Internet ll Gurus Deploy New Protocol; VoIPv6 is Born

Internet2 Gurus Deploy New Protocol; VoIPv6 is Born by Jim Thompson [October 4, 2002]
<http://isp-planet.com/Technology/2002/ipv6_internet2.html>

If the tunnel is Internet2, then the light at the end of the tunnel is IPv6. New land speed record proves that native IPv6 service stands ready to meet current and emerging needs of high performance networking.

When the brain trust behind the Internet2 program speaks, anybody who sees the Internet as part of their future, better listen. These are the people who are laying the groundwork for tomorrow's Internet today-right now, they're talking about Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The group's latest innovations include deploying IPv6 across the Abilene backbone network and developing what may become the killer app for the next generation protocol-Voice over IPv6 (VoIPv6).

Led by more than 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and government, Internet2 engineers are developing and deploying advanced network applications and technologies that will be the foundation of the public data highway of tomorrow. It was many of these same people who fostered the Internet as we know it today from its infancy. If anyone knows what's hot for the future, it's these people. According to members of the Internet2 group, IPv6 is not only the wave of the future-it's the only way for new networks to fly.

Abilene deployment
The deployment of IPv6 over the nationwide Abilene backbone networks makes high-performance IPv6 service available to Internet2 member institutions and thousands of other research and education institutions across the country that have access to Abilene. Abilene's native IPv6 service also complements existing IPv6 deployment over other research and education networks around the world, such as the Energy Sciences Network in the U.S., knows as Esnet, Renater in France, and SURFnet in the Netherlands.

"We believe the deployment of IPv6 could be critical to sustaining the scalable growth and innovation that has distinguished the Internet's development over the past 30 years," said Steve Corbató, director of backbone network initiatives for Internet2.

Running on Cisco System's premier Internet router, the 12000 series, the Abilene experiment marks the first large scale deployment of native IPv6 in the U.S.

IPv6 provides a number of significant improvements over IPv4, including 128-bit long Internet addresses instead of the 32-bit addresses of IPv4 which vastly increases the number of available addresses and paves the way for a large range of new applications.

It also opens the door to higher speeds, as evidenced by a new Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) set this month using IPv6 by the
University of Oregon, the Oregon Gigapop and NYSERNet working with the staff of Abilene.

Land speed record
In the open competition, 3.47 gigabytes of information was transferred over 3,000 miles (4,810 km) of network from Eugene, Oregon to Syracuse, New York in one hour. This established a new I2-LSR IPv6 category record of 39.81 terabit meters per second.

"There's no question that routine delivery of real-world production information services of this sort is the best tangible proof that native IPv6 service stands ready to meet the current and emerging needs of the higher education high performance networking community," noted Joanne Hugi, associate vice president, Information Services at the University of Oregon.

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