MOBILE OPERATORS ARE divided over the commercial benefits of migrating IPv4 networks to IPv6. Though the alarmists' view of the IPv4 address shortage has abated since its crescendo in 2001, when the IPv6 Forum predicted IPv4 addresses would run out by 2005, operators do recognize the need to continuously monitor the situation by adopting a long-term strategy. A number of factors to drive the conversion are already emerging (see fig. 1). In Asia, operators and manufacturers are pushing hard toward IPv6 because of the relatively low number of IPv4 addresses the continent received. In Japan and South Korea, WiMAX and WiBro systems will be based on IPv6 and will be able to natively connect in IP. Elsewhere - namely in Europe, where IP Multimedia Subsystem deployment has begun — IPv6 will he introduced oraduallv.
展开▼
