"Though the industry has been talking about IPv6 for over a decade, it's finally enjoying a quiet evolution, with 83 percent of the service providers we interviewed already deploying IPv6 or planning to by next year, and all have plans of migrating,” said Michael Howard (News - Alert), principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research, in a statement.
Howard said that with IPv4 addresses running out in some places in the world by 2012, and as many as 15 billion machine-to-machine (M2M) devices expected to be connected to the Internet by 2015, each needing its own IP address, IPv6 migration has become a front-and-center issue for carriers.
"Our survey also confirms that routers and Carrier Ethernet switches will be an important part of solving the video traffic problem, especially for providers with broadband subscribers, as 47% of carriers implementing caching plan to move associated routers and switches closer to their subscribers," he said.Infonetics Research (News - Alert) is an international market research and consulting firm serving the communications industry since 1990.
The survey by Infonetics Research found that majority of service providers have or plan to add caching capabilities on or near routers and/or Carrier Ethernet switches to address network congestion, much of which is caused by exploding video traffic
The percentage of service providers deploying content delivery networks (CDNs) is growing from 38 percent this year to 50 percent by 2013, noted the survey.
The vendors most-often cited by service providers as the "top IP edge and Carrier Ethernet switch vendors" are Cisco (News - Alert), Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper, and Huawei
For its 19-page IPv6 and Caching Strategies; Router/CES Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, Infonetics interviewed router purchase decision-makers at 24 service providers that together spend more than a third of the world's telecom capex and generate a full third of the revenue. Incumbent carriers, competitive operators, mobile operators, and cable operators from North America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) participated.
Officials with Infonetics Research said that the report explores service provider plans for IPv6, caching on or near routers, and content delivery networks (CDNs), as well as service provider ratings of Carrier Ethernet switch and router manufacturers.
Vendors named by carriers in response to both prompted and open-ended questions include Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, Cisco, ECI, Ericsson (News - Alert), Extreme, Fujitsu, Huawei, Juniper, Nokia Siemens Networks, Tellabs, ZTE, and others.
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Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Stefanie Mosca