World IPv6 Day: A Successful Test Flight
10/07/2011
World IPv6 Day: A Successful Test Flight
LACNIC’s years of work on promoting IPv6 in Latin America and the Caribbean are paying off
The first major trial of IPv6, the new Internet technology, conducted on 8 June allowed testing the use of the new Internet address system at a global scale. This initiative was led by the Internet Society (ISOC) and included the participation of major Internet organizations, hundreds of providers, government agencies, universities and private companies in an unprecedented joint effort to ensure a successful transition to the new Internet protocol.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, World IPv6 Day served as a trial and technical exercise for companies in the Internet industry to prepare their services for the new protocol and thus ensure a successful transition when IPv4 addresses finally run out. The global trial also allowed gaining hands-on experience in the resolution of problems relating to IPv6 − a much faster, agile and secure technology than the one currently in use.
The high level of participation on the part of Latin American and Caribbean network operators and organizations reflects the work carried out for many years by the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry –LACNIC– and its community in order to develop capabilities and generate proper policies to advance in the adoption of the new Internet protocol.
During all this time LACNIC has focused on ensuring the availability of IPv4 Internet addresses and taken the necessary measures to avoid a breakdown after the exhaustion of the central address pool while simultaneously dedicating major efforts to promoting the prompt migration to the new Internet addressing system. “Our organization has made great efforts so that this transition can take place in the best possible way,” stressed Raul Echeberria, LACNIC’s Executive Director.
“We are pleased to see the number of activities that are being held around the region on this World IPv6 Day and that in their majority they are being are led by people close to the LACNIC community; this allows us to see the results of the work we have been doing all these years”, he added.
World IPv6 Day
Sebastian Bellagamba, the Internet Society’s Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, considered IPv6 Day as a “successful test flight” both in terms of the trial itself as well as for “having created awareness in end users and access and content providers alike.” He noted that it was possible to “bring both ends together” and highlighted that “the problems that must be solved in the future are not that many.”
IPv6 is the new generation of the Internet protocol and is essential for the Internet to continue to grow during the next decades.