IPv6 is a cornerstone of the Future Internet. To ensure both business continuity of the European industry and society to get benefits from IPv6 added technologies, the European Commission (EC) requested that by 2010, 25% of the users should be able to connect to IPv6. This ambitious target has not been achieved and while IPv4 pool of addresses dried out in February 2011, the estimated and effective level of IPv6 deployment is still below 5%. Pointing out the emergency of the issue, the European Commission is continuing its support to IPv6 deployment through its digital agenda and calling the member states to foster IPv6 adoption.

In another effort to expand the use of the new Internet protocol within the region, LACNIC has installed in its office an IPv6 training lab within the framework of the 6DEPLOY-2 project, with equipment donated by Cisco Systems as part of the cooperation agreements of the project, sponsored by the European Commission.

It is targeted to different types of readers, including end users, SOHO, enterprise, education and research networks, and ISPs. It also includes a section on how to deploy several IPv6 services.

"We are starting to see very close ahead of us the consequences if we don't make the switch to IPv6," she warned, presumably to a very receptive audience.

Located at the Department of Telecommunications at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, the lab is an integral part of an international network of IPv6 training and research facilities and is connected to some 20 similar centers around the globe. Cisco donated the lab’s networking and communications equipment.

This will be followed by sessions in Barcelona, Valencia, León, Zaragoza, Santander, Bilbao, Logroño, Pamplona, Mérida, Ceuta, Murcia, Seville, Málaga, Las Palmas, Toledo, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Compostela and Oviedo.

A short interview video about IPv6 has also been produced as part of this plan.

The Plan includes 10 points covering all the aspects required for the public administrations to tackle the IPv4 exhaustion problem with a firm commitment for the deployment of IPv6, including eGovernment services, and the cooperation with private organisations in order to make sure that IPv6 is deployed in every network in the country.

In the next months a free training program will be provided in the 20 major Spanish cities.

The rule states that when only five large blocks of IP addresses remain, one will be handed out to each of the world's five regional Internet registries. With the latest allocation to APNIC, the number of remaining IP address blocks is down to five.

On June 8, 2011, dubbed “World IPv6 Day,” participants will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the internet protocol that is designed to replace the current Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4). The reason for this is that the range of addresses used on the internet is nearly exhausted.

This latest allocation means that the IPv4 free pool dipped below 10% in January, just nine months ago. Since then, over 200 million IPv4 addresses have been allocated from IANA to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).

This program defines and certifies courses, engineers and trainers with Silver & Gold Logo levels and requires IPv6 implementation on the web site of the education program.

The event main focus is the usage of IPv6 in Smart Buildings.

Registration is required, as only 70 seats are available.

The Number Resource Organization (NRO), which represents the registries, said on Tuesday that less than 10 percent of all IPv4 addresses remain available, threatening the future network operations of all businesses and organisations unless ISPs and businesses step up their migration to IPv6.

Cisco and the Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association (GRENA) today announced the opening of the first laboratory for training and research in Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in the Caucasus region. Cisco donated the lab's networking and communications equipment.

It is targeted to different types of readers, including end users, SOHO, enterprise, education and research networks, and ISPs. It also includes a section on how to deploy several IPv6 services.

This is jeopardising Internet growth and socio-economic development in these regions.

All computer and electronic devices that connect to the web and other online services uses Internet Protocol Addresses. The current Internet Protocol, IPv4, provides a limited number of such addresses. According to estimates will be exhausted by 2011. The new Internet Protocol, IPv6, allows every citizen and organization to have as many Internet Addresses as they need to connect every conceivable device to the Internet: mobile phones, car navigation systems, home appliances, industrial equipment, etc.

There is also a short "5 minutes" introduction to IPv6 "What is IPv6?", available only in English.

Bound was a Senior Fellow with HP, Chair of the North American IPv6 Task Force and CTO of the IPv6 Forum.

Detlef Eckert, senior advisor in the Directorate General Information Society and Media of the European Commission (EC), is today emphasising the crucial role of EU governments in leading the way to IPv6 migration, at a roundtable meeting for governments and regulators, hosted by the RIPE NCC.

This growth has been helped by the active promotion of IPv6 by the five RIRs and their communities; and developing economies, such as India, are playing an increasingly important role in generating demand for global IPv6 deployment.

Presenting research at the meeting, Japanese and South Korean professors announced a joint online collaboration and exchange program on Internet research between African and Asian technology experts.

Get to know how e-Infrastructures can open new frontiers for your business and research activities by allowing you to merge global resources and knowledge. Our Global e-Infrastructure team will be happy to answer all your questions and feed your curiosity.

At its Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy, held in Seoul, Korea, on Wednesday, the organisation said the switch to the new version of IP was necessary to connect billions of people to the internet. IPv4 addresses are quickly running out, so the signatories want to have the new version of the internet protocol, IPv6, adopted quickly. In one of the items in the declaration that is more political than technical, they call on governments and private companies that use a large number of IPv4 addresses to lead the switch over.

Kenya will embark on a plan to deploy IPv6 mainly through the national Network Operations Center (NOC) that is currently being setup, said Information and Communication Minister Samuel Poghisio in his keynote address. He added that NOC will support ongoing initiatives to encourage IPv6 deployment.

The objective of the Action Plan is the support of the widespread introduction of the next version of the Internet Protocol (IPv6).

"This is very much a case of a stitch in time saves nine", said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "In the short term, businesses and public authorities might be tempted to try to squeeze their needs into the strait jacket of the old system, but this would mean Europe is badly placed to take advantage of the latest internet technology, and could face a crisis when the old system runs out of addresses."

The number of IP addresses, needed for Web sites, servers and PCs to communicate with one another over the Internet, is limited, and almost 85 percent of addresses are now in use. At the current rate of growth, the pool of available addresses will be exhausted by 2011.

The EU Commission will set this goal in a statement, to be published at the end of May, on the new internet protocol and progress in the net.

