ETSI ISG IPE: Off to a good start

Posted by IPv6 Forum on May 20, 2021 · 4 mins read

Welcome to the ISG “IPv6 Enhanced innovation” (IPE) blog, keeping you updated on IPv6 enhanced innovation work ongoing at ETSI.

The ISG IPE Kick-off meeting took place in January 2021 with the creation of 5 initial Work Items and the appointment of a leadership team.

Latif Ladid, Research Fellow at the University of Luxembourg and Founder & President of the World IPv6 Forum was appointed Chair. Mr. Patrick Wetterwald (Cisco), Dr. Chongfeng Xie (China Telecom) and Dr. Will Liu (Huawei) were appointed Vice-Chairs

The IPE#02 plenary meeting took place online in April 2021.

The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. The 5 ongoing Work Items were discussed and progress was made on:

Work Items

  • DGR/IPE-001 (GR IPE 001) IPE Gap Analysis
  • DGR/IPE-002 (GR IPE 002) IPv6 based Data Centres, Network and Cloud Integration
  • DGR/IPE-003 (GR IPE 003) Transition to IPv6 Only
  • DGR/IPE-004 (GR IPE 004) IPv6 based enterprise networking and Industrial Internet
  • DGR/IPE-005 (GR IPE 005) 5G Transport and Cloud and IP network Convergence over IPv6/SRv6

Three NEW Work Items were also proposed:

  1. IPv6 and Cloud using DataBlockMatrix for Food Supply Chain Tracking and Tracing
  2. IPv6 Ready Logo Program: IoT & 6TiSCH
  3. IPv6-based 5G for Connected & Automated Mobility

It was agreed to have a future session dedicated to government policies from the USA, France and China, to be respectively led by Ralph Wallace (Verizon Business Group), the ISG IPE Chair Latif Ladid and Chongfeng Xie (China Telecom & ISG IPE Vice-Chair). The knowledge of the policies in place in several countries will help to better understand the future scenarios and technology needs.

The next ISG IPE#03 plenary will take place on 12 and 13 July.

ISG IPE BACKGROUND INFORMATION

ETSI has a long history in IPv6 transport solution and best practice definition, starting from 2014 with ISG IP6. ETSI/3GPP have been instrumental in specifying IPv6 for 3G in May 10, 2000 (instead of WAP), however, the deployment was done with IPv4 leading to the explosion of the wireless Internet and then IPv6 was specified again for IoT in April 2019 instead of E.164.

In summer 2020, the ETSI IPv6 White Paper, co-authored by multiple industry players including operators, manufacturers, research institutions and verticals. The White Paper summarized the progress of IPv6 deployment in last couple of years and introduced new scenarios, use cases about Cloud integration and 5G transport.

The new ISG IPE (IPv6 Enhanced Innovation) was created in October 2020 to evolve the thematic introduced within the IPv6 White Paper.

ETSI ISG IPE aims to identify and describe IPv6 Enhanced Innovations, look into the derived requirements and reference architectures that are needed to enable the deployment of IPv6 across the new and evolving technology domains. The focus is also on the automated IPv6 end-to-end reference architecture by introducing a horizontal approach that complements the activities of other SDOs.

Furthermore, ETSI ISG IPE aims to provide and demonstrate use cases and proofs of concept to support innovation on IPv6 networking topics and validate standards-based approaches. This process seeks to enhance the capture and dissemination from real-life IPv6 deployments, trials and relevant industry projects. The purpose is to allow the rapid convergence of the IPv6 standard, to share best practices in order to allow the smooth transition from legacy solutions