US Air Force Looks for IPv6 DPI @ 10Gbps

US Air Force is ".. conducting market research to identify sources that may
possess the expertise, capabilities, and experience to meet the requirements for delivery of IPv6 DPI capability at a 10 Gigabytes per second (Gbps) throughput"

"Hanscom Air Force Base has program management responsibility for the Air Force Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRnet) Gateways Program. As a result, the Air Force Network (AFNET) Gateways Program Office is requesting information to identify possible sources to deliver IPv6 DPI capabilities at a 10 Gbps throughput. This effort may consist of, but may not be limited to, the following activities: .. Interoperability with the Air Force Information Operations Platform (IOP) and the Cloudshield 4000 .. IPv6 DPI at 2.5 Gigabytes per second no later than (NLT) 31 August 2013 & 10 Gigabyte per second (Gbps) throughput NLT 1 Aug 2014". 

See "Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) at 10 Gbps" - here.

News [Part-1]: Qwilt, Procera, Tilera, ipoque, BroadForward, Acme Packet, Tekelec, Roke, Smith Micro, Greenpacket

   

It seems that many consider the first day of MWC to be the best day for press releases. I am not sure about that. With the load of press releases in one day, the attention for each is naturally lower.

Here is the first part:

• Qwilt announced that its "QB-Series Universal Video Delivery appliance supports the new Internet Protocol, IPv6. Qwilt's QB-Series is the industry's first fully integrated, purpose-built carrier-grade transparent caching platform that identifies, monitors, stores and delivers over-the-top (OTT) streaming video in fixed and mobile networks. With this feature update, the QB-Series enables carriers to transparently cache and deliver all types of video content traversing over both IPv4 and the emerging IPv6 protocols in their networks".
  
  See "Qwilt Unveils IPv6 Support For Its Transparent Caching And Video Delivery Solution" - here.


• Procera Networks and Tilera announced they have "..achieved 200Gbps of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) performance deploying the Procera Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) on TILExtreme-Gx™ Duo platform, utilizing approximately 70 percent of the TILE-Gx cores .. the solution can be deployed in a variety of networking scenarios including Network Security (IDS/IPS, DPI, DLP), Cyber Security, Network Monitoring, Data Forensics, Analytics and Big Data" processing.
  
  See "Procera Networks and Tilera Unleash 200Gbps Deep Packet Inspection Solution" - here.
     
• ipoque announced [with BroadForward]  the ".. availability of advanced interfacing capabilities for its PRX Internet Traffic Management solution .. Gaining network visibility, intelligence and management has traditionally been a complex integration issue and long-term project within network operators. Multi-vendor environments and often proprietary protocols create challenging conditions which prohibit fast time to market, require additional resources and drive up cost. This new DPI advancement addresses these issues faced by network operators. Now, a traffic management solution and elements such as an online policy and charging function can be integrated reliably in a matter of days rather than weeks or months".
  
  See "ipoque & BroadForward partner to deliver advanced DPI interworking" - here.
   
• Tekelec is expanding its "Policy Everywhere” partner ecosystem to help mobile operators deliver a superior subscriber experience. Tekelec is testing interoperability between its Mobile Policy Gateway (MPG) and solutions from Roke Manor Research Ltd. (SmartSwitch™), Greenpacket (Intouch Mobile Data Offload platform) and Smith Micro (NetWise Director™). This testing includes standards-compliant Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) capabilities, as well as advanced use cases that extend the reach of policy directly to mobile devices.
  
  See "Tekelec takes ‘policy everywhere’ with new partners" - here
   
• Acme Packet announced the "..release of Palladion 3.0 .. a non-intrusive monitoring solution, consists of three new management options: Communications Operations Monitor to track network signaling and media in real-time and enable detailed troubleshooting capabilities; Fraud Detection and Prevention to discover and prevent voice fraud; and Control Plane Monitor to track and troubleshoot Diameter signaling traffic in IMS and LTE networks". 
  
  See "Acme Packet Announces Real-Time Monitoring Solution for Next-Generation Service Provider Networks" - here.

Procera Enhances DPI OEM Engine with IPv6, GTP and Metadata Extraction

Procera Networks announced a new version of its DPI engine - the OEM product acquired recently from Vineyard networks (see "DPI Merge: Procera Acquires Vineyard Networks for $28M; Riverbed OEM Adds Enterprise Business" - here).

