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BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 Page 1 Highlights Almost one-third or 31% of respondents indicated that they had already or were in the process of deploying IPv6 now, while another 22% will begin deployment within the next two years. This 53% combined rate indicating movement on IPv6 deployment contrasts starkly with 25% responding similarly in 2008 and 23% in 2005. More than twice the percentage of respondents expressed a “huge concern” over the depletion of IPv4 addresses since the 2008 survey, jumping from 16% to 35%. Another 46% expressed moderate concern while 19% felt low concern, comforted with the ability to use NAT and VPNs to alleviate IPv4 exhaustion issues. Among service providers, 56% expressed a huge concern and only 8% expressed low concern. 45% of respondents disagreed with the statement that IPv6 should be deployed only on Internet-facing servers. This would indicate that organizations will not be satisfied simply deploying IPv6 on a portion of their networks but will look to deploy it more broadly. Among the hurdles to IPv6 deployment, the complexity of the infrastructure upgrade once again led responses with 25% having so responded, which is on par with prior survey results. Several other hurdles garnered 10-15% response rates indicating a variety of obstacles depending on the organization. The dual-stack deployment approach led other IPv4-IPv6 co- existence strategies that enterprises and service providers are utilizing or plan to utilize. The Bottom Line There is no disputing that IPv4 address space is running out. Most (53%) survey respondents are taking action as a result and another 17% are currently analyzing the costs and benefits for IPv6 deployment. The remaining 24% have either decided not to begin deployment within the next two years, feel IPv6 is unnecessary or will follow a bottom-up end-user demand-driven approach to IPv6 deployment. While many enterprises plan to deploy IPv6 only on Internet-facing servers initially, deployment throughout their networks appears to be a longer term goal. The most common or planned approach to IPv6 deployment was dual-stack for both enterprises and service providers. About twice as many respondents in this 2011 survey felt that IPv6 links to business drivers and has strong enough ROI to deploy than those respondents of the 2008 and 2005 surveys. But a wide variety of deployment obstacles acknowledged by respondents indicates that there is no one solution aspect that would ease deployment for a majority of respondents.
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IPv6 industry survey results

May 30, 2015

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IPv6 has suddenly garnered substantial interest, and for good reason. Discover the highlights of the BT IPv6 survey.
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Page 1: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 1

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Highlights • Almost one-third or 31% of

respondents indicated that they had already or were in the process of deploying IPv6 now, while another 22% will begin deployment within the next two years. This 53% combined rate indicating movement on IPv6 deployment contrasts starkly with 25% responding similarly in 2008 and 23% in 2005.

• More than twice the percentage of respondents expressed a “huge concern” over the depletion of IPv4 addresses since the 2008 survey, jumping from 16% to 35%. Another 46% expressed moderate concern while 19% felt low concern, comforted with the ability to use NAT and VPNs to alleviate IPv4 exhaustion issues. Among service providers, 56% expressed a huge concern and only 8% expressed low concern.

• 45% of respondents disagreed with the statement that IPv6 should be deployed only on Internet-facing servers. This would indicate that organizations will not be satisfied simply deploying IPv6 on a portion of their networks but will look to deploy it more broadly.

• Among the hurdles to IPv6 deployment, the complexity of the infrastructure upgrade once again led responses with 25% having so responded, which is on par with prior survey results. Several other hurdles garnered 10-15% response rates indicating a variety of obstacles depending on the organization.

• The dual-stack deployment approach led other IPv4-IPv6 co-existence strategies that enterprises and service providers are utilizing or plan to utilize.

The Bottom Line There is no disputing that IPv4 address space is running out. Most (53%) survey respondents are taking action as a result and another 17% are currently analyzing the costs and benefits for IPv6 deployment. The remaining 24% have either decided not to begin deployment within the next two years, feel IPv6 is unnecessary or will follow a bottom-up end-user demand-driven approach to IPv6 deployment.

While many enterprises plan to deploy IPv6 only on Internet-facing servers initially, deployment throughout their networks appears to be a longer term goal. The most common or planned approach to IPv6 deployment was dual-stack for both enterprises and service providers.

