Member Surveys
Internet Society Organizational Member Study on the State of Play in IPv6 Planning and Deployment
Introduction
The Internet Society's organizational membership provides a unique opportunity to take a snap shot of the state of play in IPv6 planning and deployment across a diverse set of players, from vendors to service providers to government agencies, etc. The purpose of this study is to focus on issues of operational deployment rather than product implementation. This study aims to understand deployment in service provider networks, government networks, small and large enterprise deployments, and exchanges. It is NOT aimed at understanding the state of product offerings from vendors.
The study's success depends upon the Internet Society’s organizational members’ willingness to respond to this questionnaire and to share information about their state of planning and deployment, the successes and challenges they have experienced, etc. The individual responses will not be shared outside of ISOC. ISOC will analyze the organizational member’s response to determine the high-level key findings that could be communicated further inside and outside of ISOC. These findings will NOT be attributed and will be made anonymous so as to ensure the confidentiality of the responses in the final report/publication. The study will be published and made available to ISOC members and beyond.
A number of surveys on IPv6 deployment have already been undertaken such as the ARIN IPv6 survey and the survey by the INNO group. While some of the questions asked in these surveys have been repeated in similar form in this questionnaire to provide overall context, our approach is both more focused on specific deployment issues while being somewhat broader in scope. Our goal is to get information on operational deployment issues that can be reported within the community to help facilitate further deployment.
The study aims to learn the degree to which the respondents are 1) planning to deploy IPv6 in their operational networks, 2) why they are doing so, 3) what are the challenges, and 4) what recommendations they would have for others undertaking planning/deployment. The questionnaire should also reveal if respondents are NOT planning to deploy IPv6, for what reasons, when they might do so, etc.
The questionnaire is targeted at respondents who are either involved in or are decision-makers related to the implementation of IPv6 within their respective organizations and hopes to learn from operational deployment of IPv6 within working networks rather than product enablement (and definitely not product offerings for those respondents who are product vendors).
ISOC recognizes that the questionnaire will take some of the respondent’s time to complete. Achieving a critical mass of users is an essential component of the success of IPv6, and ISOC believes that the resulting study will be a potentially important piece of work in helping to move industry and other stakeholders to IPv6. ISOC sees this as a tool for encouraging other organizations to move to IPv6, for providing guidance for those seeking to move, and for providing a rationale for those still contemplating the merits of moving to IPv6.
One of the key challenges of the questionnaire is characterizing the network that is being described. We realize that the individuals who are completing this may be describing large or small enterprise networks, large or small service provider networks, internet exchanges, etc. We are also aware that some deployments are partial, perhaps serving a single purpose to begin with, or only effecting a part of an operational network. We have attempted to ask some questions at the start of section 4 to understand these diverse situations. We have left some open space and encourage you to educate us about the kinds of deployments that we may not have considered in advance.
If you have any questions please send them to v6operationsstudy@isoc.org. When you have completed your response please send it also to v6operationsstudy@isoc.org. We would like to have your completed response on or before September 19.
Questionnaire segments
- Identification
- Key scoping questions
- Questions relating covering level of planning/implementation for those pursuing IPv6
- Operational questions for those deploying IPv6
- Recommendations/guidance
- Questions relating rationale, etc. for those not pursuing IPv6
- Thanks and follow-up
1. Identification
Respondents should be individuals who are responsible for or managing the organization's network or IPv6 deployment.
- Name:
- Position:
- Employer:
- Email address:
- Please describe your role vis-à-vis deployment of IPv6 in the organization (for example, decision maker, implementer, etc.):
2. Key scoping questions
The survey comprises different questions depending upon whether your organization is pursuing IPv6 (actively engaging in planning, deployment, roll-out, etc.) or not.
- How large is your IPv4 address allocation? Response:
- What is the utilization of your allocation? Response:
- Do you expect to request more IPv4 address space in the near future? How much? Response:
- What are your plans if you request more IPv4 address space and can't get it? Response:
- Does your organization make use of multiple allocations of the RFC 1918 address space with some form of nested NATs? Response:
- Does your organization make use of any other address space as a private address space? Response:
- In view of the coming depletion of the IPv4 address pool, would you be willing to return some of your IPv4 address allocation? Response:
- Do your plans to transition to the use of IPv6 impact your willingness to return some of your IPv4 allocation? Response:
3. Questions for organizations that are pursuing IPv6
If your organization is not already planning or deploying IPv6, please proceed to section 6.
- How do you intend to deploy IPv6 in your network(s) (please check all that apply)?
