As organizations continue to adopt (SD-WAN) technology to improve network agility and reduce costs, the transition to the next generation internet protocol known as IPv6 is becoming increasingly important.
IPv4 remains the foundation for most enterprise networks, though it has a limited pool of addresses. IPv6 provides a vastly larger pool of IP addresses compared to IPv4, enabling organizations to connect exponentially more devices and applications to their networks. For years, vendors have been arguing that it’s important for organizations to consider IPv6 for SD-WAN, though adoption of IPv6 overall has lagged. According to the latest figures from Google for November 2023, less than half of Google‘s users access Google services over IPv6.
Though IPv6 does not currently represent the majority of global internet traffic, it’s not a capability that SD-WAN users should ignore either.
“Support for IPv6 is increasing in importance as most vendors have at least partial support,” Jonathan Forest, vice president analyst at Gartner told SDxCentral. “From an enterprise customer standpoint, its importance remains mixed.”
What’s driving SD-WAN users to IPv6
Forest noted that the reasons why different organizations adopt IPv6 vary.
Drivers can be based on geography. For example Asia Pacific has higher adoption of IPv6 than other geographies. Additionally, Forest commented that certain verticals, such as governments have also mandated IPv6.
The U.S. government is among those that has an IPv6 mandate. Being certified to be in compliance with the U.S. government’s IPv6 requirements is something that vendors are moving towards. Versa Networks is among the vendors that have recently announced IPv6 certification.
Kevin Sheu, vice president, Product Marketing at Versa Networks, told SDxCentral that his company has long had IPv6 capabilities. What’s new for Versa Network is certification against the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) USGv6 revision 1 Profile, which is the latest evolution of the U.S. government’s profile for how IPv6 should be configured and operated.
The USGv6 revision 1 is, in part, a specification that is designed to help organizations meet the requirements of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s M-21-07 directive issued in 2020 which has the goal of transitioning all U.S government networks to IPv6.
Sheu noted that the certification his company has now completed covers Versa CSG and CSX appliances for SD-WAN and SD-LAN, as well as Versa Cloud Gateways.
“This provides customers and organizations with a validation that the Versa solutions meet industry standards that their teams are required to meet,” Sheu said. “Some organizations look for this certification and won’t consider products that aren’t certified.”
IPv6 usage continues to grow, but IPv4 isn’t going away either
Sheu said that global IPv6 adoption has continued to grow as internet service providers, content providers and enterprises expand their support for the protocol. In some regions and use cases, comprehensive adoption of IPv6 has already been achieved, with significant portions of their internet traffic now IPv6-based.
“While there is continued migration to IPv6, at times, it does require an upgrade or replacement of hardware and software,”
Sheu said. “This includes upgrading routers, switches, and other network equipment as well as updating software.”
The migration to IPv6 doesn’t mean that organizations are dropping support for IPv4. Rather what tends to happen is that dual-stacks of both IPv6 and IPv4 capabilities are deployed on networks. Another common approach is to have some kind of tunneling approach where IPv4 network traffic is encapsulated inside of IPv6.
“IPv6 tunneling can be used during the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, allowing organizations to gradually move their network infrastructure from one protocol to the other without disrupting existing services,” Sheu said.
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