Last week, Procera announced a new OEM partner, this time a telecom vendor for its DPI engine (here).

   

The new NAVL version 4.0 " .. adds IPv6 support, de-tunnelling of GTP traffic, improvements in metadata extraction, and OEM industry-leading high performance throughput capabilities, while conserving resources and enabling regular updates through the NAVL plug-in architecture".

"The NAVL 4.0 DPI engine can easily classify traffic at speeds well above 100Gbps, with minimal effect on network response times, latency or jitter"

Enhanced Property Extraction

"NAVL 4.0 is delivered as a software image that can be deployed in a number of processors and processing architectures, including x86 32bit, x86 64bit, Cavium Octeon, Octeon II, Octeon III, ARM, PowerPC, Tilera and Freescale".

          

See "Procera Networks Offers New NAVL 4.0 DPI Engine as SDK for License to OEMs" - here.

Napatech Looks Inside Mobile Tunnels (w/IPv6 Support)

Napatech announced " .. new tunneling protocol support that provides increased visibility for monitoring and management of mobile networks .. The new tunneling protocol support will perform flow identification and intelligent distribution based on the contents of tunnels rather than on the tunnel itself. Mobile subscriber traffic is transported in tunnels, such as GTP, through the core network. It is therefore important to monitor and analyze the contents of tunnels and base management decisions on this information .. Napatech will provide support for GPLS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) and IP-in-IP tunneling for both IPv4 and IPv6 networks .. The tunneling support features will be available in April 2013".

Erik Norup (pictured), President and CMO, Napatech said: “Our equipment vendor customers need to analyze all data on the mobile network to build a picture of what is happening .. IP-in-IP will become increasingly important as we make the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 .. There is therefore a need to transport IPv4 over IPv6 and vice versa. There will even be a need for IPv4 tunneling via IPv4 networks where only a limited number of IPv4 addresses are available. With our tunneling support we can ensure that the same picture is provided no matter the type of network you are using”.

See "Napatech Boosts Visibility in Mobile Networks" - here.

HGI Defines IPv6 QoS Standard for Home Gateway; Considers OTT

HGI published an "updated specification for improving Quality of Service (QoS) through the Home Gateway. 'Home Gateway QoS Module Requirements' (here, below) addresses the current evolution of the  home network to an IPv6 environment, and identifies the Home Gateway requirements needed to extend the HGI service-class oriented QoS approach to include IPv6 .. The document is applicable to IPv4 and IPv6 networks on both the WAN and LAN sides of the Home Gateway". 

"The strategy of using the Home Gateway as a key QoS enforcement point allows the service provider to designate service classes and their treatment based on a rich set of classification criteria, including the IPv4 and IPv6 headers. It takes a real-world approach that considers the actual QoS problems in various broadband scenarios, considering not just value-added services but also OTT services [page 13], and other traffic types".

See "HGI Sets the Standard with new QoS Document for the Home Gateway" - here.

Sandvine: Already $10M Orders from Asian Tier-1

Sandvine announced that it has "..received over $5 million in Network Policy Control expansion orders for a tier-1 customer in its Asia Pacific sales region. Sandvine has now received over $10 million in orders for this customer since August of this year [here]".

Rumors are that one of Sandvine's Asian customers is Korea Telecom. 

"The new orders represent ongoing expansion of Sandvine’s deployment, related in part to the Company’s proven support for identifying and applying policy on IPv6 traffic, and Sandvine’s Service Creation capabilities, which fit the operator’s vision for future service differentiation. The orders included units of Sandvine’s high-throughput, high-density Policy Traffic Switch 24000 to be deployed in the service provider’s network".

See "Sandvine Secures Additional Business in Asia" - here.

