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Sep. 30, 2010

Cisco Systems says it has started serving up content from its main website that supports the IPv6 protocol, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's older IPv4 network system. The transition is significant given that Cisco has been selling IPv6-enabled routers, switches and related network equipment to ISPs, carriers and enterprise customers for many years.

But on August 23, Cisco began testing the IPv6 protocol on an alternative Web site (ipv6.cisco.com) instead of its main site, www.cisco.com.

The networking giant is maintaining a dual IPv6 and IPv4 approach for its external Web presence so that all of its customers can access the Web site reliably and without any issues.

"Of course, we could start with a translating proxy server to give an IPv6 presence with an IPv4 back end, but since the end goal is native IPv6 anyway, we have decided to take this time to get our applications steadily moved to IPv6 natively rather than translating," explains Mark Townsley, network engineer at Cisco.

"We may consider a proxy for some parts of our presence down the road, but for the moment we prefer working on the various IPv6 dependencies in our code directly," added Townsley.

Microsoft, which offers built-in IPv6 in Windows 7 and even the older Windows Vista, has yet to support IPv6 content on its Bing seach engine site or its MSN portal, for that matter.

IPv6 is the biggest upgrade in the 40-year history of the Internet. Forward-looking carriers and enterprises are already deploying IPv6 because the Internet is running out of IP addresses using the current standard, known as IPv4.

Cisco isn't the only IPv6 vendor to have dragged its feet on deploying the new IP addressing standard on its Web site. Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle and most other large IT companies in the U.S. and elsewhere are still running the older and soon to be obsolete IPv4.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support only 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet. IPv6, on the other hand, uses 128-bit addressing and supports a virtually unlimited number of devices -- 2 to the 128th power-- enough to run every toaster, TV, fridge, stove, car, bicycle and just about anything else you can think of for the next 100 years.

Overall, more than 94.5 percent of IPv4 address space has already been allocated as of Sept. 3rd, 2010, according to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which delegates blocks of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to ISPs, carriers and enterprises in North America.

Experts say IPv4 addresses could run out as early as this December but will certainly be gone by the end of next year.

ARIN and other Internet policy makers are urging website operators and webmasters to deploy IPv6 by Jan. 1, 2012, or risk disenfranchising users with IPv6 addresses by providing them with slower, less-reliable service.

Among the companies that have been leaders in offering IPv6 content so far are: Google, U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp., Netflix and Facebook. Now Cisco is joining the new IPv6 club, but has yet to publicize it until today.

The networking giant says it is being proactive by taking a careful, testing-based approach to IPv6 deployment on its own site, and then will monitor the situation closely.

"IP addresses are used by Internet applications and servers in a wide variety of ways, and only by exercising the code can we find them all," Townsley says. "The Internet is in a transition phase right now, and while pressure is on due to the looming IPv4 free pool run-out in 2011, we still have some time left to see how the network and all various applications respond to the change, monitor traffic and get ready for the day when we really turn the traffic up by offering an IPv6 address to the Web site when someone types in www.whatever.com."

Townsley added that Cisco is experiencing a very small amount of IPv6 traffic. "We want to run in alpha-test mode for a while to work out any issues in the server applications and monitor the situation closely. This is the good thing about starting now, as we can afford to stage the bring up and watch it carefully, minute by minute" he adds.

The IPv6 development and testing process that Cisco is engaged in now will be more common in 2011, as pressure starts mounting for site operators such as U.S. federal agencies to support IPv6 on their public-facing Web sites.

Other industry pundits on IPv6 include seach engine Yahoo and social media site Twitter.

Cisco's disclosure of its IPv6 testing efforts came on the same day that the Obama Administration held its first-ever event focused on the IPv6 issues, and what it intends to do about it.

Source: Cisco Systems.

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