World IPv6 Launch

21/06/2012

IPv6 traffic, testing and responses

During World IPv6 Launch, LACNIC organized a virtual technical panel with the participation of Christian O’Flaherty (Internet Society), Carlos Martinez (LACNIC) and Antonio Moreiras (NIC.br) to share with the regional community information on the shift towards the new IPv6 protocol.

Christian O’Flaherty opened the panel and shared the successful results obtained in 2011 when major content providers experimentally enabled IPv6 for one day, and how that experience drove the desire to repeat it this year, except that this time IPV6 was enabled permanently. He also informed that on this opportunity not only content providers were invited but also access providers (who committed to having at least 1% of their users on IPv6) and home networking equipment manufacturers.

Faster. Carlos Martínez, Research and Development Engineer at LACNIC, shared some observations made that day. He noted that some Internet exchange points (IXPs) experienced an important increase in IPv6 traffic. He detailed one of his experiments in which he measured the delay when loading certain participating websites both over IPv4 and IPv6. The experiment showed that between 30% and 40% of these websites responded with greater speed when accessed via IPv6 as compared to IPv4.

Finally, Antonio Moreiras of NIC.br spoke of IPv6 deployment in Brazil. According to Antonio Moreiras, it is anticipated that by 2013 almost all Brazilian ISPs and content providers will allow access via IPv6. He highlighted the importance of initiatives such as World IPv6 Day, the Latin American IPv6 Week, and World IPv6 Launch, as they have helped double native IPv6 traffic.

The panel was transmitted live over IPv4 and IPv6, something worth highlighting as streaming providers have not adopted the platform yet.

More than 200 people followed the online panel, 10% of which did so via IPv6.