Experts' Views Mixed on IoT Deployment Impact on IPv6 Adoption, Potential Barriers to Full IPv6 Transition

The impact of an increase in connected devices on the demand for unique IP addresses is "a very difficult thing to measure," Alain Fiocco, Cisco Office of the Chief Technology Officer senior engineering director and head of Cisco's Paris Innovation and Research Lab, told us. "It's very fickle to aggregate." While the future need for unique IP addresses due to IoT proliferation is uncertain, Fiocco said there will be at least some demand increase, and there's a hard push by a number of industry consortiums to adopt standards initiating a move toward IPv6: "You can expect the new version of your phone, tablet, [or other connected device] to be fully IPv6-enabled."

Doug Brake, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation telecommunications policy analyst, also is uncertain about the potential need for IP addresses. "IoT is certainly one of the many reasons to prefer an accelerated transition to IPv6," said Brake. "That said, we still don't really know how IoT services will affect demand for IP addresses." It's likely many sensors deployed in the coming years will connect through a specialized hub and use specialized Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) standards that don't necessarily require unique IP addresses for each unit, said Brake. Many smaller-scale IoT systems connect through home hubs that use their own addressing systems, such as Zigbee, and don't always rely on IP addresses for each individual sensor, so there hasn't been an "overnight explosion" in IP addresses, Brake said.

Several IPv6 experts told us they do see IoT forcing the hand of companies lagging in IPv6 adoption to begin making the switch, while others said they see different motivating factors behind the need to transition. A growth in connected devices could begin to have a pull on IPv6 adoption, Fiocco said, citing the large number of IoT technologies expected to be deployed in the near future as a primary driver. IPv4 also makes it more complicated to deploy IoT, Fiocco said, due to the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and the lack of backward compatibility between IPv6 and IPv4. David Belson, Akamai industry and data intelligence senior director, said that as the number of connected devices grows "we are going to be forced into a more rapid adoption of IPv6." Adoption of IPv6 is "getting broader every day," and is even becoming the norm in several industries, he said, citing wireless companies as a prime example. World IPv6 Launch, sponsored by the Internet Society, ranks AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the top 10 on its list of IPv6 deployment, which is determined by overall traffic volume. Verizon is listed by the group at 71 percent IPv6 deployment as of Dec. 9, with AT&T at 52 percent and T-Mobile at 53 percent.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Internet and Scalable Systems Research Manager Douglas Montgomery said the IoT could "eventually" drive the IPv6 transition, but he currently "doesn't see large commercial IoT deployment" that would drive companies to adopt the new protocol. The motivators for IPv6 adoption are "plain and simple," Montgomery said, citing the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and need for unique IP addresses. "There are good advantages to moving to IPv6, but IoT isn't necessarily forcing a faster transition" now, Brake said. He also said it's "less that IPv4 is holding back the IoT" and more that the IoT could potentially spur quicker IPv6 adoption.

Multiple companies and research and industry organizations maintain statistics on IPv6 use in the U.S., with some citing an IPv6 adoption rate as low as 15 percent, and others showing deployment as high as 38 percent. Akamai lists the U.S. at a nearly 16 percent IPv6 adoption rate -- fourth on its list of highest adoption since Aug. 31, 2014, behind Germany, Liberia and Belgium -- based on calculations of IPv6 content requests over Akamai's content delivery network. Cisco's IPv6 data shows the U.S. at a 38 percent deployment rate, and almost 40 percent of the top 500 Web pages available in the U.S. over IPv6.

"As an industry we've been dragging our feet" in adopting IPv6, Akamai's Belson said, saying the lack of industry adoption can be attributed in part to a "sort of a chicken and egg problem." Content providers "didn't spend too much time providing content over IPv6," so network providers weren't making the switch to the new protocol because there wasn't enough enabled content available, though that has begun to change over the years, Belson said. "These days it's easier than ever" to make the transition, he said, but a potential challenge to adoption has been a "lack of a business case." We "haven't hit the point yet where the IPv4 market is completely dry," because sparse amounts of used and reallocated IP addresses are still floating around and being acquired by companies, Belson said. IPv4 is "unfortunately here to stay for a while," Belson said, which is in part because of embedded devices and the difficulty of upgrading them to new systems. "For the foreseeable future there will need to be some IPv4 support," he said.

Fiocco said the main reason behind a fear of IPv6 adoption isn't financial or attributable to any discernible cost. It's "more of a knowledge gap and more of a [conscious] choice" to train employees than it is a decision based on the cost of switching, he said, saying for certain large companies, the cost of transitioning to IPv6 will run between $100,000 and $200,000. Montgomery pointed to the lack of IPv6 adoption of network security vendors as another potential reason some companies are not making the switch. "In some cases, people are highly invested in security devices" and security suites for their businesses, he said, and are afraid to adopt IPv6 because they could incur costs in upgrading network security or switching providers. "Making that choice as an enterprise requires significant investment," he said.