Univates of Brazil Wins the Year’s First IPv6 Challenge

29/06/2017

A team representing Brazilian University Univates were the winners of the first edition of the IPv6 Challenge, an initiative designed by LACNIC to encourage the use of the v6 protocol in the region.

The IPv6 Challenge was a contest promoted by Azael Fernandez, Chair of the Latin American IPv6 Forum, with the support of LACNIC’s R&D department. This time, the community at large was invited to implement IPv6 in their networks and then document the work done with this Internet protocol (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMHuDlI760).

Initially, 19 organizations expressed their interest in participating in the IPv6 Challenge, though in the end only four presented the results of their research at the LACNIC event in Foz do Iguaçu, where a group of judges selected the winners.

Alejandro Acosta, R&D Engineer at LACNIC, observed that the idea had been very successful. “The main goal was achieved: encouraging IPv6 deployment in the LAC region. We know that many people and organizations implemented IPv6 on web servers, email servers, technical servers, etc. Perhaps we would have liked to see deployment at LAN or Wi-Fi network level, but that will certainly be the next step for many of those who expressed interest in this first edition of the IPv6 Challenge,” said Acosta.

The invitation to participate in the IPv6 Challenge was published on a mailing list, the IPv6 portal and social networks.

Four organizations presented their work in the final stage of the challenge. Tiago Giovanaz da Silva and William Magerl, the team representing Univates (Brazil), were declared the winners of the competition. The representatives of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Colombia) Seccional Montería and Edwin Vladimir Gomez Atuesta took the second place.

“All the proposals were very attractive. The judges voted for the work that had made the greatest progress,” Acosta observed. Building on this experience, there are plans in the works to repeat the challenge in upcoming LACNIC events.

Winning Team. The Brazilian team that won the challenge consisted of Univates network and server coordinator Tiago Giovanaz da Silva and network analyst William Magerl. After the winners were announced, they commented on their experience participating in this challenge organized by LACNIC. “Considering the nature of academic networks which should prioritize research, testing, the pursuit of knowledge and innovation, IPv6 is now part of the activities of the Information Technology (IT) team and members of academia,” said the two winners. For four years, members of the Univates team have advanced in the use of IPv6 and participated in training activities to learn about the new protocol. “Our work at the IPv6 Challenge presented the evolution, current status, challenges and results obtained in the use of the IPv6 protocol in the Univates network,” concluded the members of Univates team.