IPv6 Technology that will save e-Commerce and IoT

The Internet is largely used today for communication and doing business. E-commerce is growing day by day as more companies join e-commerce in the light of the fact that the number of Internet users are increasing astonishingly. The Internet enables the users to shop from wherever they want, across the world. With an explosion of smart devices and Internet users, E-commerce movement is facing some serious challenges to maintain its standard and availability for all.

Companies are always looking to provide more relevant content to consumers with the help of IoT and other smart devices, leading to impulse purchases. IETF- Internet Engineering Task Force, understanding the need to combat this explosion of people and devices, understood that IPv6- Internet Protocol version 6 is needed to replace the old IPv4.

IPv6 adoption is probably the largest technical change which will affect every organization touching Internet. In today’s technology-driven world, it seems to be affecting everyone using the Internet for boosting sales and marketing. With more and more devices connecting to the Internet, the need for greater bandwidth is inevitable. While, IPv6 adoption is not the concern for all, but it should be for the companies using mobile devices as well as the Internet for IoT and E-commerce. The switch from IPv4 to IPv6 may not sound much to the end user, but the role of big Software companies like Facebook and Google helping to make the switch is a big step.

While the IPv4 can support up to 4 billion devices, it is not enough for everyone. With a huge load of mobile devices using Internet and more connecting to it each day, the bandwidth is falling short. IETF realized the fact back in 1990’s only that IPv4 wasn’t going to be enough for the number of mobile devices connected to the Internet.

IPv6 adoption is not new, it has been around for quite some time now. Which is why the transition is taking place from IPv4 to IPv6. Passing through various modifications and versions, the final version was deployed back in 1999. Although more than 15 years have passed, and it may seem like a long time for transition and standardization, but it was necessary to ensure functionality and stability of IPv6. The switch to IPv6 will be helpful for the public in enjoying a level of convenience previously not possible with IPv4.

The rise of IoT movement along with a variety of mobile devices introduced in the market each year including tablets, smart phones, and other gadgets, IPv6 is needed to handle all this influx of gadgets. Moving into the world where IPv6 replaces IPv4, the functional, as well as performance benefits of IPv6, are huge. The E-Commerce sales of United States soared to 97 Billion Dollars during the second quarter of 2016, it is almost 16% more than the year-to-year growth of United States E-commerce market. Adding the fact, according to analysts, everyone of two dollars spent online will be from online purchasers no later than 2020.

As IPv6 allows for far more connection providing more addresses for connecting more devices, it is the only solution for catering to the need of E-commerce and IoT.

As for IoT, IPv6 is great because instead of relying on network machines that are complex and takes time in making the routing decisions of the packet, applications can handle the task themselves and choose the relevant paths to the services in the network. IPv6 provides bundles of opportunities and new paths for E-commerce and IoT. IPv6 is bound to revolutionize the way consumer does online shopping. E-commerce will continue to expand rapidly with the increase in the usage of mobile devices and penetration of IoT so even smaller retailers can get more of the information available to the customers to reach out to them. With more number of users, the retailers will be able to reach the global audience and hence, E-commerce will grow more.