Akamai Sees 460x Increase in IPv6 Requests in a Year

Akamai Technologies released its Q2, 2012 State of the Internet report. The report has some interesting statistics on IPv6 traffic and network attacks:

• Industry numbers show imminent global exhaustion of IPv4 addresses
• Akamai identifies 460 times increase in IPv6 requests over its platform from June 2011 – June 2012
• During the quarter, approximately 38 percent of observed attack traffic originated in the Asia Pacific/Oceania region; 36 percent from Europe; 23 percent from North and South America
• Among top countries ranked by average measured connection speed, Japan experienced largest year-over-year percentage growth (21 percent)
• U.S. experienced 76 percent year-over-year growth in number of connections at high broadband levels (greater than 10 Mbps)

See "Akamai Releases Second Quarter 2012 'State of the Internet' Report" - here.

IETF: DPI/Policy Enforcement, Re-direction and Caching IPv6 Challanges

An IEFT document by Roberta Maglione (pictured), Telecom Italia and Wojciech Dec, Cisco from the Softwire, working group that is currently discussing both encapsulation and translation based stateless IPv4/IPv6 solutions in order to be able to provide IPv4 connectivity to customers in an IPv6 only environment.

The group presents a use-case for the Application of Service Policies to the subscriber’s sessions, Application of web-redirection policies and Caching.

"With the continuing growing of video traffic, especially considering the increase of http video traffic (you tube like,) it is useful for the Service Providers to be able to cache the video stream at the Edge of the network in order to save bandwidth in upstream links. Using cache devices together with tunnel solutions would introduce similar challenges/issues as the ones described for DPI scenarios, in particular it would require applying caching functionality after the decapsulation point. Obviously this would not eliminate the benefits of the cache. Instead a MAP-T approach would allow caching the subscriber traffic at the edge of the network and gaining the bandwidth savings introduced by the caching. Crucially, any native IPv6 web-caches would be capable of processing IPv6 MAP-T traffic as fully native traffic.

In addition in some deployments today, Web Cache Control Protocol (WCCP) feature is used in order to redirect subscriber’s traffic to the cache devices. When a subscriber requests a page from a web server (located in the Internet, in this case), the network node where the WCCP is active, sends the request to a Cache Engine. If the cache engine has a copy of the requested page in storage, the engine sends the user that page. Otherwise, the engine gets the requested page and the objects on that page from the web server, stores a copy of the page and its objects (caches them), and forwards the page and objects to the user. WCCP is another example of web redirect thus, the same considerations described in section Section 2.3 and the benefits introduced by MAP-T also apply here". 

See "Uses cases for MAP-T" - here.

DPI Announcements: Mindspeed Communications Processors

 
The network processor market gains traction recently.

The latest is Mindspeed who announced ".. the introduction of the Comcerto® 2000 family of multi-core ARM® Cortex™-A CPU-based communications processors .. The first two devices in the series are Comcerto C2100 and C2200 with single-core and dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore™ processors, respectively, with symmetric multi-processing (SMP), coherent level two cache and ARM TrustZone® security. Both devices include Mindspeed®’s OPAL™ (Open Packet Acceleration Logic) engine, a wire rate gigabit-speed programmable data-path acceleration engine.. This enables a new class of cost-effective products that support new protocols and higher speeds with lower power consumption".

"In addition to the high-performance ARM IP-based subsystem, OPAL is a collection of fully-programmable wire-speed network accelerators, which include powerful engines for IPv6 packet forwarding/network address translation (NAT), firewall/VPN, IPSec/SSL security processing, deep packet inspection (DPI), quality of service (QoS) and storage network processing".

See "Mindspeed Announces High-Performance, Multi-Core ARM Cortex-A CPU-Based Communications Processor Family" - here.

DPI Announcements: Qosmos Adds IPv6 Support

While the portion of IPv6 traffic in public networks is still small, DPI products must support it - for example if you find YouTube  important - see "DPI Reports: IPv6 Gaining Share - YouTube Leads" - (here).

Qosmos announced that ".. its line of next-generation Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) products natively supports the IPv6 protocol. Qosmos is the first DPI engine to natively support IPv6 and all the transition mechanisms between IPv4 and IPv6. The capability has been in place since the inception of Qosmos technology more than ten years ago and its strategic importance is highlighted by the current worldwide migration to IPv6".

This includes:

• Qosmos provides full support of protocol classification over TCP and UDP, enabling the translation and analysis of the different levels of encapsulation these protocols will require in an “IPv6 world.” With IPv6, all mobile networks will need to support this encapsulation in order to promote the efficient delivery of network traffic, and Qosmos supports this requirement.
   