Detlef Eckert of the General Directorate for Information Society and Media presented the key points of the statement and a related action plan at the RIPE meeting in Berlin.

The Commission is joining organisations like the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE) in calling for rapid action in the face of dwindling reserves of IP addresses.

The main goal of the Communication is to promote IPv6 adoption through a wide range of actions encouraging public administration, users and industrial stakeholders to take decisive steps to accelerate the implementation of IPv6, so as to ensure Europe's readiness to face the expected depletion of the IPv4 addresses. Moreover, the prompt and efficient adoption of IPv6 offers Europe significant opportunities to boost innovation and develop a leading role in advancing the Internet.

The change comes as net governance organisation IANA adds AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of six of the 13 root name servers, making it possible for two internet hosts to find each other without using the old IPv4 protocol.

The publication "Enabling efficient and operational mobility in large heterogeneous IP networks" includes a brief presentation of the project and some of the technical achievements, contributions to standardization work, and several selected papers related to the project work.

The change involves adding IPv6 address glue to a handful of the root DNS servers on the Internet and this is critical to allowing IPv6 only devices to be able to function properly in the future.

ICANN has written to the US Government asking to be released from an agreement under which it it answerable to the US Department of Commerce, which began delegating the responsibility for running the internet ten years ago.

The information about the streaming will be published in the workshop web page a few minutes before the start of the event.

National Correspondent Carolyn Duffy Marsan sat down with St. Amour this week at a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, an ISOC-funded standards group.

This is a free event regarding next generation routing, organized in Madrid next 13-14 of December.

The agenda is available at the RiNG project web page.

The draft agenda has been posted and is available at the RiNG web page.

Every device that goes online is allocated a unique IP address but the pool of numbers is finite and due to run out around 2010.

"Growth and innovation on the Internet depends on the continued availability of IP address space. The remaining pool of unallocated IPv4 address space is likely to be fully allocated within two to four years. IPv6 provides the necessary address space for future growth. We therefore need to facilitate the wider deployment of IPv6 addresses.

As part of its activities, RiNG is hosting an open routing workshop in Madrid, Spain. The event is principally aimed at PhD students working in the area of Internet routing architecture and protocols, but is open to submissions and presentations from any interested researchers. The aim of the workshop is to allow young researchers to present their work in a formal yet friendly environment to their peers and a selection of academic and industry experts from the routing research community. We also expect two keynote speakers to take part in the event.

This portal is constituted as an information centre with the objective of providing the necessary tools, updated information, experiences, presentations and all kind of data that contribute to the transition and adaptation of the new protocol IPv6 for our region.

Resolution [#200707.01]: "Noting the imminent exhaustion of the IPv4 address central pool, the AfriNIC Board resolves that efforts to draw the public's attention to the problem and potential solutions such as IPv6 be intensified, and instructs the staff to take appropriate action in this regard". In line with this resolution, the following document has been sent to our members.

The NSF's Global Environment for Networking Investigations, or GENI, initiative would include a research grant program and an experimental facility to test new Internet technologies, but the project is not yet funded, said NSF spokesman Richard "Randy" Vines. "It's an idea under consideration," he said.

The CIO Council’s IPv6 working group has established three criteria for successfully meeting the mandate to enable the next generation of IP on agency network backbones.

Whereas, the future growth of the Internet therefore increasingly depends on the availability and timely deployment of IPv6;

Whereas, the ICANN Board and community agree with the call to action from the Address Supporting Organization and the Number Resource Organization, Regional Internet Registries, the Government Advisory Committee, and others, to participate in raising awareness of this situation and promoting solutions;

As a response to the forecasts prepared by several investigators indicating that by the year 2011 the central pool of version 4 (IPv4) Internet addresses could be completely depleted, LACNIC announces it is launching a regional campaign so that all the region’s networks will be adapted to the new version 6 of the protocol (IPv6) before January 1st, 2011.

This paper analyze the situation and classifies the potential mitigations for the IPv4 exhaustion problem into two basic categories: Temporary and Permanent mitigations.

In addition, the workshop presents ideas for using the tesbed for R&D on some potential application areas, including intelligent transportation systems (ITS), multimedia services and testing.

Following the success of MobiArch'06, the new MobiArch'07 workshop will be a single-track one-day workshop. The program is planned to present and discuss all the accepted papers. It also includes a keynote address and a panel session with world-renowned researchers discussing state-of-the-art technologies and hot topics in mobility in the evolving Internet architecture. The proceedings will be published by the ACM and ACM digital library.

The workshop will present to the participants a comprehensive knowledge of mobility technologies and their respective benefits, and inform them about technologies developed within EU projects. It will focus in particular on the recent developments and open issues of mobile networking, its evolution to B3G/4G and advanced mobile network services.

Unless, that is, we abandon something called IPv4 in favor of something called IPv6. But, so far, the issue has not generated much excitement.

Registered users can now select their default language to display the news that are translated to their preferred language, as well as participate in the translation of any news item to any language so other users can take advantage of it.

The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.

The coming shortage of Internet Protocol addresses on Monday prompted the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) to call for a faster migration to the new Internet Protocol, IPv6.

Internet Protocol defines how computers communicate over a network. IP version 4 (IPv4), the currently prevalent version, contains just over four billion unique IP addresses, which is not enough to last indefinitely. IPv6 is a replacement for IPv4, offering far more IP addresses and enhanced security features. To date, ARIN has performed technical coordination of both versions and has not advocated one over the other.

“We’re down to a year and two months to the OMB deadline,” he said recently. But Tseronis, who is overseeing Education’s transition, sees that mandate as an opportunity rather than a chore. And his efforts aren’t limited to Education.

“Agencies were assessed based on their use of the enterprise architectures to maximize efficiency of cross-agency initiatives, implement IPv6, realize efficiencies and improve program performance,” Johnson said.

The next day, using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps.

