Vision - September/October 2008 - (Page 17)

By Robert E. Calem I n a world teeming with Internetconnected devices, consumer electronics companies are continuing to pile on the goods—adding Web access and applications to a myriad of products ranging from TVs to refrigerators. But in expanding the Internet universe, the CE industry also is hastening its potential demise, experts warn: Internet Protocol version 4 or IPv4, the modern Internet’s most critical underpinning, was never designed to handle the strain. Salvation is at hand, however, in the form of Internet Protocol version 6, also known as IPv6. Already developed and partially deployed, this new foundation technology promises to accommodate an almost infinite number of Internetconnected devices plus the new applications they’ll enable. Yet, although the widespread deployment of IPv6 is practically inevitable, the experts say, its adoption will be gradual. Running Out of Numbers Originally developed in the 1970s and 1980s, IPv4 is the technology that makes every device connected to the Internet “discoverable” by assigning it a “32-bit network address” composed of four sets of three digits (in the form 192.168.251.102). The result: about four billion unique network addresses. Thanks mainly to the growth of broadband connections in the home, about 85 percent of all those available network addresses already are assigned, notes Dr. Predrag Filipovic, senior analyst with The Diffusion Group, a Dallas, Texas, based analytics and advisory firm specializing in the Predrag Filipovic connected home and broadband media markets. Moreover, with nearly 20 percent of the world’s people already connected to the Internet—and many of them owning multiple Internet-connected devices—it has been widely forecast that the world will run out of IPv4 network addresses sometime between 2010 and 2012. What has helped to stave off that day of reckoning so far, experts say, is a technolwww.ce.org ogy named “network address translation” or NAT, which allows a device with a publicly visible IPv4 network address to connect to the Internet and, in Brendan Traw turn, feed its online access to other devices using a series of private addresses. Thus, for example, a home “router” using a public IPv4 network address privately can link a PC, a videogame console and even a TV to the Internet via a “local area network” in the home. NAT is “what has given IPv4 the legs to continue for the foreseeable future,” says Brendan Traw, chief technology officer at Intel Corp.’s digital home group in Hillsboro, Ore. By comparison, IPv6 uses “128-bit” network addresses that comprise more digits, resulting in an exponentially larger number of those addresses. It thus supports “a staggeringly large number of devices” and allows each one of those devices to have its own network address directly visible on the Internet, Traw explains. Potentially, IPv6 could enable trillions more devices to be connected directly to the Internet, meaning there effectively would be no limit to the number of Webenabled products a person could own. Easy Does It IPv6 offers other advantages, too, notes Wayne Homren, principal at Command Information, a Herndon, Va., consulting firm specializing in commercial and governmental IPv6 network deployments. First among these is “self configuration and discovery of neighbors,” which enables one IPv6-equipped device to find and pair up with another automatically. “The benefit for the end-user is easier set-up, and for the manufacturer, fewer tech support calls,” Homren says. That stands in stark contrast to the configuration of an IPv4 network, which often requires time consuming and tedious human labor. Additionally, IPv6 makes broadcasting or multicasting over the Internet much more efficient, as well as adding security features not found in IPv4, Homren says. For example, digital video and audio content owners could use IPv6 as the basis for a premium on-demand service, suggests Glenn Reitmeier, vice president of technology standards policy and strategy at NBC Universal in New York—noting that because the technology provides “certainty of Internet address,” it will allow for easy user authentication. In another potential scenario, many IPv6-enabled cell phones loaded with a compatible application could discover each other automatically and form an ad hoc network when they’re in the same vicinity—allowing, for example, a throng of Facebook friends to find one another at a large party through their phones. This can be done today without IPv6, using GPS and cell phone towers, but it is a much more complicated process that requires access to a centralized database. “IPv6 opens the door for every single device sold to have its own unique IP address,” making it a lot easier for each device to hook up to the Internet and get all the data it needs, says Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst at In-Stat, a market research firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz. “This is a big breakthrough,” he declares. “Some user assembly required is where we’re at now.” Global Internet Scaling Published in May, Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning (Network Business) by Patrick Grossetete, Ciprian P Popoviciu and Fred Wettling is a guide to . the business and economic implications of deploying IPv6 for non-technical decision-makers. It contains real-life case studies related to business, government and consumer deployment of IPv6 that can be leveraged as a business differentiator and competitive advantage. September/October 2008 17 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - September/October 2008

Vision - September/October 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist Visionary C4 Trends Coming to a Neighborhood Near You IPv6: Connecting People and Things Israelis Spend Big on the Latest CE Devices Tech Speak Tech Policy CEA Newsline Going Global Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - September/October 2008

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