Deploying IPv6 in Broadband Access Networks

Chapter 1. IPv6 Drivers in Broadband Networks

With the exponential growth of the Internet and an increasing number of end users, service providers (SPs) are looking for new ways to evolve their current network architecture to meet the needs of Internet-ready appliances, new applications, and new services. Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is designed to enable SPs to meet these challenges and provide new services to their customers.

The life of IPv4 was extended by using techniques such as network address translation (NAT) and other innovative address allocation schemes. However, the need for intermediate nodes to manipulate data payload while employing these schemes posed a challenge to peer-to-peer communications, end-to-end security, and quality of service (QoS) deployments. IPv6 also addresses fundamental limitations in the IPv4 protocol that renders the latter incapable of meeting long-term requirements of commercial applications. Besides its inherent capabilities to overcome the aforementioned limitations, IPv6 also supports an address space quadruple of that of IPv4, by supporting 128-bit instead of 32-bit addresses (RFC3513). The huge IPv6 address space will enable IPv6 to accommodate the impending worldwide explosion in Internet use. IPv6 addressing provides ample addresses for connecting consumer home/Internet appliances, IP phones for voice and video, mobile phones, web servers, and so on, to the Internet without using IP address conversion, pooling, and temporary allocation ...