IPv6 – The Fabric of the “Production Internet” for IoT.

"So, IPv6. You all know that we are almost out of IPv4 address space.

I am a little embarrassed about that because I was the guy who decided that 32-bit was enough for the Internet experiment. My only defense is that, that choice was made in 1977, and I thought it was an experiment.

The problem is the experiment didn't end, so here we are."

--- Vint Cerf, “the father of internet”.

The fact that 4 of the 5 Global RIR’s (Regional Internet Registries) having announced their final /8 (IPv4) policy, the experiment has finally outlived its existence and needs to evolve to cater to next stage of Internet growth largely driven by the proliferation of IoT.

Only this time it cannot be experimented with, but will have to be planned meticulously to address not only the scalability but also the shortcomings of the earlier experiment (IPv4).

Further, the IoT is projected to add 50 billion devices (end equipment’s, sensors, embedded platforms, gateways) that need to speak to each other and exchange data in a reliable manner. The IPv4 Internet, with its pool of 4 billion IP addresses most of which is already exhausted, is neither scalable nor sustainable to meet these requirements. This situation demands an imminent shift from an over lived experimental internet to a "New Age Production Internet” that is scalable, sustainable, fast and secure to support IoT.

This “New Age Production Internet” can only be built on a robust communication fabric of IPv6 , for the reasons as explained below:

Scalability:

The “Production Internet” will have to be highly scalable to support the growth of IoT devices. Each of these devices will have to be identified uniquely on the internet for this communication to happen.

This is where IPv6, with its almost infinite (2128 = 296 x Present day internet) scale of IP addresses will serve as the communication fabric for IoT enabling these devices to send and receive information or trigger actions.

Speed and Efficiency:

With billions of IoT devices, that will need to communicate information, analyze and take action in real time, this will require the networks to not only be fast but also highly efficient.

a) The IPv6 header is designed to minimize header overhead and reduce the header process time thereby allowing the packets to be transferred in much faster and efficient manner.

b) No packet fragmentation is required to be done in IPv6 with its support for Path MTU, which further optimizes the processing time along the traffic path thereby increasing the traffic efficiency.

c) Due to the large scale of IPv6 addresses, route aggregation and summarization can be achieved. This results in reduced number of route entries in the routing table to process, thereby increasing route efficiency.

Robust and Resilient:

IoT devices will need to ride on a network that is robust and resilient, with capabilities to achieve redundancies and seamless failovers.

a) Broadcast is not supported in IPv6, there by doing away with the inefficiencies of a broadcast network that have often resulted in major network outages at times.

b) With reduced routing entries the network convergence time in the event failover or changeover is significantly reduced

c) The large address space in IPv6 allows for provider independent address allocation. This will enable organizations to build multi-homed networks uplinked to multiple providers for redundancy and failover.

End to End communication:

The IoT devices, networks and applications will need to speak to each other over a seamless path.

a) The current IPv4 network due to the limited address space, is highly oversubscribed with wide deployments of NAT (Network Address Translation). Many of the IoT applications will require an end to end seamless path without any translation to be performed in between as it breaks the end to end communication and also reduces the speed.

b) IPv6 with its infinite address space addresses this limitation by allowing global IPv6 addresses to be provided to every device on the network. Hence no NAT will be required to be implemented at any stage along the path.

c) 6Lowpan, the stripped down low power version of IPv6, can be deployed on the sensor networks which can be seamlessly integrated to the IPv6 wan or backhaul networks to carry the data to the IPv6 enabled cloud. A seamless end to end IPv6 communication path can be built from source to destination.

 Auto-configuration:

The IoT networks will have large deployments of sensors, embedded platforms and gateways that will have to be assigned unique IP addresses. Manually configuring addresses in such deployments will not be feasible.

a) IPv6 with its support for address auto-configuration can easily support fast deployments and roll outs in such scenarios.

b) NDP (Neighbor Discovery Protocol ) in IPv6 ensures that each device is allocated a unique address and dos not clash with any other address in the network.

Mobility:

The IoT will connect devices of all types, both stationary and mobile, to the internet. This requires the network to support connections without any drop of connection when there is a change of location.

IPv6 mobility provides a mechanism for the host to roam around different links without losing any communication/connection and its IP address.That is, a device can retain a virtual point of presence on one network while it is connected to another. It’s always reachable by its “home” address regardless of its location in the IPv6 network.

Security:

The IoT networks with direct exposure to Internet are highly susceptible to Internet attacks and hence will have to be secured from the same.

a) IPv6 with its inherent feature support for IPSEC can help establish a secure communication path from source host to destination. This will ensure that the traffic between the devices is protected along the path.

b) The large scale of IPv6 also makes it almost impossible to perform reconnaissance attacks on the network.

Conclusion

The experimental network of IPv4 which has evolved in to the present day internet is clearly not equipped to scale to the requirements of IoT. IPv4 exhaustion along with proliferation of smart devices is leading to imminent adoption of IPv6. IPv6 with its tremendous scalability and feature richness has been designed to provide the robust fabric for this “Production Internet” of the future, geared to serve the IoT.

Caveats :

Having concluded as above it is also important to understand that IPv6 deployment also poses a few challenges against each of these advantages. The fact that IPv6 is not inter-operable or is incompatible with IPv4 further adds to the complexity of deployment.The transition mechanisms for each of the scenarios will have to be identified and detailed transition blue print will have to designed for each organization.It is highly suggested to undertake this transition only with a IPv6 skilled team in place and under the expert guidance of an IPv6 specialist.