IPv6 is the new normal for the Internet, claimed the Internet Society (ISOC) as it summed up the early results of its World IPv6 Launch Day on June 6.
World IPv6 Launch Day was a kick-off event for more than 60 access network providers and 3,000 web sites, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Bing, to begin permanently supporting IPv6 for their customers. Additionally, five home router vendors including Cisco and D-Link are now shipping home routers with IPv6 turned on by default.
"The Internet functions with regular, business operations on IPv6. Participating web sites have turned IPv6 on for good, access providers already have significant IPv6 traffic on their networks, and equipment manufacturers are shipping with IPv6 on by default," said Leslie Daigle, chief internet technology officer, ISOC. "IPv6 is the new normal."
Daigle urged CIOs and other enterprise IT professionals to accelerate their plans for migrating corporate web sites, networks and applications to IPv6.
"For organisations, it’s time to accelerate your IPv6 plans. If you don’t already have plans, you are behind," Daigle said, adding that "IPv6 is proven ready for business."
IPv4 upgrade
IPv6 is an upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol, known as IPv4. IPv6 is needed because IPv4 is running out of addresses. However, IPv6 is not backward-compatible with IPv4. So network operators must run the two protocols side-by-side in what is called dual-stack mode or translate between them, which adds cost and latency to their operations. Because of these complications, IPv6 has suffered from a slow adoption curve. That is why internet policymakers are promoting IPv6 through events such as World IPv6 Launch Day.
One enterprise that aggressively adopted the new protocol for World IPv6 Launch Day is Cisco, which is supporting IPv6 on its main web site, www.cisco.com, as well as its www.home.cisco.com and www.webex.com sites.
"The majority of our revenue is booked through the Cisco.com web site, and 80% of our technical cases are solved through it," explained Cisco Fellow Mark Townsley. "It was a big commitment by us to run this over IPv6."
Cisco also demonstrated a beta version of its WebEx application that was enabled for IPv6 at the press conference. Townsley said Cisco would ship an IPv6-enabled version of WebEx before Sept. 30, when US federal agencies are required to support IPv6 on their web sites to meet an Obama administration mandate.
World IPv6 Launch Day participants reported no major technical glitches or security incidents as they deployed IPv6 across their products, services and content.
Google resolved what it called "minor issues" with its advertising partners as it launched AdSense and content ads with IPv6. Google also said it ran into problems with IPv6 support in its Street View service, and it reported that it was not serving up what are called Quad-A records for IPv6 to a few networks – primarily in Japan – that were having problems with IPv6 service.
Vint Cerf
"Overall, it’s been a tremendous success," said Erik Kline, IPv6 software engineer at Google.
Kline noted that Google saw IPv6 adoption increase 150% in the last year, in addition to continued growth with IPv4. "At this rate, 50% of users will have IPv6 in about six years, hopefully sooner as deployment accelerates," he added.
John Brzozowski, distinguished engineer and chief IPv6 architect for Comcast, echoed the view that Comcast saw no major issues with IPv6 on Wednesday. "Call centre volumes were at par for this time of the year or below," he said. "It was a seamless event."
Internet pioneer and Google IPv6 evangelist Vint Cerf urged businesses to begin adopting IPv6 immediately.
"There are no more excuses," Cerf said. "You have to be able to run both IPv4 and IPv6 all the time, anytime, because this is not going to be turned off. For any ISP and any edge provider, if you are not capable of running IPv6, you are not being noticed. Get going. Get IPv6 running."
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