IGF 2017 WS #191 Public Policies to deploy IPV6 in developing countries. Successful International Experiences

III. Proposer

Mrs, Jimena Sierra, Technical Community, Federal Telecommunications Institute (México)

Mrs, Diana Gomez, Technical Community, Federal Telecommunications Institute (México)

Co-organizers

Mr., Kevon, SWIFT, Technical Community, LACNIC

Ms., Carolina, CAEIRO, Technical Community, LACNIC

VII. Content of the Session

The session will focus on how public policies that promote IPv6 deployment contribute to the full development of IoT, particularly in the context of developing economies. Specifically, the session will seek to:

- Introduce major pillars of IoT development including taxonomy, communication requirements under discussion in various spaces and prominent IoT projects;

- Discuss the importance of IPv6 deployment to promote the development of IoT;

- Showcase successful case studies in IPv6 deployment, and IoT applications, with special focus on developing economies;

- Debate about the future of IPv4 addresses once IPv6 deployment is widely underway.

Session Dynamics

The session will begin with opening remarks by Moderator Mr. León Felipe Sanchez who will introduce the topic of the workshop, dynamics and speakers (10 mins).

Workshop participants will break into four discussion groups, each of which will be co-chaired by one or two speakers. Discussion topics will include:

- Main pillars of IoT development

- Importance of IPv6 deployment for the proper development of IoT

- Successul experiences for IPv6 Deployment

- The future of IPv4 addresses

Prior to breaking into discussion groups –and to facilitate the participation of remote participants-- the workshop will commence with firestarter remarks by each speaker based on the four discussion topics (30 mins total). Ines Robles from Ericson, Fred Baker from ISOC and Carolina Aguerre from UdeSA/UBA will address main pillars of IoT development introducing respectively the perspective of the Mobile Industry, the technical community and considerations from an Internet Governance perspective. Laura Kaplan from LACNIC and Paul Wilson APNIC will discuss the importance of IPv6 Deployment; Paul Wilson will also tackle the future of IPv4 addresses, while Laura Kaplan will address some successful experiences of IPv6 Deployment in the LAC region.

Following the debate, one panelist/ facilitator from each discussion group will be asked to present main conclusions to the audience.

VIII. Relevance of the Session

This session explores identification and addressing needs for the IoT with special attention paid to the linkages between IoT development and IPv6. For this reason, the session will also explore the successful experiences for the deployment of IPv6, especially in the developing countries.

This topic is extremely important considering that Gartner, Inc. predicts that there will be up to 20.8 billion connected things by 2020, as millions of new things are being connected every day. While estimates vary among sources, exponentially within the Internet of Things (IoT) is certain.

For this reason, it is important to comprehend IoT development and, in particular, its network models and communications protocols. It must also be acknowledged that IoT debate is not new. The preeminence of identification and addressing within IoT comes at a time where there is a confluence of several trends including the rise of, inter alia, IP use (and the effects of IPv4 exhaustion in particular), ubiquitous connectivity, miniaturization, data analytics and cloud computing.

Furthermore, there are pragmatic considerations within IoT development that are largely focused on the technopolitical paradigm (e.g. security and privacy concerns; proprietary addressing schemes; current deployment/ubiquity of IPv6 across industries; cost implications in designing the architecture of devices and sensors; etc.). In the wake of IPv4 exhaustion, and given the existing range of IoT interventions, enhanced bottom-up dialogue among interest groups will be beneficial to all spaces that are concerned by the identification and addressing of ‘things’.

Taking into account the aforementioned, the transition from IPV4 to IPV6 require more discussion and collaboration between stakeholders about the principles, methods and means to face such issues. However, developing and less developed countries and more even regions as Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing a mixed situation regarding the adoption of the last Internet protocol, IPv6, despite greater efforts by LACNIC and its community to accelerate its expansion and use in the continent. On the one hand there are countries that have advanced and already have up to 9% of their traffic with this technology, and on the other, there are territories that have not even deployed IPv6.

There is a serious risk that less developed countries will not be able to communicate with each other because of the lack of adoption of this Internet protocol, which offers great advantages over IPv4. For that reason, it is important to promote the coordination with all the stakeholders such as technical community, academy, private sector, civil Society, but specifically governments have to take a relatively firm stand on this in order to internally encourage the adoption of IPv6 in their countries. ISPs, users, Internet users and universities can also help in the dissemination of the protocol.

In this regard, the workshop will look for sharing the experiences of successful stories of IPv6 deployment and the international reference to promote this deployment, especially by the governments.

Finally, it is important to highlighted the Internet’s sustainable growth depends on IPv6 adoption. The booming mobile market and the Internet of Things (IoT), alone, will require much more IP address space than is available with IPv4.

Anyone running the old protocol needs to adopt the new one in order to support the increasing demand on the global network as more people – and more machines and “things” – come online. IPv4 and IPv6 are two different protocols. IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4. Devices that communicate using only IPv6 cannot communicate with devices that communicate using only IPv4.

The two protocols are not directly compatible and the idea is that both can operate until all systems have IPv6 capability, at which time the IPv4 version will be unnecessary. However, the IPv4 system could still be used privately, especially in networks that are not connected to the public Internet. Meanwhile, the connectivity of the IPv6 universe raises an important problem. In this point, it is convenient to point out that the countries that have made a successful deployment or transition may consider that their IPv4 addresses be distributed in developing or less developed countries or start discussing what will happen with the IPV4 addresses once the IPv6 is completely deployed.

Tags: Internet of Things, IPv6 deployment