For many students, this time of the year marks “Spring Break”. (Ah, just the thought of this brings back fun memories…) However, once you get past the stereotypical party imagery, it really is a time of assessment. Mid-term exams complete and we ask ourselves what we need to do to achieve that final grade. Service providers find themselves in similar circumstance with the IPv6 subject as World IPv6 “graduation” day quickly approaches in June.
At the March 20th Light Reading Cable event in Denver, two pioneers in the IPv6 field – our own Fred Baker, a Cisco Fellow and IETF Chair, and John Brzozowski, Chief IPv6 Architect at Comcast — talk candidly about the benefits of IPv6, beyond address widening; how operators are doing, in terms of the upcoming launch; and what happens post-transition. Fred also handles one he hears a lot “When is IPv6 going to be done? Because I’ll deploy it then…”
Although we released this some time ago, not long before the run out of IPv4 addresses we thought we’d repost it again given the announcement earlier in the week of the launch date for the IPv6 Internet. The great news is with the IPv6 Internet happening on June 6, 2012 there is no need to fight your colleagues for IP addresses or hide under your desk. Provided, of course, that your network architect or IT Read More »
At Cisco, we’ve talked many times before about the exhaustion of IPv4 address space and the need for the industry to adopt IPv6 to support the explosion in the number of people, devices, and web services and enable the continuing growth of the Internet. As you can read in the announcement on our corporate blog, today Cisco joined with other leading industry participants such as AT&T, Google, Facebook, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable to be part of the World IPv6 Launch. This means that by June 6, 2012 all participants will permanently enable IPv6 on their networks and websites.
Since deployment of IPv6 requires an industry-wide response we recently teamed with Excentis to participate in Read More »
In January 2011, Internet companies around the globe announced they would come together to perform the largest test of IPv6 deployment the world had ever seen. Cisco was among the first to proudly announce its official participation in World IPv6 Day, and after several months of preparation and an intense 24 hours in June, it was clear that we had witnessed a watershed moment in the move towards global deployment of IPv6.
So what next after this? As reports came in and logs were analyzed over the days and weeks after, it became increasingly clear that we didn’t need just another global test. Instead, we needed to enable IPv6 once and for all. So, on June 6, 2012, the industry will again unite but not just for single day. This time, we turn it on and leave it on. We’re calling this World IPv6 Launch, and it is now the largest commitment to full-scale production IPv6 deployment the world has ever seen.
For websites, the commitment is similar to last year in that reachability via IPv6 will be advertised within the global Domain Name System (DNS). This time, however, the DNS entry will remain indefinitely rather than disappear after a single day. In addition to websites, the Internet Society has setup requirements for participation by residential Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and makers of home networking equipment. The rationale for expanding to these two specific areas is that while IPv6 has been available in some models of consumer-grade networking equipment and from some ISPs for a number of years, it was very rarely enabled by default and as such very rarely in use despite the majority of internet devices being capable of IPv6.
In order to tackle these remaining barriers to deployment, new Internet subscriptions and consumer-grade home routers will begin to appear with IPv6 enabled by default as the normal course of doing business. Specifically, participating home networking equipment makers are committing to include IPv6 enabled by default through a wide range of their products (both “low end” and “high end” home routers) by June 6. For ISPs, websites will be measuring what percentage of users have IPv6 enabled, with a target of no less than 1% before the World IPv6 Launch deadline. The 1% is a “running start”, such that after June 6 we’ll be on a path of sustained growth in IPv6 deployment going forward.
Cisco is again pleased to announce its full participation and support, both by enabling IPv6 on www.cisco.com indefinitely and by enabling IPv6 by default in our new line of E-series home routers. In addition, we will be working with our customers, Cisco Services and development teams to ensure that as many companies as possible can participate and those that do are successful.
June 6, 2012. This is the year we Launch a new Internet Protocol.
