Is IPv6 an Essential Precondition for IoT? Or Are Things Just Fine with IPv4?

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6 pointsdanyork3 comments

I think saying its a precondition would be "good" however thats unlikely to be true everywhere. Currently a lot of IoT stacks aren't doing IPv6 because of space concerns and lack of HW support, but at some point all vendors will support v6.

one of the problems with IPv6 is that it came out around the time people were interested in mobile telephony and other applications where you need to exchange small packets and IPv4 headers are wasteful enough that the last thing you need to do is bulk them up.

It is already uncomfortable to put a whole IP network stack on very small devices, so IPv6 seems like more than part of the problem than part of the solution.

Yes, having to put two stacks into constrained devices is certainly challenging. In the ideal world we'd either: 1. Jump ahead to a IPv6-only world and just support one stack; or 2. Increase the memory in devices to allow two stacks. (But of course with more memory comes more cost.)

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