IPv6 Act Now

At the recent ISOC Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur a rather innocuous coffee break question was raised: could any one around the table name some of the major Top-Level Domains (TLDs) still delinquent in their IPv6 support? Nobody could answer on the spot but the question intrigued me.

A logical place to start looking for an answer was ICANN. Their Kim Davies provided a rather revealing perspective in a presentation at ICANN 34 in april. 41% of the 280 existing TLDs did not provide any IPv6 connectivity and more than 68% did without any diversity. Even for IPv4 it was surprising to see that 7.2% of TLDs do not provide diversity, contrary to IANA rules. Two name servers separated by geography and topology are required and the same applies for IPv6 (gTLD applicant guidebook).

More from Circle ID…

The first test specifications for IPv6 compliance, which will be required for government networking procurements beginning in July 2010, were reviewed by vendors and testing labs at a hands-on event this month at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory.

UNH-IOL is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop testing requirements for U.S. Government IPv6 (USGv6) certification. Independent laboratories accredited by NIST to perform USGv6 compliance testing will use the test specifications to certify networking products that agencies purchase.

More from Government Computer News…

The U.S. government has reportedly struck a compromise between network vendors and independent test labs with its plan to launch a comprehensive product testing program for IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol.

The USGv6 Test Program, run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, requires all network hardware and software vendors to pass IPv6 compliance and interoperability tests before they can sell their wares to the U.S. federal government, which is the world’s largest IT market.

More from NetworkWorld…

The current version of IP addresses allotted to websites – IPV4 – is almost getting exhausted. This version can accommodate only a limited number of IP addresses, which is likely to be exhausted by 2011-2012.

Although there are alternate systems of addressing, such as IPV6, only a limited number of deployments have been made till date. IPV6 deployment remains below 1% globally and near-zero in India.

More from The Economic Times…

Lorenzo Colitti of Google discusses the implementation of IPv6, which resulted in the launch of ipv6.google.com. It covers the planning and deployment, and future plans for making Google services available over IPv6.

BreakingPoint, a Texas-based provider of content-aware network equipments, announced the availability of dual stack IPv4/IPv6 testing capabilities. The company will be also providing support for latest IPv6 standards as well. With this, the company will be delivering IPv6 performance and security testing capabilities, in order to ensure network resilience and standards conformance.

More from TMCNet…

DNS security, IPv6 adoption and network neutrality will top the agenda at next week’s meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet’s premier standards-setting body, which will be held in Stockholm, Sweden.

A panel discussion about securing the DNS will be held Tuesday, featuring speakers from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Society, the operators of Sweden’s .se domain, the operators of the .org domain and VeriSign, which operates .com and .net.

DNS security extensions known as DNSSEC will be discussed at this panel as well as at various IETF working groups’ meetings. DNSSEC is an emerging standard that prevents spoofing attacks by letting Web sites verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption.

More from Network World…

Network operator Entanet UK has warned that many broadband ISPs could be missing a “competitive opportunity” by adopting a risky “wait and see” approach to IPv6 adoption. The group, which supplies several ISPs and is itself an early adopter of IPv6, said that some providers could perhaps be deemed “technically negligent” and risk “compromising network performance” by delaying.

For those not in the know, an IPv4 address is assigned to your computer each time you go online (e.g. 123.23.56.98). It is a unique online identifier made up of four number groupings and allows you to communicate with other computers around the world; not unlike a phone number for voice calls.

More from ISP Review…

Dear reader,

Worldwide, the number of Internet users is rapidly growing. For identifying and locating each user on the Internet,  IP addresses were developed. Currently, the expectation is however that in 2012 no more IP addresses are left to distribute which can seriously hinder the growth of the Internet.

A new protocol was developed as a solution to this problem: IPv6 protocol. Users can already implement IPv6 by replacing or modifying their software and hardware. A disadvantage is that IPv6 users are only able to communicate with other IPv6 users. At present, however, less than 1% of all internet users makes use of IPv6. Moreover, private companies are often unwilling to invest in IPv6.

More from Fix6…

Hurricane Electric, the world’s leading IPv6-native Internet backbone and colocation provider, today announced the availability of its free IPv4 countdown App for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The majority of Internet traffic today is composed of IPv4 transmissions, but the IPv4 protocol’s 32-bit address will soon be overwhelmed by the rapidly growing number of Internet-connected devices. In order to avoid projected address-space depletion by 2011, IPv4 systems must be transitioned to the newer IPv6 protocol, which has a vastly larger address space.

More from SOA World…