- As a trial
- In stages
- Just in part of the network (such as the core only, or end-hosts only)
- Throughout the network(s).
- Please provide any additional detail you believe would be helpful:
- What key factors have brought about the decision to deploy IPv6 (please check all that apply)?
- Need for additional address space.
- Complexity of additional workarounds to extend the use of our existing allocation.
- Complexity of additional workarounds to extend the use of private address space.
- Pressure from customers.
- Government procurement policies.
- Please provide any additional detail you believe would be helpful:
- What specific reasons prompted your organization to consider deploying IPv6 from a business or organizational point of view? For example, does the deployment of IPv6 provide a business or service advantage? Please specify:
- What are IPv6's most important technical characteristics for your organization? Response:
- Did your organization undertake an IPv6 planning/feasibility study as a precursor to deployment? Response:
- What were the key components of that planning/feasibility study? For example, did you undertake an inventory of existing equipment and software to determine whether it is IPv6 compatible, whether it is upgradeable or whether it will need replacing, etc. Please specify:
- What was the key decision point in the planning/feasibility study stage that convinced your organization to move to deployment? Response:
- What was the time frame (in months, years) from the beginning of the planning/feasibility study to the start of deployment? Response:
- What level of organizational buy-in was necessary for the deployment to proceed? Response:
4. Operational questions for organizations deploying IPv6
- How far along in your IPv6 deployment plan are you at the moment.
- Not at all.
- early stages.
- satisfactorily underway.
- fully deployed.
- Please provide any additional detail you believe would be helpful:
- Is the deployment for external facing network activities or internal network activities? Response:
- What is the scope of your IPv6 deployment? (E.g., how many facilities, networks, end nodes?) Response:
- How has your organization deployed IPv6? For example, to what degree has your organization used:
- An overlay network
- Tunneling
- Native deployment
- Dual stack
- NAT-PT
- Please let us know about other technologies your deployment has made use of. Response:
- How long has your current operational v6 configuration has been in use? Response:
- Is the plan to migrate everything to IPv6 so that all network operations/applications/services operate over v6, or just some aspect of them? Please provide detail as to the future/eventual deployment of IPv6 in your organization:
- As you transition to IPv6 would you like to maintain part of your v6 address allotment as private address space not routed outside your network? Do you have a plan for how to do this? Response:
5. Recommendations and guidance
- What elements (executive buy-in, developing internal expertise, etc.) in the deployment process have been found to be challenges in moving to IPv6 – and if so why? Response:
- Have any of these elements proven to be less burdensome or challenging than expected? Response:
- What administrative, back office, support, inventory systems required upgrading, adapting, etc.? How complex was this? Response:
- How long did the actual deployment take from start to finish (in months)? Response:
- If you are still in the process of deploying IPv6, how long do you anticipate it will take? Response:
- If you could have started earlier, would you have done so? Response:
- If your organization had to start the deployment process over, what would it have done differently and why? Response:
- What recommendations would you make to organizations currently deploying IPv6? Response:
- What recommendations would you make to organizations that have not yet started planning or deploying IPv6? Response:
Please skip section 6 and proceed to section 7.
6. If you are not yet planning for or deploying IPv6, please respond to the following questions.
- For what reason has your organization not yet planned for or deployed IPv6? (Please check all that apply).
- We see no need for it for this network.
- We don’t believe at this time that IPv6 will be deployed.
- The cost to deploy it is more than the benefit received.
- The implementation of IPv6 is too complex.
- Our upstream network service provider doesn’t support it.
- We expect to go to v6 but it will be 3 or more years from now.
- Other. Please specify:
- Is your current address allocation is sufficient for your organization's future needs, regardless of the impending IPv4 address shortage? Response:
- To what degree is your business strategy based on leveraging the existing v4 address space and using NATs and other methods to mitigate eventual depletion? Response:
- Many organizations that implement IPv6 do so for reasons related primarily to the need for addresses and business/service continuity. Do you believe that you may have to move to IPv6 at some point in time to ensure these factors going forward? Response:
- Is there any information, research, testimonials, industry analysis that would be helpful in encouraging your organization to implement IPv6? Response:
7. Thanks and follow-up
- If there are other points/issues or if you have general comments related to IPv6 deployment that have not been covered above please note them here:
- Please take this opportunity to provide links to reports, research etc. on planning/deployment you would recommend to others either intending on or in the process of deploying IPv6. Response:
- Would you be willing to be contacted for a possible follow-up to discuss further your responses? If so, please provide contact details:
Please send any questions and your response to v6operationsstudy@isoc.org.
Thank you very much for taking the time to complete this questionnaire!
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