| Summary: | The software defined networking (SDN) paradigm with enhanced features of IPv6 offers flexible network management and better network visibility for enhancing overall network performance, network manageability, and security. Thus, along with the IPv6 network deployment worldwide, SDN migration has emerged worldwide, but network service providers suffer from different issues when migrating their existing legacy network into operable SDN and IPv6 enabled networks. In this paper, we investigate the affordability of broadband network services for the rural communities in the context of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure deployment throughout Nepal. During the phase of network transformation, it will be more challenging for the service providers of Nepal to have a proper choice of technologies to expand the network while considering the proper policy formulation, affordability, need of skilled human resources, deployment cost, and many other aspects. We also present the service provider affordability via energy optimization in software defined IPv6 network (SoDIP6) implementation that contributes to a reduction in organizational operational expenditure (OpEX). We perform an experimental analysis over an SoDIP6 network testbed and present a comparison of the annual energy and OpEX savings for network service providers. Our empirical analysis shows that an energy saving of 31.50% on switches and 55.44% on links can be achieved with an SoDIP6 network compared to a network with legacy devices and network management. Optimization on service provider network operational cost leads to sustainability and affordable services to both customers and service providers
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