IPv6 Adoption Will Grow With Smart Grid Adoption, Hopes Cisco

darthcamaro writes "A lot of people in the US have not seen a use case for the use of IPv6 yet, since we've got plenty of IPv4 addresses. But what happens when the entire electrical grid gets smart? The so-called Smart Grid will need a networking transport mechanism that will connect potentially hundreds of millions of people and devices. Networking giant Cisco sees IP (internet protocol) as the right transport and IPv6 as the logical choice for addressing. 'Pv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco,' Marie Hattar, Cisco's vice president of network systems and security solutions marketing said. 'Some people say that for smaller deployments, we could get away with IPv4, but the smart grid has a number of parts. The point is that if you're looking to build this [smart grid] out, why not build it out on the scalable protocol from the get-go?'"

Comments

Translation

[Locke2005]

Companies will soon actually have a reason to throw out their old routers and buy new ones, hopes Cisco.

Wishful thinking

[Locke2005]

NAT/IP Masquerade has worked well for scaling IPv4 in every conceivable application to date... what makes them think it won't work for the "smart grid"? Or to put it differently, do you really want every appliance in your house directly addressable from anywhere in the world? After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Re:Wishful thinking

[hardburn]

NAT/IP Masquerade has worked well for scaling IPv4 in every conceivable application to date

Much the same way that up to Aug 28, 2005, the New Orleans leeves were successful in holding back every conceivable rise in water level.

NAT works as long as you have simple networking needs--nothing much more than web and email. As soon as you need to use VPN, or VoIP, or try to get two or more people to play the same game behind the same firewall, it becomes readily apparent what a pain NAT is. In some cases, the application is doing all sorts of trickery to try to keep the user from noticing the issue. In others, the user is left on their own to deal with it. That doesn't even count a bunch of potential applications where the developers realized that they wouldn't be able to get around NAT, and thus never built it at all or simply toiled in obscurity.

Or to put it differently, do you really want every appliance in your house directly addressable from anywhere in the world?

NAT != Firewall. The only thing NAT provides you with over a packet filter is hiding your network topology. There is some use in that, but it comes at the expense of everything mentioned above. On balance, NAT comes out wanting. If you still really want to hide your topology, you can still use NAT on IPv6, but this should be the exception, not the rule.

If it's so interesting...

[Gerald]

"IPv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco."

So why can't I get to www.cisco.com via IPv6?

Re:I know my utility meters can be read remotely.

[FireFury03]

Also think about it. Do you realllllllllllllllllllly want your power grid to be tied to the real internet?

Well, maybe not, but there are still big advantages with using IPv6 even if it isn't on the public network. For example, you can use addresses that are guaranteed to be globally unique - this means no readdressing problems when you suddenly decide 2 completely independent networks need to talk to each other.

This is what has stunned me about the telephone industry - they are spending billions on replacing their antiquated SS7 networks with IMS networks. The IMS protocols were _designed_ to be run over IPv6 (but of course, IPv4 and IPv6 are so similar that they have actually been made to work on both), but most of the telcos are rolling out IPv4 networks. Nothing like spending vast amounts of money to replace one obsolete network with another.

IPv6 is an established and proven technology, there really aren't many good reasons not to use it in a new network.

IPV6 is a waste of time in the 'utility' market.

I'm not sure how it can be described as a "waste of time" since that would imply it would take longer to implement than an IPv4 network. If you're starting from scratch and not having to interoperate with the existing internet, an IPv6 network takes no more time to implement and is a bit of a no-brainer (getting a much more future-proofed network at almost the same cost). Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people in charge of such projects do indeed have no brains.