STRATEGIC PLANNING

Strategic Planning

An IPv6 strategy is an important starting point for an organization that is considering implementing IPv6. Depending on the size of your organization an IPv6 strategy can consist of a short statement or a substantial document.

Even if you do not intend to implement IPv6 in the near term, it is crucial that you make a considered strategic decision regarding your approach to IPv6 and understand fully the issues involved. A strategic plan is a useful tool in ensuring that your approach to IPv6 is business focussed and based on a sound foundation.

The strategy of IPv6 services development reflects market realities and H&C IPv6´s commitment to take an early leadership role as a professional services provider. Three major focus areas have been identified:

Benefits of IPv6

1. Business continuity

The growing number of users, devices, and underlying infrastructure that support IPv6 place businesses that continue relying solely on IPv4 at the risk of isolation. These businesses must deploy IPv6 to allow access to their web sites, email or other services by the increasing base of users with IPv6 addresses.

Shortage of IP addresses could give rise to many problems for networks looking to grow or add new users, as businesses that have not deployed IPv6 are left with very limited options to acquire new IP addresses and connect new devices. Moreover, such options may be extremely costly.

2. Performance, efficiency, and quality-of-service enhancements

The major changes brought forth by IPv6, particularly on the packet header and addressing mechanisms, cater to many technical enhancements in terms of overall efficiency, performance, and quality-of-service for the Internet environment.

More efficient and higher performance packet processing
Bandwidth optimization
Simplified network structure
More robust and efficient quality-of-service

3. Simplified network structure

In IPv4, networks need to be configured either manually, by a network administrator, or by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers to assign IP addresses and other necessary resources to devices connected to the network. IPv6, on the other hand, offers a feature called ‘Stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC), which automates some of these network administrator tasks. Through the SLAAC, routers can automatically generate IPv6 addresses and configure themselves, including a verification of the uniqueness of the determined address. In this way, the SLAAC feature eliminates the need for manual configurations, DHCP servers, or any additional servers that keep track of which IP addresses are assigned currently and which other addresses can still be assigned. The elimination of these devices and processes in IPv6 contributes significantly to the simplification of the network and to reduced underlying costs.

4. More robust and efficient quality-of-service

With the introduction of innovative technologies and rapid expansion of digitalisation and automation, varying types of services and applications are developed, ranging from IoT, cloud gaming and VoIP to video streaming. These services may have different requirements characterised by various metrics, such as bandwidth, delay, jitter or packet loss. As resources in a particular network are generally limited (e.g., in terms of bandwidth), prioritisation of the different applications that simultaneously transmit data offers efficiency, flexibility and higher performance. The enabling mechanisms for such preferential treatment of certain types of IP traffic are referred to as Quality-of-Service (QoS) rules.