June 2014 archive

Jun 06

Facebook Moving To An IPv6-Only Internal Network

In a brilliant presentation by Facebook’s Paul Saab at the recent v6 World Congress in Paris, he outlined how Facebook is well on the path toward moving to an IPv6-only internal network. He makes the point that why should you deal with the headache of maintaining a dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6). Instead just move your internal network to be IPv6-only and then have dual-stack devices on the edge of the network to interact with the legacy IPv4 Internet. You can download a copy of the slides (and view commentary in the IPv6 Group on Facebook) to read all about the process, but here’s the key summary slide 31:

fb-internal-ipv6

Those statistics are:

  • 100% of  hosts they care about respond on IPv6  (Hosts that are not IPv6 ready are going away.)
  • 75% of internal traffic is now IPv6 with a goal to be at 100% by Q3 2014 or earlier
  • 98% of traffic in and out of HHVM is IPv6
  • 100% of our memcache traffic is IPv6
  • A goal of being 100% IPv6-only in 2-3 years

Very impressive to see!  Paul’s presentation is worth viewing because he outlines the challenges that Facebook faced from dealing with vendor equipment to getting developers to use IPv6.  It’s a great case study that we’ve added to our IPv6 case studies page.  We wrote about this presentation back in March, but it’s worth repeating today on World IPv6 Launchiversary #2.

Facebook very clearly understands the need to move to the production version of the Internet – and they are taking steps to ensure that their site and services will be available to the next 5 billion people who come online!  They are going to be out in front of most other companies with having made the transition over to IPv6.

What are you waiting for?  Visit our “Start Here” page or  check out our IPv6 resources  – and let us know if there is anything more we can do to help you!

Jun 06

Verizon Wireless Passes 50% IPv6 Deployment!

To all the doubters out there saying IPv6 ”will never happen”, on this World IPv6 Launchiversary let us just point you to the latest World IPv6 Launch measurements that show Verizon Wireless being the first of the top 10 largest networks to cross over the 50% IPv6 deployment mark!

Over 50% IPv6!

Verizon Wireless 50% IPv6

…as measured by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Akamai. That’s a remarkable achievement – and if you look at the rest of the top 10 you’ll see that other networks are not far behind.  As our colleague Mat Ford writes, IPv6 measurements are going “up and to the right”!

IPv6 deployment IS happening.

We are moving on from the “experimental” version of the Internet to the “production” version.  The smart companies are already making the move. Where are you?  If you haven’t already started deploying IPv6, now would be a really good time to start!

Congrats to the team at Verizon Wireless for all the IPv6 they have enabled with their LTE network – we are looking forward to seeing this percentage grow, and to seeing other networks join them in crossing this milestone!

Jun 06

Vint Cerf: We Need To Move To The Production Version Of The Internet (IPv6)

We need to stop running the experimental version of the Internet and move to the production version of the Internet running IPv6!  This was one of the key points made by Vint Cerf in a Google+ Hangout back in April 2014.  We wrote about the event then, but today on World IPv6 Launchiversary it is definitely worth sharing again.  As Vint notes, when the Internet was first being created, it was always a grand experiment.  Many of the folks involved thought that at some point we’d leave the “experimental” Internet behind and move to the “production” version… but yet many people haven’t yet made that leap!  Vint asked everyone to contact their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and ask when they will be able to get IPv6… and we’d ask you again to please do that today!

The interview with Vint Cerf covers a wide range of topics about the Internet… if you have some time it’s a great video to watch.  And then… if you haven’t yet moved to the production version of the Internet, please visit our “Start Here” pages to find out how you can get going with IPv6 today!

Jun 06

Check Out The New 2-Year World IPv6 Launchiversary Infographic!

Today in celebration of the second anniversary of World IPv6 Launch, there is a new infographic available that talks about what has changed with IPv6 since June 6, 2012.  You can find it at http://www.worldipv6launch.org/infographic/ or by clicking the image below.  Please do share it with people to let them know how millions of people around the world are now able to communicate over IPv6!

UPDATE: You can now also download a PDF version of the 2014 infographic if you would like a version for printing or sharing as a PDF.

wipv6l2-infographic-partial

Jun 06

Mexico’s AXTEL Provides Excellent IPv6 Lessons Learned And Recommendations

What are the key lessons AXTEL, Mexico’s second-largest telecommunications operator, learned in deploying IPv6 across their network?  What did they do?  What do they wish they’d known before they got started?  In an excellent case study we’ve published from AXTEL this week, they walk through the phases they went through in planning their deployment of IPv6 and then get into their lessons learned and recommendations. Their slides are available for viewing:

AXTEL IPv6 case study cover image

As far as the lessons they’ve learned, their “In Retrospective” section states that if they could return to the beginning of their IPv6 project, they wish they could have had:

  • More insight regarding how each of our different equipment providers were doing towards their evolution to IPv6.
  • The possibility to talk to another provider that had already implemented IPv6 in their network and learn from their experiences.
  • Support from our providers with people/team that had hands-on experience in an IPv6 evolution project.
  • To have had IPv6 support, even years before the beginning of the project; as a required functionality in all or our network and IT equipment requirements.