The goal is to provide researchers, engineers and IT managers with a concentrated day on the state of the art technologies on mobility along with their security and applicability aspects.

The workshop will provide to the participants a comprehensive knowledge of mobility technologies and their respective benefits. It will focus in particular on the recent developments and open issues of mobile networking, its evolution to beyond 3G/4G and advanced mobile network services.

This type of high-tech ambush, which occurs when multiple compromised systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted server to make Web pages unavailable, could be devastating for global online communication, said Susan Crawford of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers.

Federal agencies that dawdle during the IPv6 transition risk losing tech-savvy system administrators who will defect to organizations with fresher technology, advocates for the Web upgrade say.

The committees jointly conclude that the most expedient way to proceed is for ICANN, IANA and the root name server operators to coordinate a phased deployment.

• Al-Din J. Kadhem Al-Radhi
• Smain Aouissi
• Raimundo Beca
• Vikram Gupta
• Jordi Palet Martinez
• Remco Van Mook
• Shahmeet Singh
• Kuo-Wei Wu

Director of National Advanced IPv6 Centre (NAV6), Universiti Sains Malaysia Associate Professor Dr Sureswaran Ramadas said the IPv6 network would place Malaysia in a position of strength in terms of the new Internet technology.

The VoIP calls, connecting Viagenie in Canada and Consulintel in Spain, were conducted using the CounterPath eyeBeam softphone through the IPv6 version of Asterisk, ported by Viagenie, a consulting and R&D firm in advanced IP networking. The Asterisk-IPv6 server was located on Stealth Communications' Voice Peering Fabric (VPF) network.

And that is only half the amount that will go into developing High-Assurance IP Encryptor Interoperability Specification (HAIPE IS) Version 3 software to, among other things, protect IPv6 traffic.

The Office of Management and Budget in 2005 directed agencies to make the move to the next generation of Internet Protocols, setting a deadline of July 2008 for making core networks IPv6 compatible. But OMB did not explain exactly what it meant. In self-defense, the CIO Council’s IPv6 Working Group defined the scope of the transition to provide agencies with a manageable task, said John W. McManus, deputy CIO at the Commerce Department and co-chairman of the working group.

The SSAC and RSSAC committees encourage you to share your test results with the community.

The MIC decides to form the IPv6 distribution promotion committee to expand IPv6 distribution and finish IPv6 conversion of public institutions by 2010 through an active support for the introduction of IPv6 for government’s public institutions.

Only a tiny percentage of those addresses will be used, however. As with the North American Numbering Plan for telephone numbers, DOD officials said addresses will be assigned to networks in a hierarchical model that will leave many untouched.

Although Internet Protocol 4 (IP4), which allows the network to operate, has scope for 4.3 billion web addresses, that was not sufficient to meet demand, said Vinton Cerf, the chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs the net.

Peter Tseronis, the Education Department’s director of network services and co-chairman of the IPv6 working group, yesterday said the NIST profile will be out for public comment for about a month and then NIST will issue the first version of the profile.

The SSAC and RSSAC committees encourage you to share your test results with the community.

However, Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system may help change that.

Countering every new network vulnerability is a new patch. With every new cyberattack comes a countermeasure.

Such is the world of cybersecurity, both for the defenders of computers and networks and for those who would compromise those systems. But coming soon to government networks is a new and weighty variable: IPv6.

Three agency officials who are leading efforts to move to IPv6 today expressed concern over the lack of support from security vendors so far, and said federal agencies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will have to provide seed money to move products along.

Almost half of the respondents from civilian agencies and nearly two-thirds of those in the Defense Department said that IPv6 is important in supporting their IT goals. Money for the transition is slowly moving into the funding pipeline. Federal spending on IPv6-enabled products and services is expected to hit $27 billion this year, climbing to $60 billion by 2011.

From disaster prevention and relief to healthcare or remote education the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in today’s society is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, the technologies and applications themselves are becoming ever more innovative. But just how much do ICTs really transform our society? And what kind of role do governments and regulators need to play to ensure that the reach of ICTs is extended, for the benefit of all?

The report reviews the driving factors behind the government’s IPv6 transition, and predicts the reality behind the spending numbers and the challenge of operating some systems in dual-protocol mode.

WHAT is the internet? To some it's a bottomless resource of text, images and video. To others it's an idea that connects the electronic world without barriers or censorship.

There can be little argument that the internet has revolutionised communications, created businesses, slashed costs for consumers and transformed society.

Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik, in announcing this, said it was proposed that e-government services implement IPv6 the following year to enable the transformation of Malaysia to an IPv6-enabled nation in 2010.

Eighty-six percent of 1,000 respondents said they believed there would be a negative impact on the United States for dragging its feet on IPv6 adoption, according to the The IPv6 Government Action Study. A hefty 70 percent felt the delay would hit US technological leadership; 62 percent said it would impact national security; and 58 percent believe it will affect US influence over Internet stability.

In June 2003, John Stenbit, then CIO of the Department of Defense (DoD), announced that the department would move to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), a next-generation Internet communication technology, by 2008.

IPv6 may mean little or nothing to the average internet user, but without it, many people worldwide would find themselves unable to get connected in the coming years. However, to understand IPv6 is to first know how the internet works.

The problem -- all the possible Net addresses will be used up in five years -- can be solved by upgrading the decades-old standards that govern how different devices communicate with each other.

The department began converging its network in 2002 and is about 70 percent through the process.

"These allocations put in place a sweeping new system for allocating IPv6 addresses in keeping with the global policy development process conducted by the registries' communities and ratified by the ICANN Board of Directors on September 7 this year" said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN.

Even with its much-talked-about and somewhat successful Navy-Marine Corps Intranet project leading the way, Navy IT officials decided they needed to better plot a course on how their network would support the assortment of up-and-coming technologies, including PKI and IPv6.