• Native support of IPv6-specific signaling protocols in the data and control planes including SIP, FTP and GTP means that solutions that rely on the advanced DPI capabilities in Qosmos’ products can be assured the traffic will be properly correlated and analyzed at any point, ensuring complete and efficient analysis of user and application information in real-time.
   
• Qosmos supports communication protocols specifically designed for use in IPv6 networks, including ICMP V6, DHCP V6, IPv6 CP, Teredo, and Mobile IPv6.

See "Qosmos Announces Support for IPv6 in its Network Intelligence Technology Suite" - here.

DPI Reports: IPv6 Gaining Share - YouTube Leads

This year's IPv6 day (or IPv6 Launch Day) was not just testing (see 2011 report here) but for real: "Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June 2012".

Don Bowman from Sandvine provides some statistics on this D Day - "Looking at the preliminary data, this year’s World IPv6 Day was not simply turned on with one big flick of a switch, instead it looks as though yesterday’s date simply served as a deadline that many websites have been working towards over the past year to meet".

 

Source: Sandvine

Cam Cullen from Procera Networks shows similar findings: " The growth in “normal” IPv6 traffic started to ramp in April, with more users taking advantage of native IPv6 services being offered by this operator, as well as the content providers, most notably YouTube, as shown below, but with Facebook and Amazon making an appearance" 

 

Source: Procera

Darren Anstee from Arbor Networks saw a "..doubling of the amount of IPv6 traffic tracked by the ATLAS system during the day, which represented a change from approximately 0.012% of internet traffic to 0.024% of internet traffic .. things are moving forward over the past year with the amount of IPv6 traffic we are tracking having increased substantially. IPv6 now peaks at around 0.1%".

Source: Arbor Networks

According to Sandvine - ".. YouTube accounted for more than half of all Native IPv6 traffic, while Facebook (fbcdn.net and facebook.com) leapt up the list. Some notable domains that tumbled down the rankings (or disappeared entirely) include: edgesuite.net, llnwd.net (Limelight), apple.com, playstation.net, hbogo.com, and pandora.com"

See "World IPv6 Day 2012: A Preview" - here, "World IPv6 Day…We Have Liftoff" - here and "World IPv6 Launch Day: The view from ATLAS" - here.

Procera Explains the New NAT and Steering Features

Procera Networks published a white paper - "Intelligent Policy Enforcement and Application Delivery Networking - Advanced Traffic Steering and Carrier Grade NAT Technology Deployments" (here), explaining the features it has released earlier this week for network and cloud service provider (see "Procera Adds Application and Subscriber-Aware Solutions to Cloud Service Providers" - here).

• Advanced Traffic Steering - "PacketLogic Advanced Traffic Steering combines the subscriber and service awareness of the PacketLogic Subscriber Manager with the Application Awareness of the PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement. The PSM provisions the PRE with the Traffic Steering policies, which can be based on subscriber ID, subscriber service plan (for example subscriber is under 18), location, and device attributes, and combined with the specific traffic or application types that will receive traffic steering treatment"

• Carrier Grade NAT - "PacketLogic Carrier Grade NAT is the first IPE-based large scale NAT solution for network operators. Network operators are finding it increasingly difficult to manage their subscriber growth with their existing address space. Most operators do not have the ability to request more address space from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), as there is very little address space available (none in some regions). As a result, operators are attempting to launch IPv6 services to ease address congestion, but this rollout has been hindered by many different engineering and product challenges. As a result, operators are attempting to deploy Carrier Grade NAT (also known as Large Scale NAT) to ease their address shortages. The challenge with implementing with current CGN products is that they lack subscriber and service plan awareness, and most are not designed to scale with transparent stateful processing of application traffic".
   

 

DPI Announcements: Bluecoat Adds IPv6 Support and Increases Performance

    

Bluecoat announced "PacketShaper version 9, a new software operating system release for Blue Coat®PacketShaper® appliances that introduces the industry’s first [see comment below] network-, application- and content-level visibility and control for IPv6 “shadow networks” which have, up until now, run undetected on existing corporate IPv4 networks. In addition, the new software enables scalable performance of up to 8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) to meet increased network demands with more video and other rich media, large software downloads and other network application traffic".

