CESNET to be involved in World IPv6 Launch

The CESNET association will be actively involved in the World IPv6 Launch this year, the objective of which is to highlight the necessary process that the whole Internet is going to undergo gradually: the shift from the current IPv4 Internet protocol to the new IPv6. The World IPv6 Launch will fall on 6 June, when various events connected with the issue will take place all around the planet. For example, the National Technical Library will host the day-long IPv6 Day conference, starting at 9.00 am and involving experts of CESNET, the association that leads the development and gradual implementation of the IPv6 protocol on the Czech Internet and has provided IPv6 as an operating service since 2004.

Martin Pustka will talk about IPv6 in academic networks, and Pavel Satrapa will inform about the latest news in the protocol itself and the related technologies. In addition, Ondřej Caletka will introduce the Linux OpenWRT distribution at a separate workshop; it is mostly used as an alternative firmware for home routers: you can find out how to set up both tunnelled and native IPv6 on such routers, including the option to create another wireless network supporting IPv6 only.

The World IPv6 Launch is subtitled This Time, It Is for Real. It is a follow-up on last year's World IPv6 Day, when major connection and Internet content providers launched their services on the new IPv6 protocol experimentally for one day. "The experiment was essentially successful. The anticipated problems did not occur; the user support centres registered next to no users who would be adversely affected by the experiment," says Pavel Satrapa, evaluating last year's event; he has been following the issue for a long time and was at the birth of CESNET's experimental IPv6 network back in 1999.

This year, too, the IPv6 will be activated in a number of major Internet sources and components simultaneously. Unlike last year's experiment, however, this change will be permanent: Google, Facebook, YouTube Yahoo! and other servers will continue to be accessible using both the current and the new protocols. "This should not have any noticeable effect on the end customers. If they are progressive and have IPv6 connectivity, they will communicate with the participating servers and many more using the new protocol. If they don't have IPv6 at all, nothing will change for them: their communication will continue using the IPv4 protocol. They might just experience some problems with communication if they have a troublesome or non-functional IPv6 connection. However, last year's experiment showed that such cases are very rare," Pavel Satrapa explains.

Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the successor protocol to the existing one, known as IPv4. It has tried to handle some of the problems that have occurred with the massive growth of the Internet all around the world, and to provide a progressive platform for its further development.

Compared to its predecessor IPv4, the IPv6 has four major advantages:

• it radically increases the number of available IP addresses, which will make it possible to connect virtually any device you use at work and at home to the Internet;
• it will enable Plug and Play connection: any device will configure automatically and will be connected to the Internet whenever it is switched on;
• it provides a conceptual solution for mobile device communication;
• it will substantially increase the security of the data transferred.

For more on the World IPv6 Launch, go to: http://www.worldipv6launch.org/
For more on the IPv6 Day conference in Prague, go to (in Czech): http://www.nic.cz/ipv6day/
An article by Pavel Satrapa dealing with the topic and published online at Lupa (in Czech): http://www.lupa.cz/clanky/velky-den-ipv6-je-za-dvermi/

The CESNET Association was founded by Czech universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The association is engaged in research and development in information and communication technologies and builds and develops the CESNET Large Infrastructure for research and education. With its research activities and accomplishments, CESNET represents the Czech Republic in international projects, most notably the pan-European GÉANT network building project and grid projects (EGI.eu), and participates actively in their implementation.