Federal agencies have until June 2008 to upgrade their network backbones to IPv6, which will support a vast increase in the number of unique IP addresses available and bring other advances over the current IPv4. IPv6 support is a requirement of the forthcoming Networx contract as well, giving agencies more than one reason to implement IPv6.

CERNET2 is at the forefront of the development of the "China next generation Internet" (CNGI), the world's largest single Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) network.

"This was developed through the ICANN community's bottom up consensus approach which saw IPv6 adopted as a policy development process. That means ICANN's stakeholders and constituencies have shaped this policy from day one" Dr Twomey said.

While not strictly part of OSD's net-centric data strategy, the Air Force also is working on adoption of Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6.

To maintain global competitiveness, governments are mandating, encouraging or actively supporting the adoption of IPv6 to prepare their respective economies for the future communication infrastructures.

The amendment, proposed Thursday by the Civilian Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council, would ensure agencies comply with Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, requirements in acquisition plans.

By all measures, the federal transition to IPv6 is progressing slowly. Just ask the Government Accountability Office, which released a progress report last month. Or ask third-party researchers, who’ve found the same sluggish movement in meeting the 2008 deadline set by the Office of Management and Budget.

With the recent development of technologies in wireless access and mobile devices, terminal and network mobility have become an indispensable component of today's Internet vision, and this is likely to continue in the near future, while affecting the way of the whole Internet architecture design. Yet, issues like efficient mobility management and optimizations, locator-identifier split, multi-homing, security and related operational/deployment concerns are still in their early stages of development. Moreover, the Internet architecture, its end-to-end principles and business models will require rethinking due to the massive penetration of mobility into the Internet.

The goal is to provide researchers, engineers and IT managers with a concentrated day on the state of the art technologies on mobility and their security and applicability aspects. Presentations for this workshop will be primarily from EU FP6 projects within the B3G cluster.

The original Japanese version of the report was published on 3 April 2006. It was compiled by JPNIC's "Expert Research Team on Number Resources Utilization" which consists of nine engineers and researchers from the Internet Operations area. It reviews some of the recent studies on the lifetime of IPv4 address, provides analysis on impacts of the exhaustion, and offers recommendations on measures to be taken by all stakeholders.

JPNIC with the expert team will keep track of trends concerning IPv4 address exhaustion and revise the report as need arises, in order to provide more precise analysis for further discussions.

In an audit released today of 24 major agencies between Aug. 2005 and May 2006, GAO found 10 agencies have yet to develop policies and enforcement mechanisms to ensure the transition to the new protocol. The Office of Management and Budget has given agencies until June 30, 2008 to move their network backbone to IPv6.

Open Student Television Network (OSTN), the only 24-hour, 7-day global channel exclusively devoted to student-produced programming, today takes the first step towards expansion within the European Union (EU). Supported via the GÉANT2 network, which is managed by research networking organisation DANTE, the expansion will help meet EU students' demand for the channel.

But the worldwide web is filling up. So quickly, it turns out, that programmers have had to devise a new one.

The country's largest Internet service provider KT has also unveiled a plan to build IPv6-enabled access and backbone networks beginning in 2008. Leading IPv6 equipment vendors are also rushing to team up with multinational firms to join international interoperability tests, aiming to expand into overseas markets such as the United States and Japan.

To simplify access researchers are looking into usable and manageable communication infrastructures for the future.

It goes without saying that respondents were worried there isn't any money allocated to the task of migrating network backbones to the new Internet protocols by June 2008.

Life promises to be at your beck and digital call by the year 2015, going by the Government's latest 10-year infocomm masterplan to transform Singapore into an intelligent nation that is economically competitive and enriching for all citizens.

In the newest additions to the IPv6 Transition Guidance, the council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee has provided a list of best practices and transition elements that agencies should use as they work to meet the deadline.

The first ping was originated from The IPv6 Portal.

With the occasion of this virtual celebration, we have a couple of quotes from two key people on this subject:

• Bob Fink (6Bone Project): “After more than ten years of planning, development and experience with IPv6, with efforts from all around the world, it is gratifying for me to see the 6Bone phase-out on the 6th of June 2006, having served it's purpose to stimulate IPv6 deployment and experience, leaving IPv6 a healthy ongoing component of the future of the Internet!”
• Brian Carpenter (IBM, co-author of multiple IPv6 RFCs and IETF chair): “It's very encouraging to see IPv6 moving forward both technically and commercially, with its address assignments now routinely managed by the same registries that look after the rapidly diminishing IPv4 address pool. I look forward to the day the Internet reaches ten billion active nodes with public addresses, which will only be possible with IPv6.”

IETF protocols are elevated to the Internet Standard level when significant implementation and successful operational experience has been obtained.

So will the Internet and your home or work computer ever move to IPv6? That’s difficult to say. Most of the Internet routers that your data travels through can now accommodate IPv6.

But this will not be an easy task, the Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee said in the latest chapter to its IPv6 Transition Guide, because there is not much for the government to use as a reference.

ISOC, AfriNIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE NCC, ICANN/IANA, The IPv6 Portal and other organizations, join together in order to celebrate this milestone.

Net neutrality advocates, including Internet giants like Google and Amazon.com, are lobbying Congress to preserve the status quo in which all Web content is treated the same. Phone and cable providers such as AT&T and Comcast say they should be able to sell premium tiers of service since they are investing billions to build broadband networks.

The Department continues to believe that ICANN is uniquely qualified to perform these services that are critical to the stability and security of the Internet, a press release by the Department stated.

The growing popularity of smartphones, IPTV and other gadgets connecting to the Internet is eating up real estate on the net, and cyberspace could soon run out of room, according to a Frost & Sullivan analyst briefing on Thursday.

IPv6 provides the necessary basis for realising a global information society and is laying the ground for a convergence process between fix and mobile as well as between data, voice and video through the Internet. Examples of such converging markets includes: transportation, media (Triple play – data, TV and voice), mobile operators (IMS - Internet Multimedia Subsystem), consumer/device market (pervasive computing), defence (network centric warfare. Adopting IPv6 directly rather than passing through a complex and costly migration path is a compelling option for stakeholders in these markets.

