IPv6+: Defining the Next Generation of the IP Industry

By IPv6 Forum

On April 15^th, OMDIA, IPv6 Forum, and Huawei jointly held the webinar “Transform your IP network for the 5G and cloud era”. More than 200 experts from operators, vendors, research institutions, and international standards organization registered and participated in the webinar. Dr. Latif Ladid, Founder&President of the IPv6 Forum and Chairman of the ETSI IP6 Group, shared the latest innovation from IPv6 to IPv6+ and how to better guarantee new services such as autonomous driving, industrial automation, and VR/AR in 5G and cloud era.

Latif said that the number of Internet nodes will exceed 100 billion in 5G and cloud era. IPv6 is a fundamental ingredient to address current foreseen evolution, mainly to solve the problem of insufficient IP addresses, but not the only. Emerging services, such as self-driving, industrial automation, VR teaching, smart healthcare, smart power grid, and enterprise cloudification, require massive, high-quality, and faster connections. These new services pose higher requirements on network automation, intelligence, and user experience. To tackle those requirements, IPv6 needs to be further combined with other technologies to generate groundbreaking “IPv6+” based networks.

IPv6+ is the next-generation intelligent IP network for 5G and cloud era, which uses IPv6+AI+ protocol innovation to support path planning, quick service provisioning, automatic O&M, quality visualization, SLA assurance, and application awareness.

IPv6+ greatly stimulates business model innovation to increases revenue and efficiency. For example, operators use the IPv6+slicing technology to isolate multiple planes on a physical network to carry different types of services and provide dedicated channels for VR, education, healthcare, and power grid, greatly ensuring service experience. Operators transform from selling bandwidth to selling differentiated services, change the business model, and increase the revenue; IPv6+SRv6 only configures the first and the last ends, accelerates service deployment in various industries, shortening the deployment period from months to days.IPv6+AI improves O&M efficiency in various industries and reduces O&M costs. For example, a bank uses IPv6+AI to detect faults, locate faults and recover services within a few minutes, improving O&M efficiency by several times.

Latif also mentioned that IPv6+ has become a hot topic in the research of international standard organizations. ETSI has started white papers about IPv6+ in March 2020. All parties are welcome to participate in the drafting.

IPv6+, combined with business scenario innovation, is deepening and developing IPv6 and becoming the key basic technology of IP networks in 5G and cloud era. The accelerated deployment of IPv6 also provides a broad space for IPv6+ technology, network, and service innovation. It is a common understanding that IPv6+is defining the next generation of the IP industry.

Archive Webinar Link: https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2225292/26960FA1D34D59B2191411A5A13368EC?partnerref=Huawei