[SIPForum-discussion] SIP Forum's SIP over IPv6 Task Group Publishes "Interoperability Impacts of IPv6 Interworking with Existing IPv4 SIP Implementations"

[Marc Robins]

SIP Forum's SIP over IPv6 Task Group Achieves Milestone with the Publication
of "Interoperability Impacts of IPv6 Interworking with Existing IPv4 SIP
Implementations"

 

New document details potential impacts to IPv4 SIP implementations when
interworking with IPv6 SIP implementations so that SIP application
developers can create solutions to handle these cases

 

North Andover, MA. (October 20, 2016) - The  <htp://www.sipforum.org> SIP
Forum announced today its SIP over IPv6 Task Group has achieved a
significant milestone in its mission to improve the interoperability of IPv6
Interworking with IPv4 implementations with the publication of a new
document entitled
<http://www.sipforum.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,8
32/Itemid,261/> "Interoperability Impacts of IPv6 Interworking with Existing
IPv4 SIP Implementations".

 

The continued proliferation of IPv6 infrastructure deployments has resulted
in more IPv6 Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) User Agents (UAs) being
turned up on networks around the world. Considering the large installed base
of IPv4 SIP UAs deployed prior to the deployment of IPv6, it is a well-known
fact that not all IPv4 SIP UAs have taken into account all possible IPv4
SIP-to-IPv6 SIP interoperability considerations at the time of their
development. 

 

This new document, co-authored by Carl Klatsky, Comcast; Gonzalo Salgueiro,
Cisco Systems; and Olle E. Johansson, Edvina AB, outlines scenarios that
emerged from tests conducted at the SIP Forum's SIPit Interoperability
testing events combined with experiences from members of the SIP Forum's
IPv6 Task Group, and are provided as guidance for application developers to
help identify and create solutions to resolve the identified
interoperability challenges.  Gonzalo Salgueiro, a Principal Engineer at
Cisco and a co-chair of the IPv6 Task Group, confirms by adding, "Our
industry-wide and multi-vendor interoperability testing has repeated
surfaced multiple serious IPv4-IPv6 interworking issues in SIP
implementations.  The intent behind this effort is to offer some measure of
coherence and clarity to implementers and operators alike."

 

"Even if your SIP implementation only supports the legacy IPv4 protocol,
there are things you need to consider in order for the application or server
to work in a dual-stack environment. We've found issues that cause software
crashes because of unexpected data in the protocol messages." remarks Olle
E. Johansson of Edvina AB in Sweden and a co-chair of the IPv6 Task Group.
"This document aims to help developers find their bugs early and avoid the
known mistakes."

 

"As the migration to IPv6 accelerates in SIP, we want to make adoption and
implementation as easy and seamless as possible," said Carl Klatsky,
Principal Engineer at Comcast. "We hope this paper provides a helpful
roadmap for implementers seeking to navigate an increasingly IPv6-powered
environment."

 

About the SIP Forum IPv6 Task Group

It is well known that the pool of available IPv4 addresses has been
exhausted. At the same time, imminent needs for portable devices and smart
devices in the home are continuing to drive a more abundant and available
supply of IP addresses for SIP networks.

Although resale markets for IPv4 address space are beginning to emerge this
is merely a short term solution to the problem. Similarly, the deployments
of co-existence technologies (CGN/LSN, 6to4, dual-stack lite, NAT444, etc.)
are merely methods to cope with the lack of native IPv6 in the network, or
with CE devices that will remain completely reliant on IPv4. CE devices, in
particular, have been extremely slow to adopt IPv6.

The SIP Forum <http://www.sipforum.org/content/view/398/286/> 's SIP Over
IPv6 Task Group is chartered to evaluate current best practices and enable
and promote migration to SIP over IPv6. Migration to native IPv6 will take
years to accomplish, due to the costs of transitioning networks from IPv4,
as well as consumer products that have not yet widely adopted the IPv6
protocol.

The charter of this Task Group will, therefore, serve to identify issues
with SIP over IPv6 as well as to evaluate the impact of transition
technologies and dual stack devices on existing SIP networks. The Task Group
also seeks to identify solutions to these problems and to ultimately
contribute recommendations to official standards bodies, such as the IETF
and the ITU.

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sipforum.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20161020/5550f67e/attachment-0002.html>