For the past four years, the Office of Management and Budget has pushed and prodded CIOs and their staffs to complete their enterprise architectures to show how their systems fit together, what technologies are being used and how the agency plans to improve their missions using new technology.

The target audience is engineers, ICT managers, software developers and public sector. It is expected that the participants have some IPv4 knowledge in order to take bigger advantage of the workshop.

Agencies have drafted plans for migrating to the upgraded Internet — called Internet protocol version six, or IPv6 for short — by mid-2008. The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing those plans.

A reliable source in government has told Computerworld that the GSN will be built from the beginning to the IPv6 standard, but State Services Commission spokesman Jason Ryan says suppliers were merely requested to provide IPv6-compatible equipment and software.

• Envir Fraser
• Uchenna Ibekwe
• Jordi Palet Martinez
• Dave Wodelet

The first IETF meeting was held in San Diego on Jan. 16 and 17, 1986. Twenty-one people attended, four of whom are still very active in the task force. That meeting focused on some topics - including routing and QoS - that were discussed by 1,200 or so people during this year's Dallas meeting.

The federal government must move to the new Internet protocol by 2008, and the Defense Department started its transition in 2003. But since then, the U.S. has slipped behind many Asian and European nations in making the switch, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

Interview was conducted by Faye Wang.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said federal agencies will play a key role in leading the country's transition to the upgraded network known as Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6. Failing to do so would place the United States in a "back-seat position" in the development of the Internet, he said, as China and Europe aggressively move forward with the new standard.

“The rest of the world is blowing by us,” said Matthews, who moderated a panel discussing the transition to IPv6 from the current IPv4 infrastructure.

This survey is being done as part of a study at the Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration, Tel Aviv University in conjunction with the Netvision Institute for Internet Studies.

As President of the IPv6 Forum, Latif Ladid is globally considered an expert on the new internet protocol, IPv6.

The Office of Management and Budget’s mandate that government agencies update their network backbones for IPv6 compatibility by June 2008 is not cause for despair. Nevertheless, agencies should not dawdle in their preparations to move to the next-generation routing protocol. Federal agencies can take a few judicious steps now that will allow them to meet the deployment deadline cost-effectively.

Today, we are applying technologies in a way that allows us to enjoy the advantages of the network-centric operational environment concept envisioned for tomorrow. This dynamic pace of change among applications, supporting infrastructure and mode of communication presents us with both opportunities and challenges.

According to a press release by the Corporation, these appointments demonstrate ICANN's continued commitment to build on existing outreach and support the increasing international participation in ICANN and efficiency of the ICANN multi-stakeholder environment.

While other Federal Government offices are just beginning the shift from the current IPv4 to IPv6, with its vastly increased number of Internet addresses, DOD has already made substantial progress toward meeting its goal of becoming IPv6-compliant by 2008, Military Information Geochronology reported in its online edition Tuesday.

IPv6 advocates looking for the U.S. federal government to make a major financial commitment to the next generation of the Internet's main communications protocol will be disappointed with the findings of a new report from the Commerce Department.

The European Commission is engaging in a process of identifying the hurdles and triggers for IPv6 deployment and ultimately to define policies moving forward its wide adoption.

Several IPv6 workshops and tutorials are being provided: "IPv6 Deployment", "IPv6 Transition and Deployment" and "Practical introduction to IPv6".

The Task Force was established by a directive in a 2003 White House report, National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. This directive was motivated by propositions that the transition to IPv6 should be accelerated to provide enhanced cyberspace security and to respond to deployment strategies in other economies.

To maintain global competitiveness, governments are mandating, encouraging or actively supporting the adoption of IPv6 to prepare their respective economies for the future communication infrastructures.

Several agencies already have contacted the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration to sign up, said Carol Bales, a senior policy analyst at the Office of Management and Budget.

From a notorious striptease by internet pioneer Vint Cerf to a fist-pumping, table-jumping brawl about cryptography policy, the internet's premier standards-setting body has had its share of big moments.

Nokia Fellows are a small group of the world's brightest minds, whose work has significantly contributed to the advancement of science and technology. A Nokia Fellow is a recognized technical leader and contributes to Nokia technology vision and strategy creation. Nominations take place by a Nokia-wide Nomination Board.

It has been recommended by Trai that India's National Internet Registry (NIR) could serve to provide a local service point for delegation of IP addresses to the service providers and users in India.

Based on the responses received on the draft recommendations, TRAI finalised its recommendations on the subject for forwarding to the Government.

"IPv6 is an important technology for the interoperability of military and homeland defense operations, and for other netcentric operations such as disaster relief," said Chris Gunderson, W2COG executive director.

At the conference, a speech was given by Jun Murai, a Professor at Keio University who received the Postel Service Award, an award given to people who contributed to the growth of the Internet, in August.

It is the first time the Olympics is going to be held in China, and the Chinese government wants to impress the international world audience and put China firmly on the who’s who map of the 21st century athletically, economically, and culturally.

"The usage of IPv6 in the platforms /applications pertaining to e-governance is to be mandated so that headstart is taken for IPv6 deployments. The Government should also mandate IPv6 compatibility in its own procurement of IT systems and networks", TRAI said.

Well, the Office of Management and Budget and the CIO Council want CIOs, chief architects and program managers to start figuring out the impact of this new technology well before the June 2008 deadline OMB has set for agencies to move to IPv6.

“I don’t think we’re going to make that transition date,” said Kris Strance, a senior analyst in the Defense CIO office.

If you want to make an IPv6 Xmas gift to your friends, send them an email to recommend them to register into the site before that date.

According to author Iljitsch van Beijnum, “The intent behind the book is to present a clear view of the aspects to IPv6 that are of interest to those who’ll be running and administrating the protocol, not to bombard the reader with unnecessary details. This means that the book covers the IPv6 specifications to the degree necessary to successfully operate an IPv6 network.”

