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IPv6 Summit - June 2003
IPv6 And Cellular Telephony
Phil Karn
VP Technology
Qualcomm, Inc
26 June 2003
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Safe Harbor (QUALCOMM Disclaimer)
Before we proceed with our presentation, we would like
to point out that the following discussion will contain forward-looking
statements from industry consultants, QUALCOMM, and others
regarding potential market size, market shares, and other factors which
inherently involve risks and uncertainties.
These and other risks and uncertainties relating to QUALCOMM’s
business are outlined in detail in our most recent 10-Q and 10-K forms
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Please consult those documents for a more complete understanding of
these risks and uncertainties.
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
My Disclaimer
This talk includes my personal opinions.
I am not speaking for Qualcomm.
Qualcomm may or may not agree with me.
(But they should.)
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
The State of Cellular Telephony
• A plethora of incompatible physical layers
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AMPS (analog)
IS-54 TDMA
GSM
CDMA (IS-95/IS-2000, 1x, 1xRTT, 1xEVDO, etc)
WCDMA
even 802.11 b/a/g/etc
• Cheap, mass produced phones
• Expensive, inflexible base station equipment
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Interoperability
• There's an increasing realization of the need of
cellular users to roam between dissimilar cellular
networks
– Administrative barriers
– Technical barriers
• Users don't want to be bothered by the details
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
A Brief Internet History
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ARPANET started in 1969
Ethernet in mid 1970s
DARPA Packet Radio in 1970s
The need quickly appeared to join these dissimilar
networks in a uniform way
• TCP/IP and the Internet were the result
• Sound familiar?
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
The solution to the cellular interoperability problem is
IP!
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Other Useful Properties of IP
• End-to-end architecture
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recently rediscovered and hyped as "peer to peer"
place application-specific mechanisms at end points
keep network simple and general purpose
easy to add new features
• Open standards
– promotes interoperability
• Highly cost-effective network hardware
– compared to traditional telephone switches
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
But...
• As of 5/2003, there were 1.2 billion cell phone
subscribers in the world
– up 200 million in one year
• There are ~4 billion IPv4 addresses, so in theory
there's room
– but allocation issues make this impractical
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
What About NATs/DHCP?
• NATs preclude servers, or at least make them very
cumbersome
– and we want to promote end-to-end architectures, not
just wireless websurfing and mail reading
• DHCP only helps when most nodes are off
– yet everybody leaves their cell phones on
• Abolishing NATs and DHCP is what IPv6 is all
about!
– and restore the original end-to-end architecture
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
My Vision
• All cellular networks become generic IPv6 ISPs
• Voice traffic transitions to IPv6 using open
standards (SIP, freely usable codecs)
• Transparent interoperability and mobility between
different wireless and wired technologies
• End-to-end encryption becomes routine
• Carriers compete on price, coverage, reliability,
latency, etc
– may the best physical technology win
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Cellular VoIP Obstacles
• Political
• Technical
– Security
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Political Obstacles
• Telephone companies have always hated the
Internet model
– they don't like being dumb-pipe providers
• they invented the buzzphrase "integrated services"
– they like captive customers (why do they fight number
portability tooth and nail?)
– they still haven't grokked the end-to-end model (or
maybe they have...)
• Their vendors like selling them expensive
hardware
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Technical Obstacles to VoIP
• Link Efficiency
– easily solved with header compression
• Standards/Interoperability
– VoIP world is still a mess (H323 vs SIP; many proprietary
voice codecs)
• Security
– denial of service; spam; worms, trojans
– potentially the biggest problem
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
The DoS Problem
• In a true IP architecture, every phone will be an
Internet server with a global (IPv6) address
– any host anywhere can send it packets
• Wireless is inherently slower than wired
• Denial-of-service attacks would be too easy
– already pandemic in the wired Internet
– excess capacity keeps them from being more destructive
than they already are
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Blocking DoS Attacks
• Filters in the phone won't work
– the damage is to the wireless link, not the phone
• I.e., filters have to be in the network
– but under the control of the end-user
– open standards are required
• This problem isn't unique to wireless hosts
– they are simply the most vulnerable
– we need a general solution for all hosts if IPv6 is to
restore the end-to-end model
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Blocking Spam
• Special class of denial-of-service attack
– attacked resource is user's eyes, not his link
– already a serious problem with SMS in some areas
• Best solution so far: content-based filtering, e.g.,
Bayesian analysis, performed upstream under
user control
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Summary
• IP is the answer (IHMO) to the cellular telephony
interoperability problem
• Only IPv6 will scale while keeping the end-to-end
architecture that made the Internet great
– cellular phones could be IPv6's 'killer ap'
• Security is the biggest challenge, and will require
a lot of careful, up-front attention
IPv6 Summit - June 2003
Thank You