About twice as many respondents in this 2011 survey felt that IPv6 links to business drivers and has strong enough ROI to deploy than those respondents of the 2008 and 2005 surveys. But a wide variety of deployment obstacles acknowledged by respondents indicates that there is no one solution aspect that would ease deployment for a majority of respondents.

Page 2: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 2

Introduction IPv6 has suddenly garnered substantial interest, and for good reason. With the allocation of the final /8 blocks of IPv4 space to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) in early February the long-anticipated IPv4 address exhaustion had struck reality. One of the RIRs, the APNIC serving the Asia/Pacific region, which received the largest of these final allocations, has already nearly exhausted its IPv4 address space. Soon ISPs in the Asia/Pacific region will have no IPv4 space for customers, only IPv6. The advent of IPv6-only end users is upon us, and organizations must weigh the costs and risks of deploying IPv6 to communicate with this nascent portion of the Internet population.

To weigh industry feedback on these major events, BT Diamond IP conducted a web-based survey on its website from March 23, 2011 through April 15, 2011. The survey was completed by 587 IT or Operations professionals from around the globe and spanning multiple industries. The survey was posted on www.btdiamondip.com and invitations to participate were sent to individuals identified as IT and Operations professionals throughout the world. All survey responses were automatically tabulated into a survey tool. Any individual skipped questions were not included in tabulations. Each chart highlighting unique responses in this report includes the number of valid responses for that particular question (e.g. n=500 indicates 500 responses). Percentages shown in charts may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Hypotheses and Summary Our first hypothesis stated that at least half of survey respondents would have either deployed, be deploying, or analyzing deployment of IPv6. We expected a vast majority of service provider respondents to have at least reached the analysis stage. Results indicate that 53% of all respondents have reached the analysis, planning or deployment stages, which is more than double those who were in comparable stages in prior surveys. Virtually all service provider respondents have performed such analysis and/or have begun deploying IPv6.

Figure 1: Concern about IPv4 address exhaustion (n=587)

Page 3: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 3

The second hypothesis posited that the majority of non-service providers would agree with the statement that IPv6 is required for Internet-facing servers only. This was based on a minimally disruptive deployment approach to support IPv6 Internet access without impacting the internal IPv4 network. It turns out that only 32% of enterprises, 36% of government respondents, and only 20% of educational institutions agreed with this statement, with an overall average of 31%. This would indicate that organizations will not be satisfied simply deploying IPv6 on Internet-facing servers only but will look to deploy it more broadly, though as a few respondents commented, in the short-term, Internet-facing deployment will be higher priority followed in the longer term with broader deployment.

Thirdly, we hypothesized that IPv6 would be of much larger concern to organizations this year than in prior years. This has proven to be true with 35% of respondents expressing a “huge” concern, triggering a need for IPv6 deployment vs. only 16% responding likewise in 2008 as illustrated in Figure 1. Interestingly, 19% of respondents indicated “low” concern.

Another hypothesis stated that IPv6’s address autoconfiguration feature would not be viewed as a valuable feature among enterprise respondents, given its opposition to network admission control (NAC) strategies. However, 57% of enterprises felt the feature is somewhat or extremely valuable. While we still expect DHCPv6 to be used within enterprise networks for most traditional address assignment functions, clearly many enterprises also see value in possibly enabling address autoconfiguration perhaps on particular subnets.

Perceptions of IPv6 Readiness and Capabilities Figure 2 summarizes responses regarding IPv6 drivers. Most respondents (61%) agreed or strongly agreed that IPv6 is mature enough to deploy with confidence. But 37% felt that IPv6 does not prove in with strong enough ROI, though this is down substantially from prior surveys where 70% felt ROI was not strong enough in 2005 and 73% in 2008. Perhaps this ROI perspective is shifting from one of increasing revenue with respect to cost with IPv6 deployment to that of maintaining revenue to cost, by virtue of reducing the impact of the opportunity cost of losing business or losing competitiveness if IPv6 is not deployed.

Figure 2: IPv6 readiness and value (n=573)

In a similar vein, only 28% of respondents agreed that IPv6 does not link to business drivers, less than half of the 69% of respondents agreeing with the same statement in the 2008 survey. As

Page 4: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 4

discussed previously, 45% of respondents disagreed that IPv6 should be deployed only on Internet-facing servers only, though this would seem to be the first priority given some comments provided by respondents.

