C’mon…didn’t you guys just do an IPv6 show back in 2007? Yes, and although many others have covered this ad-nauseum…(and we don’t run ads…) we thought it was high time we covered it TechWiseTV style…which means we got the details.
Specifically, we did not want to focus on big numbers or sky is falling stuff – its been done. We wanted to cover the actual reality of implementation.
If scare tactics still get you going…you know we have now officially run out of IPv4 addresses so I do think this topic has a new feeling of urgency.
The time for making educated decisions on your IPv6 migration can no longer be put off. Much has been learned about how to do this right and this one is all about asking the right questions and providing the right guidance.
Questions with the potential for long-term impact like:
While looking over our data from World IPv6 Day, we found that 2.26% of all users who logged in with a username and password to www.cisco.com on June 8 did so over IPv6. That is nearly an order of magnitude greater than between the less than .2% and .3% averages reported by sites operated by more broadly visited websites such as Yahoo, Facebook, and Google. In contrast to those who logged in with their username and password, the total proportion of unique users who visited our site via IPv6 was estimated at just under 1.5%, which still represents at least a five times greater likelihood that a given cisco.com visitor reached us via IPv6 vs. the broader population of Internet users.
This shouldn’t be surprising at all. The cisco.com user base is made up of networking and IT professionals that are likely more willing to go out of their way to obtain IPv6 connectivity than most users. We hope that you will continue to use IPv6, show others how, and that we’ll have even more IPv6 users the next time we make www.cisco.com AAAA records available (see Fred Baker’s blog on what might be next).
In terms of overall traffic, our netflow statistics reported that 1.11% of traffic to and from www.cisco.com was served over IPv6. This traffic was delivered via an IPv6 to IPv4 load-balancing proxy function within our Application Control Engine (ACE) 30, allowing us to keep our existing production www.cisco.com virtually untouched while still providing an IPv6 web presence. On June 8, we used a pre-release version of code, alongside other Early Field Trial (EFT) customers. Matthew Laslie, Network Engineer and Architect at Savvis writes:
“Savvis was looking to provide IPv6 reachability to our primary websites without performing major modifications to our backend application/security infrastructure. After evaluating several solutions, Savvis selected the Cisco ACE. In the span of two short days the ACE was fully installed, configured and providing IPv6 reachability for several Savvis corporate websites.”
In addition to the participants that officially signed up for World IPv6 Day, others moved ahead on June 8 without the formalities. Cisco EU IPv6 Deployment Council member and customer Strato let us know after World IPv6 Day that they are now announcing IPv6 AAAA records for over four million domain names. Wilhelm Boeddinghaus, Head of Networks at Strato writes:
“Our customers don’t ask us for IPv6, nor do they ask us for IPv4, they ask us for the Internet, and that’s what we give them. Today the Internet is more than IPv4. The working Internet provides both protocols.”
Those four million domain names represent the ability of the content side of the IPv6 Internet to move very rapidly to IPv6. The fact that they decided to leave IPv6 on after June 8 is testimony to the confidence they have in IPv6, and that it is the right thing for their customers. There were a number of other websites that opted to keep their AAAA IPv6 records active after the 24 hour test on June 8, including our own www.scansafe.com, which moved to IPv6 by announcing AAAA records on World IPv6 Day and continues to today.
Given the relatively high turnout of IPv6-enabled www.cisco.com users vs. the rest of the industry, we have yet another clear data point of the importance of IPv6 to our customers. With all the success around World IPv6 Day, it seems hard to fathom that this will be the only event of its kind and we are eagerly looking forward to participating in and helping our customers with the next “World IPv6″ event. Stay tuned…
IPv6 has been top of mind lately, with World IPv6 Day on June 8th that provided a global-scale test flight of IPv6 technology for the purpose of testing and data collection. Cisco also recently announced that French service provider SFR is using our Carrier Grade v6 solution to offer IPv6 services to their residential customers, while still preserving their existing infrastructure investments.
Many people still have questions on the issues and options associated with making the evolution to IPv6. Below, in part one of a four part series, Cisco’s Kelly Ahuja, SVP Service Provider Chief Architecture Office and ACG Research’s Managing Partner Dr. Ray Mota discuss the changed landscape which network operators face that is driving the adoption of IPv6 technology. Ray does make an interesting comment about 2011 being the year of the tablets - and not just for consumer use, but also for business applications. Another point that Ray makes with which we agree is the need for network operators make a near term plan which extends or preserves the use of existing IPv4 assets, and a longer term plan which can migrate services to IPv6 - seamlessly - when needed.
Happy Friday! Read more about the top news stories of the week that includes a feature on World IPv6 Day, an announcement on the Cisco ASR 9000, a demo of Cisco’s new data center and a couple news announcements about WebEx!
On June 8th or World IPv6 Day, Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) went live for a day on the public Internet. How did IPv6 testing go? Get an update here from InfoSecurity!
The Cisco ASR 9000 series just got better with age! On Tuesay, Cisco announced major advancements that will set new industry benchmarks and dramatically increase capabilities at the edge of the next-generation Internet and transform the broadband communication and entertainment industries! Read more here!
Back In January, Cisco was among the very first to respond to the World IPv6 Day rallying cry launched by the Internet Society and major Internet content providers such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Akamai. Since then, we have been working across the industry with other participants, customers, and users to ensure that this global experiment was a success.
At midnight UTC on June 8 (5pm at Cisco Headquarters in California), www.cisco.com alongside hundreds of other World IPv6 Day participants announced reachability to IPv6 in the global Domain Name System. Millions of lines of code and countless man-hours of work over the past decade developing the various bits and pieces of IPv6 in network equipment and software across the globe were exercised in concert like never before. As we watched the various test sites and dashboards move to “green” status for IPv6, sighs of relief were heard followed by a sense of great satisfaction among everyone involved. 24 hours later, no major issues have been reported.
All in all, World IPv6 Day seems to have gone off without a hitch.
IPv6 is the only long-term solution the industry has available to continue Internet growth in the manner that the world has come to expect. We believe that this day will be looked back upon as a watershed moment in the global deployment of IPv6 -- we have verified not only that IPv6 works on a global scale, but also that it can work alongside IPv4 until the day that we can all begin to turn IPv4 off.
Cisco has been involved in developing standards and products for IPv6 since its inception, and by being part of World IPv6 Day from the very start we have learned a great deal in how the various implementations over IPv6 operate with one another. We will be reporting more on our findings in the coming weeks -- for now, it’s been an exciting 24 hours, and all those that helped get us here are going to get some much-needed rest.
