February 8, 2012

More Support For World IPv6 Launch

California’s Hurricane Electric, which calls itself “the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and leading colocation provider,” has thrown its support behind World IPv6 Launch, sponsored by the Internet Society and set for June 6 as a follow-on to World IPv6 Day last year (click here for more information).

Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home-networking equipment manufacturers and Web companies around the world announced last month they would permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by that date.

During the World IPv6 Launch, IPv6 will be permanently enabled by some of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web content providers. Seven ISPs (AT&T, Comcast, Free Telecom, Internode, KDDI, Time Warner Cable and XS4ALL) have committed to having at least 1 percent of their subscribers using IPv6 to connect to IPv6-enabled Web sites by June 6. In addition, Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo! will permanently enable IPv6 connectivity.

Participating home-networking vendors, including Cisco and D-Link, will enable IPv6 by default through the range of their home router products.

Hurricane Electric’s global IPv6 backbone provides IPv6 transit to many of the Web sites and vendors participating in the launch, and it will be support much of the increased IPv6 traffic flow for the launch. Hurricane Electric maintains more than 7,000 concurrent Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) sessions and connects to more than 2,000 networks at 50 exchange points in North America, Europe and Asia.

“Since the 2001 launch of our global IPv6 network, every day has been IPv6 Day at Hurricane Electric,” says Martin Levy, director/IPv6 Strategy. “The opportunity to be at the forefront of this historic transition across the globe and ensure that the Internet thrives in the years to come is exciting.”

"The fact that leading companies across several industries are making significant commitments to participate in World IPv6 Launch is yet another indication that IPv6 is no longer a lab experiment; it's here and is an important next step in the Internet's evolution," adds Leslie Daigle, the Internet Society's chief Internet Technology officer. "And, as there are more IPv6 services, it becomes increasingly important for companies to accelerate their own deployment plans."