Watch: What is IPv6 and how do we govern future IoT?

17 Feb 2016

If the internet of things (IoT) is to really become a mainstay, we’re going to need to adapt IPv6 universally, but what is it exactly and how do we ensure it’s secure for the billions of internet users?

With billions of devices all around the globe all interconnected as part of IoT, the system we have been using to assign unique identities to each and every one of them – through IPv4 – is just simply not able to keep up with the demand.

In fact, late last year, the final nail in the coffin of IPv4 was hammered into place when the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) confirmed it had issued its last IPv4 for North America after reaching its limit of 4,294,967,296 individual addresses.

Equally prophetic of IPv4’s demise last year was one of the so-called ‘founders of the internet’, and Google’s Tech Evangelist, Vint Cerf, who said it is vital for those working within the telecommunications and device-manufacturing industry to ditch it in favour of the more flexible and secure IPv6.

But with billions of devices already communicating with one another on the internet, who creates and governs the structure that holds it all together, and how does it remain secure?

Well, thanks to the talented crowd at Think Visual, Intel’s senior IoT solutions architect, Pawel Ostropolski, can explain it all in just three minutes.

Woman on tablet image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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