Survey of IPv6 Support in 3GPP Specifications and Implementations

The growth in Internet usage has been phenomenal over the last decade. During the last few years, more and more of this growth has come from mobile broadband access. The most widely used types of mobile broadband access are based on the standards defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). This phenomenal growth, and the introduction of the always-on network paradigm in cellular networks, has put a strain on the Internet infrastructure itself-it has caused the exhaustion of the Internet address space. This paper surveys the relevant 3GPP and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications, and by looking at the research and standardization experience of the authors, it addresses the factors leading up to this strain, and it describes how the solution-Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-has been implemented in the 3GPP architecture and its specifications. It also analyzes what still needs to be done and suggests the possible focus areas of the future for IPv6 in 3GPP networks.