Tata Communications expects IPv6 day to go smoother than anticipated

AS THE CLOCK STRIKES 12, many of the world's largest web sites will switch over to IPv6 for a day.

Web sites such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo and content distribution networks such as Akamai and Limelight Networks will be switching over to IPv6 for 24 hours starting at midnight, 8 June 2011. One of the world's largest Tier 1 transit providers, Tata Communications, expects that the switch will go much smoother than expected.

Yves Poppe, Tata Communications' director of business development for IP strategy told The INQUIRER that not only is IPv6 required in order for the internet's membership to grow, it is vital to the growth of mobile devices such as smartphones.

Poppe said that by the end of May 2011 41 per cent of Tata's transit network, which carries 18 per cent of world's internet routing tables, was running a dual stack - IPv4 and IPv6. Come the end of the year, Poppe says that over 60 per cent of all its routing tables will support both versions of IP.

While websites are changing over their networks to IPv6, with Google once again claiming that it expects to drop around 0.05 per cent of connections to its network tomorrow, Poppe believes that Internet-wide the figure will be closer to 0.5 per cent. Poppe says that Tata Communications will be monitoring the level of support calls it gets tomorrow to see just how disruptive IPv6 day is, but adds that for the vast majority of people the change will be seamless.

Poppe also said that IPv6 is absolutely vital to the viability of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. Poppe said that without IPv6, "the growth of smartphones would be stunted". Poppe added that the big network operators already see revenue coming from both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity.

That's good news because once providers see a revenue generation model from IPv6 they will be keen to deploy it.

Tomorrow's IPv6 day will, for most, be like the infamous Millennium Bug, and simply go off without a hitch. Behind the scenes though, network operators and content providers will be monitoring closely those who cannot connect, because the failures are what really need to be rectified. µ