The CIO Council Architecture and Infrastructure Committee earlier this month issued Chapter 1 of its IPv6 implementation guidance, detailing steps agencies should take to prepare to meet the June 2008 deadline for incorporating the new technology.

Even when IPv6 is already being deployed commercially since the last two years, this is happening at a different rate in different geographies. In some cases, this is due to the insufficient expertise and/or education regarding the importance of the new protocol, while in other cases is a matter of lack of support from the upstream providers, or a combination of both.

The Implementation Category Deadline Advance Entry is now December 12. The submission deadline for the Implementation and Idea categories is now December 26.

But in reality, the U.S. government has strictly limited influence on which top-level domains--such as .com, .org, and .uk--are actually seen by Internet users. The real power behind the network lies with the group of 13 organizations which, through a mechanism little-known outside of technical circles, operate the root servers that guide traffic to each one of those top-level domains.

Key members who promote IPv6 in various regions, including Prof. Hiroshi Esaki, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, gave talks and a panel discussion.

But while the agency is embracing voice over IP and Internet Protocol Version 6, Diann McCoy, DISA’s component acquisition executive, expects the transitions to the new technologies to take time.

IPv6 has been talked about for years - is it still a pie in the sky or is it finally a reality?

The IPv6 Deployment Field Trial by the MIC is a three-year project, and this is the last year of the project. In the previous two years, adoption trials have clarified the technical points related to adopting IPv6, and its coexistence with IPv4, in various scenarios, such as local governments, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and homes.

"The Department of Defence is a strong supporter of IPv6, and we also support the Australian IT industry," he said.

Part of the reason is IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), which has galvanized hardware manufacturers to decouple and open up systems so that key elements and components can be interfaced to others without drastic integration measures. For billing and OSS vendors, that means simplified interaction with network elements. Because the 3GPP’s TS 23.221 specification mandates that IMS make optimum use of IPv6, it is expected that IMS will be one of the drivers behind IPv6 acceptance.

Well, no, but a new version, with the inelegant name IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), is starting to get serious attention. The Department of Defense uses it, the European Union is trying it. China, Japan and South Korea are clamoring for a worldwide upgrade.

Paul Davis, CEO of GrangeNet, Australia's first native IPv6 network said the summit is "absolutely relevant" to enterprise IT staff as the industry is heading into a new paradigm of networking.

On the initiative of Telekom Austria's technology head Helmut Leopold in his role as president of the task force, the document was drawn up on the basis of the results of the five working groups. Within the framework of the working groups a series of trials were installed, to test the suitability of IPv6 in daily use.

The past September 22nd autumn started, and just a few days afterwards, this astronomical phenomenon, will be visible from a few places in the world, being Madrid (Spain) one of those privileged locations.

The event, taking place on October 3rd, is an annular solar eclipse (over 95% occultation), with an approximate duration of 4 minutes and 11 seconds (which is longer than in previous occasions), which will start to be visible at 10:55 (Madrid local time). The partial eclipse will start at 9:40 and end at 12:23.

To made this globally available, the LIVE! ECLIPSE 2005 Annular project, from the Japanese organization LIVE! UNIVERSE, will join efforts with two Spanish organizations, Consulintel and RedIRIS.

Several factors, such as the deployment of Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR) and Network Address Translation (NAT), have “delayed the inevitable,” and perhaps led to some complacency on the part of network operators. In this issue we examine the topic of IPv4 address space depletion in more detail. Our main article is by Tony Hain, and it is followed by a response from Geoff Huston and a roundtable discussion with Tony, Geoff, Fred Baker, and John Klensin.

We are referring to an annular solar eclipse (over 95% occultation), with an approximate duration of 4 minutes and 11 seconds (longer than in previous occasions), which will start to be visible at 10:55 (Madrid local time). The partial eclipse will start at 9:40 and end at 12:23.

The Live!Eclipse project join efforts with Consulintel and with RedIRIS infrastructure and support to allow the webcasting of multiple video streams via Internet, in low, medium and very high definition (up to 33 Mpbs). The higher quality broadcasting will be done with IPv6 multicast and unicast; nevertheless IPv4 unicast and multicast connections will be also offered.

"Revolutionary" in the sense that the past decade has seen fundamental and highly disruptive changes in the nature of the underlying technologies used by the industry, changes in the composition, ownership and role of industry players, changes in the nature of services offered to the end consumer, changes in the associated financial models used by the industry, and changes in the regulatory environments in which this industry operates.

Lumeta is the IPv6 Internet mapping provider to NAv6TF and will be publishing an IPv6 "report card" with statistics and maps detailing the state of IPv6 Internet deployment as it expands around the globe.

As in previous editions, a special IPv6 workshop will be organized. The theme of the IPv6 workshop this time is "IPv6 Deployment of Technologies and Applications".*UPDATED: The call for papers will be over on 1st October 2005.

The regulator had solicited comments from all the stakeholders on recommendation in the paper by September 23 this year.

The group, comprising 40 members from government, the private sector and civil society, met four times between November 2004 and June 2005.

Are network managers and service providers sticks-in-the-mud who refuse to get with next-generation technology?

The Office of Management and Budget has released a memo that gives agencies until Nov. 15 to assign an official to coordinate the move to the new protocol and complete an inventory of existing routers, switches and hardware firewalls.

The white paper examines the components of convergence, provides an overview of the enabling technologies for full convergence such as HTTP/SIP, IPv6, VoIP, IMS, UMA and a host of radio access technologies and addresses how together they will facilitate Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC).

Speaking at the recent SEK 2005, a major IT exhibition and seminar in Korea, the Minister of Information and Communications, Dr Daeje Chin, said the country would reach its u-Korea target as early as 2010.