   

".. Content is now widely available over IPv6 from providers such as Netflix, YouTube and via emerging Peer-2-Peer (P2P) applications. At the same time, many desktop and mobile endpoints, including tablets and mobile phones, are fully IPv6 ready .. PacketShaper version 9 adds IPv6 application and content visibility to the most powerful real time classification engine available today, with granular understanding of 700+ applications and tens of millions of Web sites categorized into 84 content categories.". 

   

The PacketShpaer product line is the former Packeteer (the DPI pioneer), product line. During the years, Packeteer and later Bluecoat focused on DPI based WAN Optimization solutions for enterprises, universities (where it competes with Allot and Procera - see a recent announcement "Procera Launches the PacketLogic™ PL7810" - here) and small ISPs, due to the limited performance compared to the other DPI players. Note that Procera announced already support for IPv6 (here). 

  

See "New PacketShaper Drives Performance up to 8 Gbps and Introduces Visibility and Control of IPv6 “Shadow Networks” - here. 

Major ISPs will Participate in 2012 IPv6 Day

 

The Internet Society announced that "Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June 2012 [here] ..Organized by the Internet Society, and building on the successful one-day World IPv6 Day event held on 8 June 2011, World IPv6 Launch represents a major milestone in the global deployment of IPv6. As the successor to the current Internet Protocol, IPv4, IPv6 is critical to the Internet’s continued growth as a platform for innovation and economic development"

"ISPs participating in World IPv6 Launch will enable IPv6 for enough users so that at least 1% of their wireline residential subscribers who visit participating websites will do so using IPv6 by 6 June 2012. These ISPs have committed that IPv6 will be available automatically as the normal course of business for a significant portion of their subscribers. Committed ISPs are: AT&T, Comcast, Free Telecom, Internode, KDDI, Time Warner Cable and  XS4ALL"

See "The CTOs of Arbor and Sandvine Analyze "World IPv6 Day" here.

See "World IPv6 Launch Solidifies Global Support for New Internet Protocol" - here.

China's Plans for 2015: IPv6 ($25B investment), 5X Access Speed

 

Gao Yuan and Chen Limin report to China Daily that ".. The country will put the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network into small-scale commercial pilot use by the end of 2013, and deploy and commercialize the IPv6-based network on a large scale between 2014 and 2015, according to a statement released after an executive meeting of the State Council that was presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao .. By 2010, China had about 278 million IPv4 addresses, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center. That was far fewer than the 450 million Internet users who live in the country".

Hu Qiheng (pictured), director-general of the Internet Society of China said: "The development of IPv6 is one of the most important tasks for China's Internet industry during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, from 2011 to 2015".

See "New Internet protocol to undergo test" - here.

According to Shenyin & Wanguo Securities, "China's development of the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network will attract 160 billion yuan [$25B] investment" (here).
 

In parallel, Zhu Shenshen reports to the Shanghai Daily that "China is to increase Internet access speed by five times and cut broadband costs .. By 2015, China's average broadband bandwidth will hit 20 megabytes [megabits] per second (Mbps) in urban areas, almost five times the current level. In rural areas, the bandwidth will reach 4 Mbps .. By the end of November, China had 155 million family broadband users and 119 million 3G phone users .. 11 million Internet Protocol TV users and 40 million mobile video users "

See "Internet faster, cheaper by 2015" - here.    

 

Verizon Brings 100G and IPv6 "Closer to the Edge"

CSR-3 (Source: Cisco)

   

Verizon announced that ".. to meet the growing traffic demand created by video, mobile and cloud services, Verizon will upgrade its IP network infrastructure in selected U.S. markets, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. Verizon will extend its next-generation 100G capabilities by deploying Cisco's CRS-3 Carrier Routing System platform to terminate high-speed connections closer to the "edge" - the part of the network nearer to the customer's network facilities"

"Verizon will deploy the CRS-3 platform to provide 100G edge access to the IP network and upgrade its FiOS core network. The Cisco platform will enable content providers and large-enterprise customers to benefit from more efficient and quicker access in delivering traffic to Verizon's wireline and wireless consumers. The CRS platform also plays a key role in Verizon's network evolution strategy to IPv6, the new Internet addressing system, by providing the flexibility to support the anticipated wave of IPv6 services while continuing to expand and sustain IPv4 services"

Other network equipment should be ready as well! (see "100G Announcements for DPI Products" - here and "F5 Platform Road Map - 100GE Ports Planed for 2013/14" - here).

