SIP & IPv6

sipv6Unified Communication ties people together across boundaries. One of these boundaries will be the IPv4 and the IPv6 Internet. The SIP industry has a responsibility to make sure that this transition works seamlessly and that our customers get products and services that will continue to work as the IPv6-only part of the Internet starts growing – and we’renot only talking about laptops with softphones and chat software – SIP is an application that will run on smartphones, TV sets, pads and all kinds of connected things. A Unified Communication network requires IPv6 to be unified.

SIP is peer to peer – and so is IPv6

The way we build IP networks today with IPv4 has made us disconnected. NAT devices and private addresses stops all possibilities of direct access between two SIP devices. It should be possible when needed – only stopped by policies enforced in firewalls. All intermediate servers that handle media adds complexity and latency. With the number of phones that are migrated to VoIP, there is a large need of IP addresses. Why not use IPv6 for all these new devices from start?

SIP needs to migrate to IPv6 and cooexist with it

IPv6 is a natural fit with SIP infrastructures. The SIP community needs to start working, experimenting and implementing IPv6. On these pages, we will publish information, references to IETF and SIP forum work as well as our own documentation.

IPv6 will impact your IPv4-only SIP products too!

A new Internet Draft, co-authored by Edvina, discusses how IPv6 can affect IPv4-only implementations and how they should harden their code in order not to cause bad situations for customers migrating to IPv6. Read the document  “Interoperability Impacts of IPv6 Interworking with Existing IPv4 SIP Implementations” (draft-klatsky-dispatch-ipv6-impact-ipv4) now!

Links: