Brazilian Institute for Mathematics Wins the IPv6 Challenge

The Brazilian National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) was the winner of the seventh edition of the IPv6 Challenge organized by LACNIC, the results of which were announced today during LACNIC 33.

The work submitted by Felipe Correia and Rosa Ladeira on IPv6 deployment in the network of the National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) — one of the research institutes of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology — was chosen as this year’s winner. Given to the quality of the projects presented in this edition of the IPv6 Challenge, this announcement came after a process of careful evaluation.

The project by Luis Javier Barrera and Javier Soto on IPv6 deployment at the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management of the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia came in second place.

LACNIC especially highlighted the work of the Evaluation Committee made up by Azael Fernández, Jorge Villa, Nicolas Antoniello and Alejandro Acosta, which allowed determining the winner this year. “The quality of the projects that were submitted to the Challenge made selecting the winner a very difficult task,” observed Alejandro Acosta, member of the IPv6 Challenge Evaluation Committee and R&D Coordinator at LACNIC.

Close to 40 initiatives were submitted for this edition, although some projects had to withdraw because of cuts introduced in various organizations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, many went ahead and the “two final projects in the running to win the Challenge contained a detailed explanation of the work that had been done, including a routing plan, testing, configuration excerpts, monitoring, security, partial network topology, and other aspects. Much of their content is in the form of charts, tables and images,” Acosta added.

Since its first edition in 2017, the possibility 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.

FRIDA and +Raíces. Carolina Caeiro, Development Projects Coordinator at LACNIC, informed LACNIC 33 participants that, starting this year, the FRIDA program will be funding projects with a technical focus in two of its three categories: Internet Stability and Security, and Internet Access. She mentioned that the application process will remain open until 22 May and that three projects will each receive an award consisting of US$ 10,000 plus a full fellowship to attend LACNIC 34. Likewise, approximately eight projects to be executed within a period of 12 months will each receive a grant of between US$ 10,000 and US$ 40,000.  Caeiro also added that the call for proposals is open to operators, universities and government entities based in Latin America and the Caribbean. Among others, this includes IXPs, NOGs, university networks, and professional networks. For more information and to apply, go to https://programafrida.net/

In turn, Guillermo Cicileo, Head of Internet Infrastructure Research and Development at LACNIC, announced that the +RAICES call for proposals for the installation of anycast copies of root servers in the region (DNS root servers) will be open until 17 May. He explained that LACNIC’s role is to coordinate with the host organizations and those providing the root servers (F-, I-, J-, K- and L- root servers). For more information, click here.