Ihab Tarazi (pictured), VP of global IP and transport planning and technology, Verizon said: "We're constantly seeking to improve the Verizon IP network to support traffic growth, improve performance and increase functionality Upgrading the network using Cisco's CRS-3 platform provides better scale and expanded capabilities that support traffic growth areas such as broadband access and content delivery"

DPI Win: Procera Gets $3M Follow-on from US MSO; Customer Monitors Netflix and IPV6

   

Procera Networks announced a "a $3 million follow-on order from a Tier-1 US MSO" (usually refers to Cox Communications see "Procera: Cox Generated $2.2M in 2010"- here);

According to the press release, the customer is "expanding deployment of Procera's PacketLogic solution set across more geographies for this service provider .. One area in particular that this customer has been monitoring is Netflix and video streaming  and they are now actively managing capacity and capabilities with the information provided via PacketLogic Report Studio [here] .. The customer is also beginning an IPv6 deployment, for which Procera is providing new analytics and data feeds into existing security solutions to save the operator on CAPEX for new IPv6-capable solutions in existing routers".

See "Procera Awarded $3 Million Follow-On Order by Tier-1 US MSO to Support Network Expansion" - here. See also "Procera News - $6M Follow-on Deal" - here.

Cache Announcements: Blue Coat CacheFlow 5000 – 3x Performance, IPv6, 10GE

  
Blue Coat announced "its next-generation Blue Coat^® CacheFlow^® 5000 appliance, which delivers a significant leap forward in performance and capacity -- more than three times greater throughput and cache storage compared to the previous version -- in the same compact, 4U footprint. The new CacheFlow appliance is available immediately and includes IPv6 support .. Deployed in nearly 50 service provider networks [see -  Umniah, Lebanon Online, CallPlus,True Internet] around the world today, the appliance has achieved on average 40-50% bandwidth savings on general Web traffic .. The new CacheFlow appliance also adds an option for 10GigE Fiber"

See "Blue Coat Enables Service Providers to Meet Staggering Demand for Web Video with New High Performance CacheFlow Appliance" - here.

Salient Federal Solutions: IPv6 Threats can be Eliminated Using DPI

  
Salient Federal Solutions reports "real-world incidents of IPv6 attacks based on the emerging protocol's tunneling capabilities, routing headers, DNS broadcasting and rogue routing announcements. The company asserts that all of these threats can be eliminated with the use of IPv6-enabled deep packet inspection tools, which it (here) and other network vendors sell".

See "IPv6 eyed by torrent users to avoid network throttling" - here.

Jeremy Duncan (pictured), senior director and IPv6 network architect for Salient Federal Systems, said: "IPv6 tunneling gives attackers a green light to penetrate networks .. uTorrent, which is an IPv6-capable freeware client for the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol that's used to share large files such as music and movies runs very well over Teredo, and that the BitTorrent community is discovering IPv6 as a way of avoiding network congestion controls that are used by ISPs to manage BitTorrent traffic on IPv4 networks"

The slides below are taken from Jeremy's presentation "IPv6 Is Here. Is Your Network Secure?" at the 7th Annual GFIRST National Conference, held in Nashville earlier this month.

The 2 parts presentation is available here and here.

 

Infonetics: Optimization and QoE Drive CDN; Migration to IPv6 is Happening

 

A new research by Infonetics Research finds that "The percentage of service providers deploying content delivery networks (CDNs) is growing from 38% this year to 50% by 2013".

The research, by Michael Howard (pictured), co-founder and principal analyst, provides the main drivers for CDN use (see chart), and notes that "Though the industry has been talking about IPv6 for over a decade, it’s finally enjoying a quiet evolution, with 83% of the service providers we interviewed already deploying IPv6 or planning to by next year, and all have plans to migrate" 

See "Majority of carriers plan IPv6 in 2011; caching, CDN critical to reduce traffic loads" - here.