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Re: [RRG] 2 billion IP cellphones in 2103 & mass adoption of IPv6 by currentIPv4 users




On Sep 16, 2008, at 9:57 PM, Roland Dobbins wrote:

Or do they have other plans ?

There's a lot of NATting going on in this space, and an active desire on the part of management to provide the minimum of 'true' IP connectivity which users will accept and pay for, due to fears of service bypass, the desire to keep the user in a 'walled garden' of metered services, oversubscription concerns, etc. The service terms for many wireless services often explicitly forbid the use of P2P technologies like BitTorrent, and in some cases ftp and other protocols/services which are viewed as being undesirable due to typically heavy usage patterns.

Note that the handset manufacturers are very responsive to carrier requirements in terms of the capabilities that they design into the handsets, even in markets where unlocked, individually-purchased mobiles are the norm. AFAIK, none of even the most modern smartphones support IPv6, or allow it to be enabled by the user (correction welcome); which is rather ironic, given that, at present, IPv6-based mobile networks would represent a garden with especially high walls.

This is a handset manufacturer rather than a wireless provider but they seem to have given IPv6 some thought.

About 8 minutes into this presentation they talk about one reason why they are interested in IPv6.

About 11 minutes in there is a list of mobile devices that have support for IPv6, this of course doesn't address the issue of whether it's allowed to be enabled by the user on a given wireless provider's network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5RbyK0m5OY


Also, I've yet to see a wireless access service which supports IPv6 even for general-purpose computers connected via wireless adaptors. None of the mobile network operators with whom I've interacted provide IPv6 connectivity at all, or have disclosed an intention to do so in the near-to-medium-term future.

As to long-range plans, my subjective impression is that most of the mobile operators to whom I've spoken are just now coming to grips with the implications and requirements of operating production- quality IPv4 networks, and IPv6, even though it would at first blush seem quite attractive to them, is in many cases not even on their radar. I'm sure this will change over time, but quite slowly, given the industry characteristics noted above.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // +852.9133.2844 mobile

    History is a great teacher, but it also lies with impunity.

                  -- John Robb


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---
Bruce Curtis                         bruce.curtis@ndsu.edu
Certified NetAnalyst II                701-231-8527
North Dakota State University


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