* Testing of IPv6 was carried out on Moonv6
IPv6 is one step closer to widespread commercial availability in the U.S. after several leading ISPs and other network vendors successfully completed a series of routing, security and applications tests using the next generation of the Internet’s main communications protocol.
The testing was conducted in March on Moonv6, the largest-ever backbone network based on IPv6. Moonv6 is a joint operation of the University of New Hampshire, the U.S. Department of Defense, the North American IPv6 Task Force and the Internet2 university consortium. Moonv6 links approximately 80 servers, switches and routers located at research sites from New Hampshire to California.
“The success rates we’ve seen here argue that IPv6 is clearing the hurdles to inevitable adoption,” says Ben Schultz, managing engineer with the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Laboratory, which oversaw the Moonv6 tests. “We plan to continue industry-wide multi-vendor testing on a rolling basis.”
The ISPs that participated in the recent Moonv6 tests were AT&T, Chunghwa Telecom, France Telecom, KDDI and NTT. Other participants included two-dozen network hardware and software manufacturers including Cisco and Microsoft.
The Moonv6 tests were designed to help boost commercial deployment of IPv6 in the U.S., which has lagged behind Europe and Asia.
“AT&T is a global carrier, and we’re seeing interest in IPv6 in various parts of the world like Japan,” says Rose Klimovich, vice president with AT&T. “In the U.S., we’re seeing interest in the government as well as…some interest from commercial customers.”
Developed by the IETF, IPv6 promises easier administration, tighter security and an enhanced addressing scheme over IPv4, the Internet’s current protocol. IPv6, which uses a 128-bit addressing scheme, supports a virtually limitless number of uniquely identified systems on the ‘Net, while IPv4 supports only a few billion systems because it uses a 32-bit addressing scheme.
Moonv6 participants said they successfully tested the following IPv6 features: quality of service, firewalls, mobile IPv6, DNS and routing protocols including Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Intermediate System-Intermediate System (IS-IS). The Moonv6 participants also tested the performance of IPv6 over high-speed l0G bit/sec links.
ISPs involved with Moonv6 say the network test bed is helping them develop commercial IPv6 services for U.S. corporations.
Klimovich says the service AT&T put together for Moonv6 overlays its commercial services. “If a customer came in today, we have an IPv6 service that’s available today,” she says.
She points out that AT&T is the only commercial service provider currently offering transport services on Moonv6. “Our goal has been to gain experience in provisioning and managing dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6. This mirrors what our customers will see going forward,” she says.
Meanwhile, NTT already offers commercial IPv6 in the U.S. through its Verio subsidiary.
“The current services we offer are three-fold,” says Stan Barber, vice president of engineering operations for NTT/Verio. “You can get native IPv6 services. You can run tunneled IPv6 to existing IPv4, or you can get a dual-stack service. This is available in all the markets we serve.”
Moonv6 participant France Telecom has no plans to offer IPv6 services in the U.S. through its sister company Equant this year.
“We are looking at it, but we’re not planning to offer it right now,” says Sergio Catanzariti, senior engineer, network architecture at France Telecom’s R&D lab in San Francisco. He said France Telecom will continue using Moonv6 as an “international exchange point” for IPv6 traffic from Europe.
Moonv6 will remain in place as a native IPv6 backbone available for peering from anywhere in the world. It will serve as an ongoing testbed for industry, universities, research labs, ISPs and the U.S. military.
Klimovich says AT&T plans to continue running tests on Moonv6. “We want to look at other things such as testing multi-homing between service providers, testing peer strategies and unique functionalities of V6 like Anycast,” she says. “But one of the most important reasons we’re participating in Moonv6 is that as the IPv6 market develops and customer interest grows, we want to be ready with commercial IPv6 services.”
