The V6OPS Working Group (WG) facilitates the universal deployment of IPv6. It will focus on both IPv6 deployment and IPv6 traffic growth.

Also, V6OPS provides operators, including service providers, enterprises, and other organizations a venue to share IPv6 operational experience, challenges, and lessons learned, as well as other work within scope for the WG. Specifically, V6OPS is a venue to share reports on IPv6-related network monitoring experiments and applications that perform well in IPv4 networks but do not perform well in IPv6 networks.

## Objectives

*  Publish Informational or BCP documents that provide IPv6 operational guidance in specific deployment contexts. For example, this includes:

     + Documents summarizing requirements and defining current practices for nodes, applications, and services adopting and operating over IPv6.
       
     + Documents that demonstrate how IPv6 can be deployed in a specific environment (data centers, enterprise networks, WAN, access networks, etc.).
 
     + Documents explaining IPv6's advantages over IPv4 (e.g., features that reduce operational complexity and improve reliability).
 
     + Use cases, transition strategies, and best practices that enable IPv6-only operation.

*  Publish Informational documents that identify obstacles to IPv6 deployment and IPv6 operational issues in general. Each document should describe the problem statement and include discussion of operational solutions, if any are available. These documents can be used as input to protocol-developing WGs. For example, this includes:

     + A study that compares the performance of existing IPv4 networks to the performance of existing IPv6 networks. When IPv6 networks do not perform as well as IPv4 networks and vice versa, identify the root causes if possible.
 
     + Use cases where dual-stack hosts prefer IPv4 or fail to utilize available IPv6 connectivity.

* Maintain and specify Standards Track extensions to NAT64 (RFC 6146), Stateless IP/ICMP Translation Algorithm (SIIT, RFC 7915), IPv6 Addressing of IPv4/IPv6 Translators (RFC 6052), 464XLAT (RFC 6877), Stateless IP/ICMP Translation for IPv6 Internet Data Center Environments (SIIT-DC, RFC 7755/RFC 7756), Explicit Address Mappings for Stateless IP/ICMP Translation (RFC 7757), and Stateless Source Address Mapping for ICMPv6 Packets (RFC 6791) (including, updating those published as Informational to Standards Track and Proposed Standard to Internet Standard).

## WG Practices

In order to achieve these goals, the WG will work with regional network operators' groups and other IPv6 proponents. It will also interact with the HAPPY, SRV6OPS, and 6MAN WGs, exchanging information and being mindful of each WG's charter.

Occasionally, deployment issues will require protocol enhancements. Protocol enhancements are the responsibility of the WGs that developed the protocols, if such WGs are not concluded. However, the V6OPS WG may provide input to those WGs and cooperate with them in reviewing solutions to IPv6 deployment problems.