ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE) had its 4^th plenary on 26 October. More than 40 members, participants and guests of ISG IPE registered for the plenary and the workshop.

The plenary began with the IPv6 workshop. Our distinguished guests, Mr. Satyen Gupta (India IPv6 Forum), Mr. Arnaud Braud (Orange France) and ISG IPE participant Tahar Schaa (Neuland@Homeland) shared their experience in IPv6 deployment and the impact of regulator policy for IPv6.

• Mr. Gupta gave the talk entitled “Convergence of 5G, IoT and IPv6-Capacity Building for New Internet IPv6 Root Server”. The importance of IPv6 as a key component of the new Internet and some IPv6 killer applications were presented (such as broadband home, cloud computing, IoT, etc.). Then Mr. Gupta further introduced the government initiatives and IPv6’s economic value in India. The fast IPv6 adoption by ISPs like Reliance JIO has made India among the top IPv6 deployment countries, representing an example of how govern IPv6 policies and support lead to excellent results.
• Mr. Braud presented GAIA-X. It concerns EU’s digital sovereignty and data sovereignty. Currently, EU only has 4% of the cloud platform business and the fragility of international supply chains shows the importance of GAIX-X as an EU-wide federation. IPv6 is fundamental to guarantee digital and data sovereignty in a cloud system.
• Mr. Schaa emphasized the importance of digital sovereignty for Germany and IPv6 in the public administration of Germany. For Germany, IPv6 is more than a technical issue – it forces the government to think beyond the organizations. IPv6 also leads to new fields of action in the standardization of IT networks for regulatory authorities as well as politics. IPv6 only for internal network is the target, with IPv4 offered only for end users not able to access the government Services using IPv6.

Ten Reports have been started in ISG IPE, collecting active contributions from the stakeholders.

• IPE Gap Analysis Report, jointly compiled by 15 leading IP industry players, has been published in August, representing a solid base of the other WIs to evolve in aligned direction. This report comprehensively analyzes gaps based on requirements created by the new use cases and services like 5G and the cloud, to accelerate IPv6 deployment and innovations, and identifies recommendations of six key features of the IPv6 enhanced innovations, including deterministic quality, ubiquitous connectivity, low latency, ultra-high bandwidth, security, and automation, paving the way for a consensus to be reached among global IP industry players. You can download the report here.
• The Report on IPv6 based Datacenter, Network and Cloud Integration reached a stable draft version and is ready for the finalization phase.
• After the good progress and internal alignment on the way ahead achieved within ISG IPE, the ISG is going to start PoC activities to evaluate identified scenarios and solutions. A new report for PoC framework definition has been presented and approved within the plenary.

Those reports and their rapporteurs are:

• DGR/IPE-001 IPE Gap Analysis, (Huawei, Eduard Vasilenko) – Published in August 2021
• DGR/IPE-002 IPv6 based Data Centers, Network and Cloud Integration, (China Telecom, Cong LI)
• DGR/IPE-003 Transition to IPv6 Only, (Internet Associates, John Lee)
• DGR/IPE-004 IPv6 based enterprise networking and Industrial Internet, (CISCO, Pascal Thubert)
• DGR/IPE-005 5G Transport and Cloud and IP network Convergence over IPv6/SRv6, (POST Luxembourg, Sebastien Lourdez)
• DGR/IPE-006 IPv6 and Cloud using DataBlockMatrix for Food Supply Chain Tracking and Tracing (Biigroup, Haisehng Yu)
• DGR/IPE-007 IPv6-based 5G for Connected and Automated Mobility (University of Luxembourg, Ion Turcanu)
• RGR/IPE-008 IPv6 Ready Logo Program: IoT & 6TiSCH (Mandat International IoT Lab, Cedric Crettaz)
• DGR/IPE-009 SRv6 based service function chain for value-added service in operator network (China Unicom, Li Jianfei)
• DGR/IPE-0023 IPE PoC Framework (Philippine IPv6 Forum & Globe Telecom, Ramirez Medel) – Start of work

The day after the plenary meeting, the Framework for E2E IPv6 based Autonomic 5G Networks joint workshop has been held inviting ETSI TC INT and ISG ENI representatives, relevant to ETSI AN work. Speakers included Tayeb Ben Meriem from Orange, John Lee from Internet Associates, Muslim Elkotob and Ranganai Chapardaza from Vodafone, Ning Wang from NG-CDI (BT), Kaniz Mahdi from VMware, Aldo Artigiani from Huawei, Giulio Maggiore and Massimo Banzi from TIM. They presented transport automation methodologies and use cases, highlighting the possible way ahead to sum up the effort in order to study and evolve business scenarios. 5G SA and Cloud system integration are a possible target for dynamic connectivity based on per flow management, able to grant e2e Quality of Experience.

IPv6 Enhanced Innovation role in the industry scenario has been remarket, highlighting the clear need to bridge the IETF protocol standardization activity with the Industry fast evolving business scenarios, providing proper guidelines and best practices on one side and clear indication on the evolution needs on the other. On this side, a Liaison Statement has been established with IETF sharing the Gap Analysis WI published on 21 August by ISG IPE.

Member & participant updates: Bell Canada and EDF France joined IPE. We now have around 70 players in the big family from all over the world:

The ETSI webinar: IPv6 Enhanced Innovation: the IPv6-Only Future in the 5G, IoT & Cloud Era has been successfully done on 13 September 2021, with high participation and relevant messages delivered by the speakers:

The recording and presented material is available at:

• Part 1
• Part 2

If you would like to join ISG IPE to get the latest news and advancement related to IPv6 enhanced innovation, as well as its deployment, please contact ISGsupport@etsi.org