The advantage to people starting now is that there are examples of service providers who have implemented IPv6 and there are people who other service providers can speak with.  To that point, Cesar Joel Ramirez Garcia, an author of this case study from Axtell, said in a message that he’s glad to receive questions from other network operators about what they’ve done.

In the case study they go on to provide their recommendations for other companies seeking to move to IPv6:

  1. Communicate to all company levels the urgency and importance of IPv6 evolution.
  2. IPv6 is a primarily a business continuity case.
  3. Test in a lab environment all your IPv6 deployment scenarios
  4. Begin IPv6 training in all the different technical, sales and marketing teams ASAP.
  5. Evaluate the necessity of running a network audit or assessment to know where your network stands regarding IPv6.
  6. Join in technology forums and ask other people about their experience in the IPv6 evolution.
  7. Work closely with your equipment providers.
  8. Implement double stack wherever possible.
  9. Avoid NAT techniques wherever possible.
  10. Don’t be afraid of the IPv6 transition; as with many things the beginning is the toughest part.

These are great recommendations and we certainly commend Cesar and the rest of the AXTEL team on the work they have done so far as well as the work they are continuing to look at about how to expand IPv6 further in their networks.  Now that they have business and VPN customers using IPv6 they are now looking at the best ways to get IPv6 connectivity to all their residential customers.  All of that will help Mexico move ahead in having an Internet that will work even better in the future as more people and devices come online!

What are you waiting for?   If you would like to join AXTEL and many other service providers with moving to the production Internet, please visit our IPv6 resources or begin with our “Start Here” page to help find resources most appropriate for your type of organization.

Congratulations, again, to AXTEL for both their deployment of IPv6 as well as their willingness to share their story so that others may learn! Thank you!

Jun 06

Happy World IPv6 Launchiversary #2 – What Will YOU Do Today To Help Get More IPv6 Deployed?

World IPv6 Launch LogoWhat will YOU do today to help accelerate the deployment of IPv6?  Today, June 6, 2014, is the second anniversary of World IPv6 Launch and two years later the growth of IPv6 is going very well – “up and to the right” as our colleague Mat Ford writes!   But as Phil Roberts wrote on the ITM blog, “The effort is more like a marathon than a sprint, and persistent effort is still needed.”

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Today, on this second “Launchiversary” we are celebrating by posting new IPv6 case studies (and more on the way today!) and promoting some of the many IPv6 resources that we have collected on this site.  Here are a couple of ways you can help with this celebration:

1. ASK YOUR ISP WHAT THEIR PLAN IS FOR IPV6! – If you don’t have IPv6 yet at your home or business, could you take a moment today and contact your ISP and ask them what their plan is?  Email their help desk… file a ticket in their issue-tracking system… call into their contact center… or contact them on Twitter or Facebook… or do all of the above!  As Vint Cerf said in a webinar earlier this year, we have to erase this idea that “no one is asking for IPv6″. If everyone reading this article could take this simple step… and encourage people they know to do so… we would go very far in helping erase that idea!

2. LEARN HOW YOU CAN DEPLOY IPv6 IN YOUR NETWORK – To help, we recently added our “Start Here” section to the site to help people more rapidly find the resources they need to get started with IPv6.  Please check those pages out… and if you don’t find enough info to help you get started, please let us know so that we can see what we can do to help you!

3. START WITH A SMALL PROJECT – Figure out some small way you can experiment with IPv6.  For instance, here are two things you can try:

Or read one of the IPv6 ebooks available out there.  Here are two good ones:

Or if you are a developer, look at some of the libraries your application uses and figure out if they support IPv6.  See if there is one step you can take today!

4. READ AND SHARE (AND CONTRIBUTE!) IPv6 CASE STUDIES – There are some who doubt that IPv6 will really happen… yet we are publishing case studies showing how it is happening already today on a large scale.  Please read those… and share them!  Email them to people who you think should be aware of IPv6.  Tweet them on Twitter or share them on Facebook and Google+.  Let the world know that companies all over the world are already making the move!

And if you have made the move to IPv6, why not tell the world about it?  Even if it is not a formal case study like we have here… why not tweet out that you have IPv6 on your network?  Or write a quick blog post?  Or share that story in some small way?  (And we’re glad to retweet/re-share and otherwise amplify stories we see out there.)

5. CELEBRATE! – Two years after World IPv6 Launch we have made significant progress!  If you have done something to help move IPv6 forward… either in the past or today… please do take a moment to celebrate today!   As Vint Cerf said, we are in the process of turning on the “production” Internet – let’s make it happen!

Happy 2nd World IPv6 Launchiversary!

Jun 05

Check Out These 7 New IPv6 Case Studies! And Watch For More Tomorrow…

World IPv6 Launch LogoHave you checked out the growing list of IPv6 case studies we are publishing?   We’ve added seven more in the past few days, including the excellent example from RCS&RDS in Romania … and also some outstanding ”lessons learned” and recommendations for network operator Axtell in Mexico.  Plus CERN, UCD, Forthnet and more…

And tomorrow, as we celebrate the 2nd anniversary of World IPv6 Launch, we’ll be putting out even more case studies – all to help people understand that IPv6 is very real and people are making the move today!