Over half (55%) of respondents felt that IPv6 provides benefits to their network infrastructure. This is comparable to results in prior surveys. Finally, only 16% agreed or strongly agreed that IPv6 is not necessary even with respect to the current state of IPv4 address space capacity.

In terms of IPv6 features, Figure 3 summarizes respondents’ opinions. Not surprisingly, the expanded address space feature leapt to the top of the “most valuable” list for the vast majority (70%) of respondents. 82% of service providers considered expanded address space somewhat or extremely valuable, while 82% of respondents from Europe, 75% from Asia/Pacific and 67% from North America felt likewise. As one might expect, respondents managing larger networks also agreed with 93% of those managing over one million IP addresses finding value in expanded address space.

Increased mobility support, authentication and security services, and efficient packet routing features were all considered somewhat or extremely valuable by two-thirds of respondents, though this is a smaller proportional than in the 2008 survey results. In the earlier survey, 74% found IPv6 mobility features valuable, 84% indicated value with IPv6 security features and 76% with routing features. However, it must be noted that a “neutral” response was provided in this year’s survey, unlike in past years, which may account for the apparent feature value erosion.

Figure 3: IPv6 features (n=519)

Likewise, the structured quality of service feature, rated by 62% of respondents as somewhat or extremely valuable in this year’s survey, was rated similarly by 82% in 2008 and 89% in 2005. Address autoconfiguration was considered valuable by 57% of all respondents, including 59% of those identified as enterprise respondents, 66% of government respondents, 57% of educational institutions and 51% of service providers. About half of respondents found value in IPv6’s simplified packet header and flow labels.

Even among those who have no plans to deploy IPv6 in the near future, this group found substantial value in IPv6 features, with 66% finding somewhat or extreme value in authentication

Page 5: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 5

and security services, 67% is efficient packet routing, 57% in quality of service features as well as mobility support, and 59% finding value in expanded address space. Meanwhile those with full IPv6 deployment plans had a slightly higher percentage of respondents finding value as follows: 71% for authentication and security, 70% for efficient routing and quality of service, 76% for mobility support and 77% for expanded address space.

IPv6 Deployment Status We asked survey participants where they stood with respect to IPv6 deployment. Responses ranged from those having already deployed IPv6 across the organization (5%) to those who have not considered or assessed IPv6 (16%) and varying degrees in between as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4: IPv6 deployment status (n=587)

As Figure 4 illustrates, almost one-third or 31% of respondents indicated that they had already or were in the process of deploying IPv6 now, while another 22% will begin deployment within the next two years. This 53% combined rate indicating movement on IPv6 deployment contrasts starkly with 25% responding similarly in 2008 and 23% in 2005 as illustrated in Figure 5, which illustrates the same pie chart reflecting survey responses in the 2005, 2008 and 2011 editions.

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BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 6

Figure 5: IPv6 deployment status over time

Note: If you are printing in black and white, the legend begins at the top of each pie chart and follows each slice clockwise around the pie as in Figure 4.

We asked those who had not deployed IPv6 what measures are being implemented, if any, to enable co-existence with IPv6 even if no IPv6 deployment was planned. The results of this question are illustrated in Figure 6. A third of respondents are leveraging Dynamic Host

Figure 6: IPv4-IPv6 co-existence measures (n=429)

Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and NAT to improve IPv4 utilization. One-fifth of respondents are planning to implement IPv4-IPv6 gateway functionality, while 18% plan to utilize tunneling techniques. 6% of respondents are explicitly turning off IPv6 routing in their networks and 22% are taking no action.

Page 7: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 7

To identify specific IPv6 deployment strategies that organizations have assessed or are considering, we posed two questions: one for enterprises and one for service providers, given the varying technical approaches relevant to each.

