External IPv6 Projects & Activities

The Internet has grown and expanded over 25 years using one single common communication protocol, IP, in particular IPv4. In the 1970s, 32-bits of address space were considered ample for the future, allowing up to 4 billion devices to connect. However, IPv4 address space has limitations in utilisation (see RFC3194). Recognising this, and because of a global shortage of IPv4 addresses, a new Internet Protocol – IPv6 – was developed by the IETF a number of years ago. IPv6 offers 128-bit addresses, enough address space for the next century and beyond, and a number of other beneficial features. The base specification for IPv6 is in RFC2460.

JANET(UK) makes the following observations and has carried out the following work regarding IPv6:

There have been a significant number of commercially supported IPv6 code releases, such that stack support is available from Cisco, Microsoft (WinXP), Juniper, Sun, IBM and Hitachi, as well as open source platforms such as Linux and BSD.
The GÉANT pan-European research network is supporting IPv6 in its production network. JANET(UK) has established a native IPv6 connection.
JANET(UK) has supported early IPv6 trials, in particular providing management for the Bermuda 2 IPv6 project. Similar trials have been performed in many other countries around the world; the Japanese initiatives probably being most advanced.
JANET(UK) has gained IPv6 experience by establishing a connection to the 6bone in 1997, and further IPv6 deployment experience as it was a partner in the 6NET project, along with the UK Universities of Southampton, Lancaster and University College London. JANET(UK) was particularly interested in native, high bandwidth, IPv6 deployment.
JANET(UK) recognises the importance of working with international partners. It maintained a leading role in the GÉANT TF-NGN IPv6 Working Group, and has established IPv6 peerings with BT's UK6X and other IPv6 enabled networks such as NTT.
JANET(UK) has implemented a dual-stack infrastructure on JANET, providing both IPv4 and IPv6 services.
JANET(UK) will enable dual stack on the SuperJANET5 backbone from day 1, with a view to enabling IPv6 Multicast thereafter.

Full details on the JANET IPv6 Experimental Service are available.