From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation of the Internet Protocol that is currently in various stages of deployment on the Internet. It was designed as a replacement of the current version, IPv4, that has been in use since 1982 and is in the final stages of exhausting its unallocated address space.
In February 1999, The IPv6 Forum[1] was founded by the IETF Deployment WG to drive deployment worldwide. This resulted in the creation of regional and local IPv6 Task Forces.[2]
A global view into the growing IPv6 routing tables can be obtained with the SixXS Ghost Route Hunter.[3] This tool provides a list of all allocated IPv6 prefixes and marks with colors the ones that are actually being announced into the Internet BGP tables. When a prefix is announced, it means that the ISP at least can receive IPv6 packets for their prefix.
The current integration of IPv6 on existing network infrastructures can also be monitored from other sources, for example:
According to Kshemendra Paul, chief architect at the U.S. Department of Justice, Asia is experiencing a huge demand for addresses and thus is one of the strongest adopters of IPv6.[citation needed]
In December 2008, despite celebrating its 10th anniversary as a Standards Track protocol, IPv6 was only in its infancy in terms of general worldwide deployment. A recent study by Google, reported in November 2008,[7] indicated that penetration was still less than one percent of Internet traffic in any country. The leaders were Russia (0.76%), France (0.65%), Ukraine (0.64%), Norway (0.49%), and the United States (0.45%). Although Asia lead in terms of absolute deployment numbers, the relative penetration was smaller (e.g., China: 0.24%). IPv6 is implemented on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments. According to the Google study, Mac OS lead in IPv6 penetration of 2.44%, followed by Linux (0.93%) and Windows Vista (0.32%).[8]
IPv6 testing, evaluation, and certification
A few international organizations are involved with IPv6 test and evaluation ranging from the United States Department of Defense to the University of New Hampshire.
Government incentives
Increasingly, governments are starting to require support for IPv6 in new equipment. The U.S. Government, for example, specified in 2005 that the network backbones of all federal agencies had to be upgraded to IPv6 by June 30, 2008, which was completed before the deadline.[9][10][11][12]
The government of People's Republic of China has a 5 year plan for deployment of IPv6 called the China Next Generation Internet (see below).
Official governmental decisions should further encourage the private sector and other countries to migrate to IPv6 as well.
Australia
- AARNet recently completed a new network, AARNet 3. It is a high-speed network connecting academic and research customers in the major metropolitan centres, with international links to major ISPs in the US, Asia, and Europe. One of the design goals was to support both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols equally. It also supports multicast routing and jumbo frames.[13]
- IPv6 Now Pty Ltd introduced the first[14] commercial grade IPv6 tunnel broker service in Australia on April 30, 2008. Also, in June 2008, IPv6Now introduced the first dual stacked (IPv4 & IPv6) web hosting service.[15]
- Internode is the first commercial ISP in Australia to have full IPv6 connectivity, and are currently making IPv6 available to customers.[16] The availability to customers was officially announced to Whirlpool on July 18 2008.[17]
- The Victorian State Government has granted $A350,000 to establish an IPv6 testbed network (VIC6) freely available to industry to evaluate their IPv6 products and strategies.[18]
China
The China Next Generation Internet (CNGI, 中国下一代互联网) project is a five year plan initiated by the Chinese government with the purpose of gaining a significant position in the development of the Internet through the early adoption of IPv6.
2008 Olympic Games IPv6 showcase
China showcased CNGI's IPv6 infrastructure at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.[19] The Olympics website was published on the IPv6 Internet at http://ipv6.beijing2008.cn/en (IP addresses: 2001:252:0:1::2008:6 and 2001:252:0:1::2008:8). All network operations of the Games were conducted using IPv6. This event was reported to be the largest showcase of IPv6 technology since the inception of IPv6.[20] The deployment of IPv6 was widespread in all related applications, from data networking and camera transmissions for sporting events, to civil applications, such as security cameras and taxis. The events were streamed live over the Internet and networked cars were able to monitor traffic conditions readily.
Germany
- M-Net, a regional carrier and ISP, offers an IPv6 PoP for their customers.
- The 6WIN backbone network by the JOIN Team offers full native IPv6 support for their participants. Many scientific networks in Germany, like the Munich Scientific Network (MWN)[2] operated by Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, are connected to this network.
- According to a a list maintained by the SiXXS project, there are about seven providers who offer native IPv6 or combined native IPv6/native IPv4-connectivity over the T-DSL network at the end of 2009.
France
- AFNIC, the NIC for (among others) the .fr Top Level Domain, has implemented IPv6 operations.[21]
- Renater, the French national academical network, is offering IPv6 connectivity including multicast support to their members.