While DHS can track Internet threats, it doesn't have an Internet recovery plan or a national cybersecurity threat assessment, David Powner, director of IT management in U.S. Government Accountability Office, told a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. DHS is making progress but more work needs to be done, he said.

...You're the perfect person to ask a question I've been wondering about for a decade—and which goes back to your point about security and why IPv6 hasn't been adopted.

The program is designed to accelerate the adoption of IPv6, the "next-generation" Internet Protocol that offers new capabilities and addresses the fundamental limitations of the currently used IPv4.

The report of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance, a copy of which has been obtained by ComputerWire, suggests the creation of a new organization that would take over the internet oversight functions of the US Department of Commerce.

The event will be held in Sophia Antipolis 17th to 21st of October 2005.

The North American IPv6 Technology Conference 1 will gather the founders and the most innovative and influential leaders from the global Internet community to discuss strategic and deployment issues related to the next generation Internet protocol, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

The task is made easier by network hardware and software makers that are already adding IPv6 support to their products, said Ben Schultz, managing engineer of the interoperability lab at the University of New Hampshire.

The office said it would issue a policy memorandum dictating full federal "IPv6" compliance in an effort to spur its deployment throughout government agencies.

To get to the bottom of the matter, government and private sector specialists are testifying at Congressional hearings in Washington Wednesday.

The subject of the hearings says it all: "Is the Federal Government Doing Enough? Will Other Nations Surpass the U.S?" Congressman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, is presiding.

If you haven't thought about the impact of IPv6 on your network's security, it's time to start thinking! The replacement for the venerable IPv4 protocol is now in use on the Internet and might even exist on your network without your knowledge. Here's a look at some of the security implications of IPv6.

This book aims to contribute some basic knowledge about the technical specifications of IPv6 and to analyse, from a legal point of view, the problems and possible solutions that could exist regarding the right to privacy, data protection and intellectual property rights.

The event also had a very important impact in TV, radio, press and digital media.

Furthermore, several IST projects shared a booth where several demonstrations were displayed, including new commercial UMTS services.

Consulintel, as part of the activities of the Euro6IX EC IST co-funded project, has cooperated with XTEC in order to design and support this deployment.

Consulintel, as part of the activities of the Euro6IX EC IST co-funded project, has cooperated with BSC in order to design and setup this access.

For this deployment, Al-Pi has worked jointly with Consulintel, which was in charge of the design and configuration of the network as part of the activities of the Euro6IX European Commission IST co-funded project.

The program, to be called MetroNet6, is in the early stages of development. Jim Bound, chief technology officer for the North American IPv6 Task Force, said at the SuperComm trade show yesterday that the network probably would use 802.11 wireless networking to connect police, fire and emergency medical personnel at the local level. The MoonV6 test bed network could provide a nationwide command and control link.

Mícheál ó Foghlú, research director at the TSSG, said, "Ambient intelligence incorporated into smart devices and software should radically improve the usability and usefulness of IT to people at work, play or rest. The promise of this freedom of communication where PCs, mobile phones, personal digital assistants and even standard household devices can all communicate seamlessly with each other also raises the question of how to make all this communication secure and private.”

VDSL2 (very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line 2) uses existing copper wires, and is designed to complement the installation of fibre networks to provide support for high-bandwidth applications such as TV, video-on-demand and videoconferencing. Many operators see it as the ideal accompaniment to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), where fibre optic lines are used to link offices or apartment blocks to the network backbone (PSTN) to provide sufficient bandwidth for all the users in each building.

The Government Accountability Office released a report, “Federal Agencies Need to Plan for Transition and Manage Security Risks,” May 24 during a four-day Coalition Summit for IPv6, or Internet protocol version six. The report concludes that IPv6 is gaining momentum globally, but in this country, only the Defense Department has a coordinated method to integrate the next version at the agency.

For this monograph we have invited authors with extensive experience in the research and promotion of IPv6 to provide a broad view of the current state of IPv6 in articles addressing different perspectives of IPv6 deployment.

However, proactive integration of IPv6 requirements into federal contracts may reduce the costs and complexity of transition by ensuring that federal applications can operate in an IPv6 environment without costly upgrades.

According to industry sources, communication equipment makers, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Locus, iBIT, Mercury and AddPac Technology, and research organization such as the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI) are developing small and medium-sized routers, home routers, trunk gateways, access gateways, VoIP, and wireless access points. These firms are expected to begin rolling out products next month.

As the Internet becomes as accessible and mobile as a cell phone by 2008, the changes will have profound effects upon homeland security, give a much-needed boost to technological industry and create some 10 million new jobs in the U.S. alone.

Juniper's Federal IPv6 IQ Study found that less than 7% of respondents consider IPv6 "very important to achieving their IT goals," despite the fact that the protocol is designed to address, among other things, many of the quality of service, security, and network management issues that concern them. The Federal government is particularly indifferent to IPv6 and lags well-behind the private sector in migration planning and awareness.

Dr Lim said other bigger challenges taken was to make Malaysia an IPv6-enabled nation by 2010 and turn it into a global destination for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) professional training.

While Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) currently represents the fundamental internetworking protocol for DOC, the Department recognizes IPv6 as an emerging standard and has already taken steps to ensure the adoption of IPv6-enabled technology as part of the lifecycle of existing investments.

While U.S.-based telephone companies delay their spending on the next-generation Internet protocol, Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, and China are moving ahead, looking to raise their profits in the process.

This year's focus is on increased collaboration and partnership with the IT839 Strategy Projects including Wibro and Home Network. The projects will be utilizing the KOREAv6 nation-wide network that was constructed last year.

...That doesn't mean IPv6 is dead.

After the success of the three previous "Madrid Global IPv6 Summit" events, this latest event will highlight that IPv6 is already being deployed.

On this occasion, the event is jointly organized with the Internet Global Congress (IGC), in Barcelona, in order to provide a much more complete view of the progress of IPv6 in a broad spectrum of ICT sectors.