Figure 7 illustrates the results from enterprise participants, where the most respondents (27%) plan to implement dual-stack, followed by 15% having no plans for IPv6 deployment, 14% planning full IPv6 deployment, and 12% planning Internet-facing deployments only. The remaining selections imply internal enterprise deployment of IPv6, at least at gateway or tunnel endpoints. If you’d like more details about each of these approaches, please download this free white paper: http://btdiamondip.com/resources/whitepapers/default.aspx?id=1226.

Figure 7: Enterprise IPv6 deployment plans (n=470)

Service provider deployment strategies generally seek to enable IPv6 customers to communicate over a service provider IPv4 network or vice-versa. Figure 8 highlights the favored approaches for service provider IPv6 deployments. Once again, dual-stack in varying forms comprises the top technology of choice, totaling 47% of responses. 12% of respondents plan to enable standard IPv4-IPv6 over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks, 10% plan full IPv6 deployment and 9% plan no action.

A variety of other techniques make up the remaining set of approaches. If you’d like more details about each of these service provider approaches, please download this free white paper: http://btdiamondip.com/resources/whitepapers/default.aspx?id=1239.

Page 8: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 8

Figure 8: Service provider IPv6 deployment plans (n=305)

IPv6 Deployment Obstacles We asked survey participants a couple of questions regarding obstacles to deployment. The first asked about the largest hurdle to IPv6 deployment, and results are summarized in Figure 9. Among the responses, the complexity of the infrastructure upgrade once again led responses with 25% having so responded, which is the average of the prior two surveys, 22% in 2008 and 28% in 2005, in both cases the top percentage.

The next set of most popular responses included the perception that IPv6’s only benefit is more address space (15%) and conversion of applications and middleware (14%), the cost of equipment upgrades (13%), and network services support (DHCP, DNS, NTP, etc.) at 11%. In prior years, each of these concerns likewise placed high, though comparatively higher than this year. This would imply that such concerns about vendor support are diminishing over time as vendors step up IPv6 support.

Page 9: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 9

Figure 9: IPv6 deployment obstacles (n=519)

The second question relating to IPv6 deployment obstacles asked what would most help in garnering management support to overcome obstacles to deploy IPv6. Results are summarized in Figure 10. The top three responses, all roughly at a 20% response rate, indicated that IPv4 address space exhaustion, a government or industry mandate, and tested product compliance documentation would be equally helpful in overcoming deployment inertia. The second tier of the remaining three answers, just slightly less popular at about 15% each, indicated that case studies showing either linkage to business drivers, positive ROI, or competitive advantage would help organizations gain buy-in for deployment.

Page 10: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 10

Figure 10: Most helpful in overcoming deployment obstacles (n=519)

Demographics Figure 11 summarizes survey respondent demographics. Geographically, 64% of respondents indicated they were from North America, 17% from Europe, 13% from Asia and 4% from Middle East/Africa and 2% from Central/South America. This geographic distribution is consistent with prior years’ IPv6 surveys.

Figure 11: Survey Respondent Demographics (n=503)

From a network sizing perspective, about a third of respondents each managed networks of less than 10,000 IP addresses and between 10,000 and 100,000 addresses. 19% of respondents managed networks of 100,000 to 1 million addresses and 14% managed networks larger than 1million addresses.

Page 11: IPv6 industry survey results

BT Diamond IP 2011 IPv6 Survey May 17, 2011 � Page 11

A wide variety of organization types was also represented among survey respondents as indicated in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Type of Organization

������������������ BT Diamond IP is a leading provider of software and appliance products and services that help customers effectively manage their complex IP networks. Our award-winning IPControl™ solutions help businesses more efficiently manage IPv4 and IPv6 address space across mid-to-very large enterprise and service provider networks. IPControl is the most comprehensive IPAM solution available today, enabling customers to dramatically improve their IT operational efficiency and service levels by automating IP address management and DNS/DHCP server configuration across their networks.

For additional information, please visit www.btdiamondip.com or contact BT Diamond IP at 1-800-390-6295 in the U.S., +1-610-423-4770 worldwide.

IPControl is a trademark of BT INS, Inc.

Report compiled by Tim Rooney, BT Diamond IP Director, Product Management

Copyright © 2011, BT INS, Inc. This is an unpublished work protected under the copyright laws. All trademarks and registered trademarks are properties of their respective holders. All rights reserved.