- Free, a major French ISP rolled-out IPv6 at end of year 2007[22].
- Nerim, a small ISP provides native IPv6 for all its clients since March 2003.[23]
- Orange has done IPv6 experimentation, official support is still unclear.
- OVH has implemented IPv6.[24]
- FDN, a small associative ISP, has been providing native IPv6 since November 2008.[25]
India
- Sify Technologies Limited,[26] a private Internet service provider, rolled out IPv6 in 2005.[27] Sify has a dual-stack network that supports commercial services on IPv6 transport for its enterprise customers.[27] Sify is a sponsored member of 6Choice, a project by India-Europe cooperation to promote IPv6 adoption.[28]
- Sify is the first to launch a dual-stack commercial portal http://sify.com,[29]. Users were notified about the version of IP they use when they are accessing the front-page.
Luxembourg
- RESTENA, the national research and education network, has been running IPv6 for a number of years. It is connected to the European GEANT2 network. In addition, it runs one of the country Internet exchanges, which supports IPv6 peering[30]. RESTENA also runs the .lu top level domain, which also supports IPv6[31].
- P&T Luxembourg, main telecom and Internet service providers has announced they have production quality IPv6 connectivity since January 2009, with the first professional customers being connected as of September 2009[32]. Deployment of IPv6 to residential customers is expected to take place in 2010[33].
Netherlands
- SURFnet, maintainer of the Dutch academical network SURFnet, introduced IPv6 to its network 1997, in the beginning using IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnels. Currently its backbone is entirely running dual-stack, supporting both native IPv4 and IPv6 to most of its users.[34]
- XS4All, is a major Dutch ISP. In 2002 XS4All was the first Dutch broadband provider to introduce IPv6 to its network,[35] but it was only experimental and they disabled that service again. While the experimental service currently only provides tunnels, as of May 2009 the provider also provides native IPv6 DSL connections.[36]
- Business-orientated Internet Provider BIT BV has been providing IPv6 to all their customers (DSL, FTTH, colocated) since 2004.[37]
- SixXS has two private Dutch founders and has been partnering with IPv6 Internet service providers in many countries to provide IPv6 connectivity via IP tunnels to users worldwide since 2000. It started out as IPng.nl with a predominantly Dutch user base and reorganized as SixXS to be able to reach users internationally and be diversified in ISP support.[38] SixXS also provides various other related services and software which contributed significantly to IPv6 adoption and operation globally.
- Business ISP Introweb provides an IPv6-only 8 Mbit/s ADSL connection for 6 euro per month to 100 customers as a pilot, both for companies to learn how to adapt to IPv6 as for themselves in working on a fully IPv6 enabled network.[39][40]
- Signet is the first ISP in the country which provides IPv6 connectivity together with IPv4 on multiple national fiber networks (Eurofiber, Glasvezel Eindhoven, BRE, Glasnet Veghel, Ziggo, and Fiber Port).[41]
United Kingdom
- JANET, the UK's education and research network, is introducing IPv6 unicast support into its service level agreement by August 2008.[42] Several major UK universities (e.g., Cambridge) are upgrading their campus routing infrastructure during summer 2008 to provide IPv6 unicast support to their users.
- Andrews and Arnold launched a native (non-tunneled) IPv6 service in October 2005.[43]
- The UK Government is intending to replace much of its Wide Area Network with a new Public Sector Network (PSN) starting in late 2009. The PSN will be based on IPv6.[44]
United States
- Hurricane Electric (AS6939),[45] a Fremont, California Internet backbone and colocation provider, was an early IPv6 adopter and maintains a native IPv6 backbone and is today one of the largest IPv6 connectivity and hosting providers in the United States. It was the first IPv6 backbone operator in the world to reach 200 IPv6 BGP adjacencies. Through its IPv6 tunnel broker service,[46] Hurricane also provides free IPv6 connectivity to users in the United States and in several other countries.
- Sonic.net a Santa Rosa, California based Internet provider offers partial support for IPv6. They assign a /60 to any customer requesting address space and deliver the IPv6 packets over a 6in4 tunnel. The RDNS authoritative servers for the assigned IPv6 space do answer IPv6 requests, but the recursive DNS servers provided for customer use are IPv4-only.
Other Countries
- Bulgaria has constructed a research center to study the possibilities of adopting IPv6 in the country. The center is to operate alongside another facility, which is equipped with an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer.[47]
- New Zealand ISP Worldxchange Communications has started providing residential customers with dual (IPv4 and IPv6) service using DHCPv6, on a trial basis. [48]
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