz Allen Hamilton, Juniper and Cisco) have generated 10% of all slides.
Another interesting distribution in Figure 4 orders top 10 participating entities by the number of presentations. This time DoD with subsidiaries takes the lead delivering 34 or 14% of total discussions. IPv6 Forum and NAIPv6TF combined came distant second with 7% while Native6 Inc. takes the third place at 6%. A mix of hardware manufacturers has changed. Now it includes Cisco, Juniper, Nokia and HP. These four entities together had their speakers at the podium in 12% of all cases.
The above observations as well as a consensus on certain items throughout the material dare to hazard the following summary:
We would like to stress the application aspect of IPv6 which presents a unique opportunity for investors. While telecommunication and cable industry struggle with dramatic changes in the distribution of voice and TV an opportunity presents itself for a new type of entity. Such Internet Applications and Services Provider (IASP) could leverage IPv6 by creating, hosting and offering network centric applications. Most of the promise appears to come from solutions where moving things exchange data via native IPv6 network. Anyone who is interested in such venue - please contact the author. About the author Peter Sherbin has 15 years of the telecom industry experience with global carriers and multinationals including AT&T, PTT Netherlands, British Telecom, GPT International, Bell Canada in areas spanning from Product Development / Management to Strategic Planning. He received his MBA from the CU at Denver, CO and his B.S. from Kiev State University. With Bell Canada he has managed 100M Internet Access portfolio over the last few years. He currently assists Bell with market forecasting. Recently Peter has started UNET Advisors Inc. which provides IPv6 consulting. He can be reached at peter.sherbin@bell.ca. The article expresses the personal opinion of the author with no obligations
of any kind on Bell Canada's part.
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Where
would you go for cutting edge information nowadays? Probably the next
best thing to pro's mind is a PowerPoint capturing its originator's thoughts.
Hence a "paronthology" (in Greek 'paron' means 'to present')
or a true 21st century art of creating and processing presentations is
blossoming on the need to share ideas at ever increasing pace.
