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July 5, 2010

With so many new iPhones, smartphones, BlackBerrys, MIDs (mobile Internet devices), book readers, VoIP networks, and other numerous IP-enabled devices landing on so many mobile networks around the globe, a large majority of wireless carriers over the past few years simply haven't given some serious thought to the fact that we will very soon run out of IPv4 Internet addresses.

And the problem is growing faster and getting worse than what most people think.

The transition for the move from IPv4 to IPv6 should now be a top priority for all wireless carriers and mobile service operators. With the demand for so many new wireless devices coming online and the management of network resources that are getting more and more complicated, mobile operators will need to get on the IPv6 platform very quickly if they want to continue to thrive.

If they don't, their current systems will continue to work as before, but when we will soon run out of IPv4 IPs, wireless carriers simply won't be able to grow anymore, and that's where all the urgency is. It's not if but WHEN we will run out of IP addresses many ISPs and Internet experts are saying.

Still today, there are many wireless operators that are totally unprepared for the transition to IPv6. Testing for new 3G devices alone such as the 2 million iPads and the 3 million iPhones 4 recently sold is more than enough to keep operators very concerned.

And this important issue won't go away on it's own either. With the remaining pool of available IPv4 addresses at around less than 7.2 percent, it is hoped that wireless carriers will feel an immediate sense of urgency.

Additionally, IPv4 addresses are not being disabled or un-supported – rather, they will continue to co-exist in what is known as a dual-stack environment with IPv6 for many more years to come. With IPv6, it is estimated that there will be an immediate pool of over 85 billion IPs, enough to last us for the next century at least!

However, there are no less than 3 major obstacles wireless carriers will face when they attempt the transition to IPv6:

Regression and interoperability issues -- Mobile apps and services must be able to coexist over both v4 and v6 stacks. This means mobile wireless carriers will need to ensure that every phone with IPv6 support is able to communicate both with other IPv6 phones of all makes and models, as well as all those supporting only IPv4. All transition mechanisms within the network will need to be exercised to ensure that each potential element in an operator’s network is going to work well.

Functionality migration -- Mobile operators may assume that if their underlying networking infrastructure supports IPv6, the migration will execute flawlessly. This is incorrect. Many of today’s applications contain IP addresses embedded within higher-level protocols, such as SIP in Voice over IP. Without specifically developing IPv6 support for that application, it will not behave correctly when migrated. Also, the variety of operating systems today that might connect to their network will all behave differently when operating in both IPv4 and IPv6 environments, not to mention the dual-stack environment. Key elements such as domain name resolution need to be thoroughly tested because all applications depend on this working flawlessly.

Security -- Application-aware systems such as DPI, IPS and firewalls have all had years of development and security patches that have gone into detecting and managing attacks and exploits over IPv4. But how do you ensure that old IPv4-based attacks are properly detected and handled when they come in over IPv6? And what about the tunneling schemes that would allow IPv6-based exploits to be tunneled over the v4 version?

All these many security challenges will require wireless carriers to have an appropriate transition plan in place. Such a plan will need to include adequate testing or those operators will experience unexpected and undesired consequences associated with their move to IPv6, including specific applications, services, and devices failing to work, either all at once or sequentially.

Although unlikely, it's also possible that a complete network meltdown could occur, in certain cases.

So the question is: what do mobile operators need to do today? Wireless carriers now need to re-test every element of their current networks, as well as ensure their upcoming 4G networks can support both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously and well in advance of launching them.

A recommended method would be to implement a testing solution that would allow a mobile service operator to leverage a single suite of tests which can seamlessly switch between IPv4 and IPv6, thereby preventing the need to maintain and extend two independent sets of tests for the many years to come when we will be living in a dual-stack Internet environment.

Nevertheless, wireless carriers may want to use this transition as an opportunity to re-evaluate their current testing strategy. There are new and innovative testing approaches that are more effective in meeting the challenges carriers have in testing their networks given the uniquely rapid rate of change associated with them.

Relying on regular and "generic" testing that will at best serve as an approximation of their real-world environment is now a thing of the past and simply won't work with IPv6.

A more effective approache uses the mobile operator’s own real service traffic as the basis for test creation. This not only allows tests to be created more rapidly, it also allows more accurate testing of the actual services being deployed by the wireless carrier.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months just how fast wireless carriers and mobile operators will prepare and fully upgrade their networks to accomodate IPv6. Time is now of the essence, and the ones that do will continue to grow. Those that don't upgrade will still have their networks work on the older IPv4 protocol, but won't be able to add new subscribers to their legacy systems.

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Source: DVMN.