Dear NEMO WG participants,





The car manufacturer RENAULT is involved in several research projects
dealing with IP mobility since 2001. One of our major achievements was the
RENAULT Laguna "IPv6 Car", supporting Mobile IPv6. This telematic concept
car received the "Murai Award" in 2003 in Tokyo for its capability to
support GPRS (2G European cellular network) / Wifi vertical handover, using
Mobile IPv6 with IPv4 NAT traversal feature (the NAT traversal function,
called "DOORS", was developed by Cisco Systems, it did provide efficient
results and is compatible with our deployment constraints for further
commercial exploitations).



Mobile IPv6 is considered by the car manufacturers as a key technology for
the deployment of next generation Telematic services, such as remote
diagnosis, fleet management, etc.

This trend has been confirmed by the current work of the research project
GST - Global System for Telematics, in which RENAULT, BMW, DAIMLER CHRYSLER,
FIAT and many other actors of the Telematic Industry work on standardization
convergence : IPv6 is now part of the core specification for a European
standard for telematics, mainly because of its mobility features.



If it is agreed by the automotive industry that IPv6 paves the future of the
telematic market, the existing constraints on the deployment of Mobile IPv6
makes the finalization of the standard very sensitive:



1.      For the car manufacturers, Mobile IPv6 will have to be deployed soon
on top of existing cellular networks, such as GPRS, EDGE or UMTS, all based
on IPv4. In order to remain independent from the mobile telecom operator, it
is mandatory to deploy Mobile IPv6 with a NAT traversal support. Deploying
MIPv6 without a NAT traversal feature would be a non sense: if the car
manufacturers have to setup technical agreements with the mobile telecom
operators to deploy MIPv6, then many other solutions can be considered, and
MIPv6 leads to a situation of dependence toward the mobile telecom
operators, which is not acceptable.
MIPv6 should not limit the possible business models : it should enable the
actors of the value chain to define their business model, and in this MIPv6
context, it means that MIPv6 should be flexible and not compel the Home
Agent to be directly connected to the Internet.



2.      Having NAT traversal feature is a required feature but the technical
solution defined at the IETF should take into consideration the deployment
constraints. In the next 18 months, MIPv6 will be mainly deployed for pilot
experiments, for validation before a wider deployment. In this context, the
Home Agent is in many cases in existing small networks dedicated to pilot
experiments initially designed for IPv4, with NAT boxes on the Internet
interface. This constraint is a fact, and is valid for many projects.



3.      On a long term perspective, the car manufacturers - or any actors
from the telematic industry supplying IP mobility support for the cars -
will deploy MIPv6 on their enterprise networks. Those networks are secured,
designed for IPv4, and most probably the Home Agent will not be directly
interfaced with the Internet, it will be a secured equipment in the core of
the network, behind NATs.
This problem is in fact very common as enterprise networks are connected to
the Internet behind NATs in general.



If the deployment of Mobile IPv6 requires re-designing the car manufacturers
networks because security policies and existing NAT features are not
supported, then Mobile IPv6 will remain a beautiful idea that no company
will be able to deploy.



Mobile IPv6 should support multiple IPv4 Network Address Translation (in the
access networks, and in front of the Home network). The Home Agent may be
deployed on IPv4 networks behind NAT access to the Internet.



I have currently several industrial projects for which I could deploy MIPv6
_for real_ if the IPv4 NAT traversal would be normalized and enable Home
Agent to be connected to the internet behind NATs and other boxes.



Edouard LASNIER REDDAN, Telecom Solution for Telematics, RENAULT, on May
2nd, 2005



 **************


Cordialement / Best Regards / Mit Freundlichen Grüssen

Edouard Lasnier Reddan.
edouard.lasnier-reddan@renault.com
Office : + 33 (0)1 76 84 71 93 / Fax :  + 33 (0)1 76 84 91 16
RENAULT
13 avenue Paul Langevin / API : FR EQV NOV 3 32
92359 Le Plessis Robinson Cedex
France