* NTT peering with more than a dozen carriers through four exchange points in the United States
NTT Communications, the first carrier to offer a commercial IPv6 service in the United States, is reporting steady growth of IPv6 traffic across its own backbone as well as for its peering partners.
As other carriers such as AT&T and Global Crossing announce their first IPv6 peering arrangements, NTT says it is peering with more than a dozen carriers through four exchange points in the United States.
Developed a decade ago by the IETF, IPv6 features more address space, easier administration and tighter security than IPv4, the main communications protocol used on the Internet today. IPv6 can support a virtually limitless number of individually addressed devices on the Internet, while IPv4 can support around 4.3 billion devices.
NTT uses Equinix exchanges in Ashburn, Va., and San Jose to exchange IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. NTT also exchanges IPv6 traffic at Switch and Data’s PAIX and a federal government IPv6 peering point run by NASA.
Most of the carriers that NTT exchanges IPv6 traffic with are regional Tier 2 carriers such as Hurricane Electric that support universities and colleges.
“There are a lot of Tier 2 carries that are doing IPv6 but not too many Tier 1s,” says Stan Barber, vice president of product marketing and engineering for NTT. “There are probably less than five Tier 1 carriers altogether doing IPv6…Most of the Tier 2 providers are regional broadband providers.”
Barber says he’s glad that AT&T and Global Crossing are getting into the game of IPv6 traffic peering.
“It’s is great that AT&T and Global Crossing have done this in terms of the development of the U.S. IPv6 market,” Barber says. “But it’s not actually the first IPv6 peering arrangement in the United States. It’s the first one for them.”
Barber admits that IPv6 represents a small fraction of NTT’s overall Internet traffic in the United States.
“If you look at the total amount of IPv4 traffic, which is multiple terabits a day, the IPv6 traffic is dwarfed,” Barber says. “There’s no infrastructure that’s in trouble of being overstretched by the amount of IPv6 traffic. But I have to say in all honesty that the trend is upwards.”
Barber says most of the IPv6 traffic NTT transports go between the United States and Asia, where IPv6 is more popular. In Asia, carriers such as NTT are beginning to see audio and video data carried over IPv6.
“In Tokyo, we know for a fact that consumers on the broadband networks are using IPv6 for video and audio traffic,” Barber says.
NTT has seen the number of IPv6 customers in the United States double every year since 2003. Today, the carrier is approaching 100 U.S. customers for its IPv6 service.
“Our customers are primarily in high-tech and education,” Barber says. “We’re beginning to see a group of customers this year who are using IPv6 as part of their solution. They are OEMs. They are buying IPv6 from us and bundling it with something they do and selling that service to someone else.”
NTT has offered commercial IPv6 transit services in the United States since June 2003. In Japan, the service has been available since April 2001, and in Europe it has been available since February 2003. The company supports three peering exchanges for IPv6 traffic in Asia and six peering exchanges for IPv6 traffic in Europe. Most of these exchanges transport native IPv6 traffic rather than traffic in a dual-stack mode supporting both IPv6 and IPv4.
