Telecom Argentina’s Successful Road to IPV6
10/05/2023
October 2023 was the month that the engineers at Telecom Argentina had set as the date for the final exhaustion of IP addresses (version 4) in all the companies that make up one of the largest telecommunications conglomerates in the country.
Two years earlier, the technical teams at Telecom’s Network Transformation Office had raised the alarm and designed a project for the deployment of IPv6 addressing in dual stack format in the organization’s networks and services that supported it. This was the only way for the business to remain sustainable.
The initiative covered all services and networks, including the related systems that support IPv6 functioning and operation, explained Sergio Bustamente of Telecom’s Network Transformation Office (link to ppt) during his presentation at LACNIC 39.
The main challenge of the project was to reduce the impact of IPv4 exhaustion and deploy IPv6, with a focus on the fastest growing businesses.
The LACNIC Campus paved Telecom’s road to IPv6, Bustamante explained. “We relied heavily on LACNIC, its IT department and the different IPv6 courses offered through the LACNIC Campus to train our technicians,” he said.
Telecom knew that if it wanted to continue to grow and provide new services —especially with the Internet of Things, fiber networks to the home, and the 5G network on the horizon— it had to move to IPv6. The organization had completed a very important merger (Telecom and Cablevisión) and was focused on having a single numbering plan assigned to services.
“First, we presented the need to our management team. The key was to obtain the support of the various areas within the organization and include the different products and services. We said that we would try to do it in the shortest possible amount of time and with the smallest possible economic impact,” Bustamante commented.
(Free access, no subscription required)
How did you approach the project? Collaboration between Telecom’s technical staff and commercial developers allowed us to focus on IPv6 deployment in those networks on which the company was planning to centralize its business plans following the market.
How did you do it? Telecom’s training department contacted LACNIC to inquire about large-scale courses for its staff, and these courses facilitated the learning process. Nearly 100 Telecom technicians and professionals participated in the IPv6 courses (basic and advanced). “Certification (introduced this year by the LACNIC Campus) is a major incentive to complete the courses on the Campus, as it endorses the knowledge that is being incorporated,” Bustamante added.
When designing the plan, Telecom also used Jordi Palet’s ten do’s and dont’s for migrating to IPv6, which were adapted to the language of Telecom. Likewise, once the IPv6 address plan had been put together, in 2021 Telecom also received the support of Alejandro Acosta, coordinator of LACNIC’s R&D department.