Chilean Project for Venezuela Wins IPv6 Challenge

30/10/2019

After a very tight selection process due to the level of the projects that were submitted, the Selection Committee named a project by Chilean company Simeon for Venezuela’s ISP, Nervicom, as the winner of the sixth edition of the IPv6 Challenge. A project by Francisco Gavidia of University of El Salvador took second place.

The IPv6 Challenge is a competition launched two years ago by LACNIC to promote and encourage the use of IPv6 in Latin America and the Caribbean. This time, the awards ceremony took place in Panama during the LACNIC 32 event.

“We named a winner, but it was not an easy decision as the two final projects in the running were head-to-head in their assessment by the Committee,” said Nicolás Antoniello, a member of the IPv6 Challenge Selection Committee.

The winning project was led by José Gregorio Cotúa of Simeon and Victor Bolivar of Nervicom. It consisted of deploying IPv6 for a large number of the Venezuelan ISP’s services: FTP, SSH, VoIP, SMTP, SYSLOG. “The interesting thing is that these devices are on IPv6 networks and include NAT64 translation equipment (SIIT-DC) on the edge, and this allows them to be reached via IPv4,” said Alejandro Acosta, R&D Coordinator at LACNIC and also a member of the IPv6 Challenge Selection Committee.

The winning project submitted proof of the services operating with IPv6. “The document presented to the Committee was divided in such a way that it was easy to understand what work had been completed on each server as it includes the configuration files,” Acosta added.

The work presented by Mario Rafael Ruiz Vargas of Francisco Gavidia University (El Salvador) for the deployment and configuration of IPv6 in the university’s internal network and other services provided by the university network took second place with a score just a few points below the winning project.

The winners of the second prize in the IPv6 Challenge explained the steps taken to achieve their goal, even including a description of the tasks performed before registering for the competition and how the Challenge had served as a final driver for their deployment. Their work includes an activity schedule, as well as proof and tests conducted on the network.

Since its first edition in 2017,  the challenge of participating in subsequent editions of the IPv6 Challenge has led many organizations around the region to organize their deployment of IPv6 services and substantially increase the use of this protocol. The IPv6 Challenge originated in the former Latin American IPv6 Forum (currently part of the LACNIC Technical Forum) and was promoted by Azael Fernández with the support of the LACNIC R&D department.