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On June 16^th, Light Reading organized a webinar endorsed by IPv6 Forum, ETSI and EANTC, on “IPv6 Enhanced Innovation: Embracing the IP Future in 5G & Cloud Era”. More than 200 experts from standards organization, operators, vendors, government, university and research institutions registered and attended the webinar. Speakers shared experience in deploying IPv6 in Europe, benefits, challenge and related standardization progresses and business practices.

In the 5G and cloud era, the number of nodes connected to the Internet will exceed 100 billion. IPv6 fundamentally solves the problem of insufficient IP addresses. In addition, IPv6 extension headers functionality greatly improve the scalability and flexibility of packets and becomes the starting point for the next generation of internet.

Based on IPv6, SRv6 standard has also made great progress. IETF officially released in March the SRv6 standard document RFC8754, which defines the encapsulation format of the SRv6 Segment Routing Header (SRH). This laid a solid foundation for large-scale commercial use of SRv6 and multi-vendor interoperability. Bruno Decraene, a senior architect from Orange, co-chair of the IETF’s SPRING working group, shared the latest progress of SRv6 standardization and the adoption perspectives.

Dr. Latif Ladid, Founder & President of the IPv6 Forum and Chairman of the ETSI IP6 Group, shared IPv6+(IPv6 Enhanced Innovation) vision. He said that emerging services such as autonomous driving, industrial automation, VR, smart healthcare, and IoT require huge quantity, high-quality, and smart connections. These services pose higher requirements on network automation, intelligence, and experience assurance. To tackle those requirements, IPv6 needs to be combined with innovative technologies to generate groundbreaking “IPv6+” networks.

IPv6+ is IPv6 Enhanced Innovation for 5G and Cloud era, represented by protocol innovation such as SRv6, BIER6, etc. , combined with AI such as network analysis, intelligent tuning, etc. , which can meet the requirements of path planning, quick service provisioning, SLA assurance, automatic O&M, quality visualization, and application awareness.

• IPv6+AI supports network quality visualization and automatic O&M, shortening root cause analysis time by 80% and reducing O&M cost by 50%.
• IPv6+Slicing can provide dedicated channels for VR, education, healthcare, and electric power, transform the business model from selling bandwidth to selling differentiated services.
• IPv6+SRv6 achieve automated service provisioning across domains with one-hop; like taxi, focuses on destination, no transfer required.

Eduard Metz, network architect, shared insights in future network architecture based on IPv6+ innovation within Netherlands KPN. He reported that KPN sees SRv6 as a key building block for a scalable, seamless and flexible end-to-end fabric that allows for a high degree of automation.

Sebastien Lourdez, network architect from POST Luxemburg, shared his vision on new IPv6 / SRv6 infrastructures and what they will offer. He shares his insightful thinking on AI application to IPv6 Service which can be dynamically established based on the customer’s requirements and resources availability to reduce the waste of network resources.

Within the webinar, industry recognized a consensus on the IPv6+ concept, application scenarios, and value, laying a solid foundation for expanding the IPv6+ industry ecosystem.

From IPv6 to IPv6+, technological innovation will help to address new challenges, to create new value for the industry, and to embrace the bright IP future in 5G and the cloud era.