ETSI launches new group on IPv6 Enhanced Innovation

Sophia Antipolis, 25 January 2021

In the 5G and cloud era, IPv6 will grow rapidly. Strengthening new generation IP network technologies based on IPv6 and its innovative technologies has become the common direction of the IP industry.

To tackle the increasing Industry needs for IPv6 adoption in multiple Use Cases and Scenarios, ETSI has recently launched ISG IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE). IPE aims to drive full connectivity of IPv6 on everything and facilitate the business success of this technology. IPE members include 43 organizations to date, comprising carriers, vendors, and academia, working together to improve the industry ecosystem and accelerate innovation.

The Industry Specification Group held its’ kick-off meeting on 18-19 January involving attendees from  Cisco, ETISALAT, HPE, Huawei, OTE, POST Luxembourg, Telefonica and Turkcell to name a few. Latif Ladid, Research Fellow at the University of Luxembourg and Founder & President of the World IPv6 Forum has been appointed as Chair.

Mr. Patrick Wetterwald from Cisco, Dr. Chongfeng Xie from China Telecom and Dr. Will Liu from Huawei have been appointed as Vice-Chairs.

During the meeting, a number of participants from 4 continents, including carriers and vertical industries expressed interest in exploring new IPv6 use cases and developing guidelines, highlighting foreseeable and tangible needs for both their business and our daily life. They agreed on the next-steps and work objectives laying a solid foundation for IPE rapid progress and Reports in several vertical industries (e.g., Finance, Automotive, Manufacturing) as well as Telco Operators (e.g., Cloud hosting, on demand connectivity, granted SLA transport, IIOT).

The group will first analyse the current landscape of existing IPv6 standards deployed on prime technologies such as 5G, IoT and Cloud Computing to identify gaps and thus accelerate IPv6-based innovations. Two other reports will cover data centre and Cloud use cases on one hand and 5G Transport use cases on the other hand. The last pieces of work will define Industrial IoT/enterprise requirements and IPv6 only transition requirements across new and evolving technology domains and areas.