IPv6 and e-business
June 2005
Page 1 of 17
© 2005 International Business Machines, all right reserved
IPv6 and e-business
Jérôme TARTE
IBM Systems & Technology Group, Client Technology Center for Lab Services
EMEA ATS e-Business Solutions Center (eBSC), La Gaude, France
Jerome.tarte@fr.ibm.com
IPv6 and e-business
June 2005
Page 2 of 17
© 2005 International Business Machines, all right reserved
Executive summary
After a quarter century of use, today the IPv4 protocol is showing its limitations. With the
explosion of Internet and the growth of IP address needs, a new version of the IP protocol is
needed. This new version of the protocol, IPv6, adds some features to handle the limitations of
IPv4, like QoS, plug and play support, improved support for mobile clients and the
multiplication of IP addresses.
Java, the main language for e-business applications, is ready for the support of IPv6. The last
releases of the JDK provide APIs compliant with the IPv6 protocol. IBM, pioneer of e-business
and On Demand Business trends, is progressively enabling the IPv6 support into its software
now that is supported in the operating systems of its servers. The first IBM software that is fully
enabled with IPv6 support is WebSphere Application Server v6.
The application server is the main piece of an e-business infrastructure. It provides the execution
environment for the e-business applications. It handles the network connectivity. Running in an
application server, the e-business applications are not directly dependent on the IP protocol
version. Thus, today, the e-business applications are ready for IPv6 as soon as their underlying
middleware such as Java is ready. The migration of e-business applications from IPv4 to IPv6
infrastructure can be achieved without major work. They can also work in mixed infrastructure
(IPv4 and IPv6). This is an important point because the deployment of IPv6 will be progressive
and the two version