Rating: M2M big driving force behind it
Today [June 6th 2012] has been named World ‘IPv6 launch day’. Now that might seem totally irrelevant to the world of mobile but the exact opposite is true. It’s all about giving every device connected to the internet a unique ID number or address. What you are almost certainly using today is Ipv4. Which allows for a mere 4.3 billion unique addresses. Sound enough until you realise that Ericsson (which is still world leader in providing mobile network infrastructure) has worked out that there will be around nine billion mobile devices in five year’s time [2017]. So we desperately need IPv6 which offers a mere 340 undecillion addresses (that’s 340 followed by 36 zeros). In order for this to work the networks need to switch it on. And guess what M2M (machine-to-machine) comms is one of the biggest driving forces behind IPv6?
Here at GoMobile News we’re grateful to Orange for providing us with a useful infographic on the importance of IPv6. You can find it here.
Now Orange talks about the ‘emerging markets’ as driving IPv6. Initially we thought they meant developing countries but what they mean is the new mobile markets such as mobile and M2M.
Take this example … only six million out of the 15 billion electricity meters in the world were ‘smart’ in 2008. By 2020 that figure will have risen to 825 million.
Incidentally, we haven’t noticed anyone else mention this but has anyone calculated just how much money the SIM card manufacturers are going to be making out of this? Just a thought.
Anyway, in theory we still have plenty of room to play with Ipv4's 4.3 billion addresses. But does anyone remember the bad old days of landline telephone numbers?
There were theoretically plenty to spare but the big conurbations kept running out of them and you can’t give a Leeds number to someone in Clapham, can you really?
Same with Ipv4, so we really do need Ipv6's greater address support. The only catch is that all the operators – not just the mobile ones – need to implement and offer IPv6 for it to work efficiently.
Hence IPv6 launch day which is a commitment by some big players to turn IPv6 on and – more importantly – keep it switched on.
With IPv6 there will be more than enough addresses to go around. So as Orange says, “Even your toaster can have one.”
Tony is currently Editor of GoMobile News. He has taken over this role from Bena Roberts. 
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