LACNIC Drives IPv6 Consolidation in Latin America and the Caribbean

30/05/2018

After the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in Latin America and the Caribbean, IPv6 deployment has gained traction in the region. Recent statistics show an increase in traffic and in the number of users of the latest version of the Internet Protocol in LACNIC’s service region, a sign that operators, organizations and governments have become aware of the importance of the IPv6 protocol.

Because LACNIC has been sharing knowledge and working hard to accelerate IPv6 deployment in the region for more than a decade, the organization feels part of this success. Over the past 10 years, the Regional Registry has developed hundreds of IPv6 training activities for members of the technical community and decision-makers, trained thousands of professionals, and visited countless customers and government agencies. It has also generated statistics and research on IPv6 to help numerous organizations.

Nine out of ten of LACNIC’s customers have received IPv6 resources and 42% have begun the work needed to adapt their networks for using the IPv6 protocol, a figure well above that of other regions.

These indicators show that the resource distribution and training activities developed by LACNIC have been effective to the extent that operators have done an outstanding job in beginning to prepare their infrastructure as compared to other regions.

According to studies conducted in the region by LACNIC, at least seven countries have more than 20% of their total traffic over IPv6: Brazil, Uruguay and Ecuador.

One of the keys to this achievement is training. Just last year, LACNIC trained 4,100 Latin American and Caribbean professionals, most of them on IPv6.

Highlights worth mentioning include the Basic and Advanced IPv6 courses offered through the LACNIC Campus, the organization’s e-learning platform. LACNIC has also developed a training program for decision-makers which is presented during IPv6 Tour or LACNIC On The Move events.

In addition, IPv6 workshops are held at each of LACNIC’s annual meetings. For the past three events, LACNIC added the IPv6 Challenge, a contest where organizations from around the region can showcase their projects. Another important initiative created by LACNIC is Doctor IPv6, a project that has already received 45 questions which have been answered by experts on the subject.

At community level, LACNIC supported FLIP6 (the Latin American IPv6 Forum) from April 2004 to 2017 and worked with the IGF (Internet Governance Forum) on the preparation of documents with best practices for IPv6.

Cascade effect. Since Telefónica del Perú promoted a strong deployment of IPv6 during the first half of 2013, the positive effect has cascaded to other organizations throughout the region.

Telefónica del Perú was then joined by CNT of Ecuador, a company which began to deploy IPv6 in the second half of 2014 and now has more than 20% of IPv6 penetration among its users. Almost in the same period and encouraged by Comteco, Bolivia also deployed IPv6 and has now reached a deployment level of 5%.

Uruguay is currently the leading country in terms of end users with IPv6: 30.99% (see chart). It is followed by Brazil with 25.58%, Ecuador with 20.26%, Trinidad and Tobago with 19.7%, and Peru with 15.65%.

While not at the top of the list, other countries such as Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Panama also exhibit interesting growth rates.

As for IPv6 traffic operators, Centros Culturales (Mexico) leads the top ten list of IPv6 penetration, followed by Saneamento de Goias (Brazil), Universidad Estadual de Ponta Grossa (Brazil), Projemar Telecomunicações (Brazil), Interprime Telecomunicações (Brazil), HUGHES (Colombia), Telefónica (Brazil), FIBERCOM Telecomunicações (Brazil), Telecentro (Argentina), and Servicios Innovadores de Comunicación y Entretenimiento (Guatemala) (http://stats.labs.lacnic.net/IPv6/top-ipv6-asns.html).

IPv6 Day Webinar. On June 5, one day before the sixth anniversary of IPv6 Launch Day, LACNIC will present a webinar on the IPv6 protocol with content for every audience. The webinar will include talks by experts aimed at decision-makers, presentations on government IPv6 initiatives and actions, IPv6 numbering plans and transition mechanisms, as well as other topics that will be addressed during nearly four hours of talks and presentations. For more information and to register, click here.