IPv6 can boost mobile performance, battery life, proponents say

IDG News Service - IPv6, the next version of the Internet Protocol, could make life easier and battery life longer for electronics-addicted consumers.

Much of the push for IPv6 has been focused on the requirements of enterprises and the challenges they face in making the transition from the current protocol, IPv4. If device makers and service providers do their jobs right, consumers won't even know it when they start using IPv6, but they do stand to benefit, proponents of IPv6 said in a panel discussion at International CES on Thursday.

The main feature of IPv6 is a nearly endless supply of IP addresses, which devices and services on the Internet use to find each other. There are enough addresses available under the new protocol to give each person in the world 4.3 billion of them, according to Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum.

Many popular smartphones and tablets now on the market can use IPv6, including the iPhone 5, iPads 3, 4 and Mini, Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2, Nokia Windows 8 phones, and many models in the Sony Xperia line, according to Frederik Garneij, a systems manager at Ericsson.

With IPv6, there are enough addresses to give one to every device, so they can talk directly to each other over the Internet. Each phone, home security camera and broadband router can have a globally unique address.

"Every single device is able to be globally reached from every other device," said Dale Geesey, chief operating officer at Auspex Technologies, an IPv6 professional services company.

Today, broadband and mobile service providers using IPv4 typically use private IP addresses within their networks and assign true, unique Internet addresses to subscribers' devices only temporarily. This process, called NAT (network address translation), has a number of implications for consumer electronics, the panelists said. Using IPv6 instead could have several benefits, they said.

Here are some example.

-- Accessing sites and content over the Internet is usually faster with IPv6 than with IPv4 because with the new protocol it requires fewer "hops" between network nodes, Ladid said.

-- Twitter, instant messaging, and push notification services, which have to constantly keep a network pipe open for incoming messages, don't mesh well with NAT, Ladid said. The applications have to keep telling the carrier that the temporary IP address is still in use. Sending those "keep alive" packets back and forth consumes battery life and network capacity, Ladid said.

An IPv6 address could stay with the phone, so none of those checks would be required.

"Since these devices do not have a constant IP address ... this NAT address has always, every 30 seconds, to say, 'I'm still on' to justify its presence," Ladid said. With IPv6, the phone could have its own unique Internet address and avoid that administrative traffic.