Coventry University

The dissertation is an operational study on the issues to be faced in migrating an IPv4-enabled multinational organisation to IPv6. The organisation's characteristics will be modelled according to the survey's results to cover most typical scenarios.

In the forthcoming years, a crucial factor in sustaining business advantage will involve the introduction of new, personalised applications and services based on greater mobility of terminals and users. Additionally, the demand for infrastructures to support higher throughputs will steadily increase, particularly for enabling peer to peer applications.
Given the inherent limitations of IPv4 in fulfilling such obligations, a shift to IPv6 is likely to be an irreversible trend.

Asia's lead in IPv6 deployment is poised to grow further through China's national CNGI project (to implement the world's largest IPv6 network infrastructure).
Meanwhile, the DoD's decision to migrate its entire network to IPv6 in 2008 is bound to have a major impact in accelerating IPv6 deployment in the US.
In Europe, strategies on national and international levels (e.g. the European Union) have been drawn up to push the widespread deployment of IPv6. Most major ISPs and ICT vendors have already incorporated support for IPv6 functionality within their strategic plans. Yet, in order to catch up with the other continents, enterprise user demand needs to be stimulated in order to cajole ISPs and backbone providers to accelerate IPv6 deployment.

The survey is primarily planned for UK enterprise organisations which may or may not have multinational representation. It aims to gather a cross-sectional knowledge on issues that organisations may be facing in internal and 3rd party communications through limitations of IPv4 as well as their awareness and knowledge on IPv6. The survey includes an organisation profiling exercise to indicate the current situation in the UK vis-à-vis the feasibility of IPv6 adoption.
The resultant statistics will help in highlighting the issues to be tackled and considered within the dissertation.