Have you already made the move to IPv6?  If so, would you be interested in publishing a case study in some form?  (Please let us know!)

If you haven’t made the move yet… what are you waiting for?  Check out our “Start Here” page and find the resources that may help you make the move soon!

Jun 04

TDYR #156 – Leaving Djibouti – More Thoughts On The Visit Here

TDYR #156 - Leaving Djibouti - More Thoughts On The Visit Here by Dan York

Jun 03

Why And How Did RCS&RDS, Romania’s Largest ISP, Deploy IPv6?

Romania IPv6 usageWhy did RCS&RDS, Romania’s broadband market leader, deploy IPv6 in their network?  How did they do it?  What did they have to do?  And what were the results they saw?

In this excellent case study provided to us by Liviu Pislaru, the Chief Architect for IPv6 for RCS&RDS, he answers all of those questions and much more.

I want to pull out a couple of specific points, in particular his answer to why they did this:

The trigger for IPv6 deployment wasn’t IPv4 depletion. We still have plenty of IPv4 addresses and this is gold nowadays. We wanted our engineers to gain experience with IPv6 when the size of the IPv6 internet was less the 1% and chances to affect customer services was minimised.

They went ahead now because they knew that sooner or later they would need to make the transition… and wanted to get the experience before it became critical for them to have it.  As Liviu notes, they were ready for World IPv6 Launch in 2012 and rapidly became one of the leaders globally in IPv6 adoption.

Now, for people looking at this today, the global IPv6 Internet has already grown past 1% by any of the statistics sites such as Google’s IPv6 stats… but Liviu’s point is a good one – NOW is the time to gain the experience before you need to do so!

Liviu notes how much traffic they now see over IPv6:

Nowadays our IPv6 traffic goes to 30-35G in peak time, mainly because there’s more IPv6 content on the Internet. Our measurements show that 25% of a dual stack residential customer traffic is IPv6 traffic.

This is consistent with what we’ve heard from other ISPs (some of home have even said higher values such as 40%) and makes sense when you realize that many of the sites that home users would visit are all IPv6-enabled, such as all of Google’s properties (including YouTube), Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing, Netflix and more.

While they had great initial success in 2012, the rate of IPv6 adoption has not climbed greatly in Romania and Liviu gets into some of the reasons he believes this hasn’t happened. He also provides a link to a site where you can monitor the status of IPv6 on RCS&RDS’ network.

All in all it is an excellent case study and I would strongly encourage you to read it! Thank you to Liviu for providing us this case study and for all of his hard work there in Romania bringing about this great level of IPv6 deployment!

Interested in more stories of IPv6 deployment?  Check out our IPv6 case studies page – and if you want to get started with your own transition to IPv6, look at our “Start Here” page to find IPv6 resources most appropriate to your type of organization.

Jun 03

Case Study: Mexico’s AXTEL Outlines Phases of IPv6 Deployment and Recommendations

AXTEL is the second-largest telecommunications operator in Mexico, running its own network in 39 major cities in Mexico and having connectivity to 200 more cities across the country.  They have implemented IPv6 for their business and VPN customers and are currently analyzing how best to roll out IPv6 to their residential customers. In this 2014 case study (PDF) they walk through the multiple phases of their IPv6 implementation, including:

  1. Project kickoff
  2. Initial analysis
  3. Network deployment
  4. Service deployment

In each phase outlining what they did and providing a good checklist for any other service provider to consider. Their slides are available for viewing:

AXTEL IPv6 case study cover image

In particular, their “In Retrospective” section states that if they could return to the beginning of their IPv6 project, they wish they could have had:

  • More insight regarding how each of our different equipment providers were doing towards their evolution to IPv6.
  • The possibility to talk to another provider that had already implemented IPv6 in their network and learn from their experiences.
  • Support from our providers with people/team that had hands-on experience in an IPv6 evolution project.
  • To have had IPv6 support, even years before the beginning of the project; as a required functionality in all or our network and IT equipment requirements.

They go on to provide their recommendations for other companies seeking to move to IPv6:

  1. Communicate to all company levels the urgency and importance of IPv6 evolution.
  2. IPv6 is a primarily a business continuity case.
  3. Test in a lab environment all your IPv6 deployment scenarios
  4. Begin IPv6 training in all the different technical, sales and marketing teams ASAP.
  5. Evaluate the necessity of running a network audit or assessment to know where your network stands regarding IPv6.
  6. Assist to technology forums and ask other people about their experience in the IPv6 evolution. There are a lot of us in the same situation.
  7. Work closely with your equipment providers.
  8. Implement double stack wherever possible.
  9. Avoid NAT techniques wherever possible.
  10. Don’t be afraid of the IPv6 transition; as with many things the beginning is the toughest part.

All of which are solid recommendations!

This case study was provided by Cesar Joel Ramirez Garcia, IP Architect Engineer and IPv6 Leader with AXTEL in Mexico.

If you would like to get started with IPv6, please visit our IPv6 resources or begin with our “Start Here” page to help find resources most appropriate for your type of organization.