At its meeting on 3 May 2005, ICANN's Board directed that the revised strategic plan be posted for public comments. The comment period will be open until 13 May 2005 at 23:59 UTC. At ICANN's next meetings (in Luxembourg in July 2005), the ICANN community will be invited to participate in the development of the next round of ICANN's planning process for July 2006 - June 2010.

The Open Future for Wireless Communications conference in Cambridge, organised by the Communications Innovation Institute in conjunction with the Cambridge-MIT Institute, saw technologists, regulators, researchers, network operators, equipment and chip manufacturers get together to discuss the future of radio regulation.

The IPv6 Portal also provides all kind of news related to IPv6, IPv6 events and information about vendors and providers of IPv6 services and applications, all around the world. A weekly newsletter and other features are also available for registered users. All the information is also available via RSS feeds.

The current version of the Internet has more than 4 billion IP addresses. But soon, that might not be enough.

This is the view of Jordi Palet Martinez, an internet consultant, who made a presentation on the new IPv6 system to the AfriNIC policy making meeting in Maputo, Mozambique.

What are the roadblocks stopping widespread adoption of IP Version Six.

It is important to note that for the purposes of this discussion, the IPv4 and IPv6 addressing systems behave identically.

Just like a city, the Internets virtual space is divvied up into addresses - not e-mail addresses, but Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Each numerical address represents a piece of the Internet, and you cant connect to the Internet without one.

The new site is already working and most of the contents are already available, specially the IPv6 news, which are being delivered from there since a few days.

The site offers also RSS Feeds for the news service and more feeds are being designed to match the specific user needs.

Uptade your bookmarks to point to the new site http://www.ipv6tf.org.

But we’re entering a new digital era in which the Internet will grow much faster. With economies booming in the Far East, millions more people will be using the Internet. Even more important, existing users and new ones alike will have an array of devices, aside from computers, that need an address.

In accordance to the 'IPv6 Promotion Master Plan" adopted by the Ministry of Information and Communication last year, the National Internet Development Agency has been committed in designing a deployment plan for IPv6.

Among the big challenges are identity theft, personal privacy, search algorithms, semantic networks, database sharing, IPv6 deployment, allocation policy development, DNS refactoring and provisioning.

Answer: China and the three US universities have roughly the same number of Internet protocol (IP) addresses, a globally unique number identifying each machine on the Internet.

Specific proposals have been made by Houlin Zhao of the ITU-T and by Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project, both of which propose that the ITU itself could establish such a registry group, operating as a collection of national registries.

• a guarantee that addresses used in a public environment will be unique worldwide;
• neutral bodies allocating address space according to documented need and on the basis of policies set by a community of all stakeholders;
• measures to avoid stockpiling or hoarding of IPv6 addresses in anticipation of future gain; and
• an optimum address aggregation by managing IP addresses in a manner consistent with needs of providers, facilitating their services while helping in the optimization of the size of routing tables.

Key task force members Etisalat and Case Technology aim to use the initiative to speed up the deployment of IPv6.

Minister Noel Dempsey announced today that the Department for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources is intending to establish a National Test Centre for IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6).

The IDV Global Media-On-Demand (GMOD) was a top-secret project until premiered at the China MOD Coalition press conference on April 12 in Beijing.

This system will be used for joint development of the video delivery system to support paramedic and fire-fighting activities.

David Jones, Head of IT at Virgin Radio, said: 'We are delighted to be the first commercial radio station to adopt this next generation Internet protocol, and see it as being essential to the future of Internet Radio. IPv6 is core to the future provision of radio to 3G mobile devices, and will continue our strategy to expand on to all potential platforms.'

A long-time MCI customer, Cray provides innovative computing platforms that enable scientists and engineers in academia, government and industry to meet both existing and future computational challenges.

Dr. Tim Chown (University of Southampton, UK) and Jordi Palet (Consulintel, Spain) have voluntered to continue this task, acting as the new co-chairs of the IPv6 Cluster.

The WPAN concept is designed to offer connection capabilities for all the various information devices that individuals may need or want to carry within their personal information space.

In addition, a new IPv6 Cluster meeting has been scheduled for the Friday afternoon, followed by an open debate about the future of IPv6 and related activities worlwide, were participants from all the world will provide their views.

The early registration special deal will finish on April 15th.

At a ceremony held during the recently concluded 5th IPv6 Global Summit at Bangalore, IPv6 Forum president Latif Ladid presented the award, on behalf of the entire global IPv6 community, to Hemanth T Dattatreya, Jayachandra K and Gopi Krishna S Garge of the IPv6 Forum India.

Cable/HFC, BB Ethernet, xDSL and WLAN are the main BB technologies that are currently deployed, and discussed in this document. The emerging PLC/BPL access technology is also discussed contributed with the results of the 6POWER project.

The event is organized this year jointly with IGC2005, with an expected attendance over 2.600 people from different ICT sectors.

The event includes a special tutorial about the deployment of IPv6 in Broadband Access Networks.

The registration is already open, and the special early bid rate is available until 15th of April.

"My initial job was getting IP on everything," Cerf said. That's been done by now. IP is on every device from the smallest handheld to the largest supercomputer.

The objective of this initiative is to speed up deployment and uptake of the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) with support from industrial, educational & research communities and government agencies.

References:

• RFC 3160 "The Tao of IETF", section 7 "How to Contribute to the IETF -- What You Can Do", about the importance of "running code" for IETF,
• the log of a communication between:
  • ottawa, using the "INRIA" IPv6 stack (written by Francis Dupont, today at Point6) on NetBSD;
  • sipper, using the IPv6 stack of OSF/1 (developed by a Digital team lead by Jim Bound, today "HP Fellow" and IPv6 Forum CTO).

But the ITU enjoys virtually no influence over the Internet. That remains the province of specialized organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN; the Internet Engineering Task Force; the World Wide Web Consortium; and regional address registries.