Canadian IPv6 start-up attracts VC funding

Montreal start-up Hexago gets $6 million in first round venture capital funding

Hexago, a Montreal start-up that provides IPv6 tunneling software to ISPs and enterprises, has attracted $6 million (Canadian dollars) in its first round of venture capital financing.

The Hexago deal comes on the heels of a $20 million venture capital investment in Herndon, Va.-based IPv6 start-up Command Information that was announced in February. Command Information provides IPv6 training, transition planning and other related services.

The two deals signal the investment community’s growing level of interest in IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4.

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Hexago, a Montreal start-up that provides IPv6 tunneling software to ISPs and enterprises, has attracted $6 million (Canadian dollars) in its first round of venture capital financing.

The Hexago deal comes on the heels of a $20 million venture capital investment in Herndon, Va.-based IPv6 start-up Command Information that was announced in February. Command Information provides IPv6 training, transition planning and other related services.

The two deals signal the investment community’s growing level of interest in IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4.

"We were oversubscribed for our first round of financing. We had to turn people down. That should give you an indication of the level of interest in IPv6 in the venture capital community," Hexago President and CEO Bruce Sinclair says.

Hexago’s funding came from three Canadian venture firms: Solidarity Fund QFL, BDC Venture Capital and Innovatech Quebec.

Although Canadian investors backed Hexago, its biggest customers are in the U.S. and overseas. These include service providers such as AT&T, France Telecom, KDDI and NTT as well as the U.S. Department of Defense and military contractors General Dynamics and BAE.

Hexago has been offering IPv6 products since 2003. The company is best known for Freenet6, a free IPv6 service that allows 100,000 users to access IPv6 services over IPv4 connections.

Hexago’s flagship product is the Migration Broker, now in Version 4.0, which provides automated IPv6 tunneling. The latest version includes a Dual Stack Transition Mechanism that enables IPv6 users to access all of their existing applications on IPv4.

Hexago plans to use the venture capital funding to beef up its sales and marketing efforts. Already, the 20-person shop has opened an office in Washington, D.C. to service its customers in the U.S. federal government.

"Until now, the company has had its head down, mostly focused on technology," Sinclair says. "Now we're finding that in parts of Asia, in the ISP market and in the U.S. federal government, the appetite for IPv6 is picking up. Now is the time to start commercializing our research."

IPv6 offers many advantages over IPv4 including easier administration, built-in security and an enhanced addressing scheme. IPv6, which uses a 128-bit addressing scheme, supports a virtually limitless number of uniquely identified systems on the 'Net, while IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing scheme and supports only a few billion systems.

To read more about Hexago, click here.

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