IPv6 Gains Momentum in the LAC Region

22/12/2016

This year, LACNIC increased its initiatives aimed at achieving successful IPv6 deployment in Latin America and the Caribbean, helping organizations in the region and training technicians and professionals on the latest version of the Internet protocol that replaces IPv4.

Today, approximately 1,050 out of 1,717 networks in the region are announcing IPv6, 64% more than last year. While this is considered a good number, the amount of traffic circulating over IPv6 in the LACNIC service region is still far from being regarded as ideal (less than 1 %). Only five countries have more than 1% of their traffic over IPv6. Brazil, Ecuador and Peru have made the  greatest efforts in this sense.

Among the initiatives to help IPv6 expansion, this year LACNIC launched “Doctor IPv6,” a novel program that allows any member of the community to submit technical questions via email and receive an answer in podcast format.

In its first months of operation, Doctor IPv6 received 21 questions about different technical aspects of Internet Protocol version 6. LACNIC’s website for this project has received more than 13,000 unique visits from people interested in listening to the answers provided by the experts involved in the initiative. Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela were the countries with the most visitors. Interest has also been received from outside the region, mainly from users in Spain, the United States and Russia.

Twenty of the answers provided by Doctor IPv6 collaborators have been in Spanish, while one of them was in English.

More than 2,300 specialists. Since the beginning of 2016, LACNIC has organized 16 training activities, including several IPv6 workshops and webinars. In all, 2,371 professionals representing companies, civil society organizations, governments and universities from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Suriname, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Uruguay participated in these training activities. Likewise, experts from other countries in the LACNIC region were also able to participate in the webinars online.

The LACNIC community has also been very active in the promotion of new IPv6 policies, adapting regulations to the changes demanded by the expansion of this protocol. Thus, after discussions on the mailing list and at the Policy Forum, two IPv6 policies were approved: modify the initial assignment size and the requirements for subsequent direct IPv6 assignments to end sites https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2016-6?language=en and modify direct IPv6 address assignments to end users  https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2016-4?language=en .

For more information on LACNIC’s IPv6 related activities, check out the portal specially created for the promotion of Internet protocol version 6: http://portalipv6.lacnic.net/en/