Hurricane Electric to Support World IPv6 Launch on June 6 and Beyond

Transition to IPv6 has begun and gained momentum since June 8, 2011, when the world celebrated IPv6 Day and successfully launched a 24-hour IPv6 test drive. 

Earlier last year Owen DeLong (News - Alert), director of Professional Services and IPv6 Evangelist at Hurricane Electric, said all American governmental public-facing servers are slated to be IPv6 compatible by September of 2012, and internal Federal systems must use IPv6 by 2014.

According to DeLong, 256 out of 306 Top Level Domains (TLDs) are already enabled for IPv6.

The upcoming World IPv6 Launch scheduled on June 6, 2012-- nearly a year after the IPv6 test drive--is set to become the biggest milestone in the IPv6 transition drive.

Recently Hurricane Electric (News - Alert), the world's largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and leading colocation provider, announced its support for World IPv6 Launch, which is sponsored by the Internet Society.

The event will be marked by the permanent deployment of IPv6 at some of the leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web content providers. Leading content providers committed to a permanent shift to IPv6 include Facebook, Google (News - Alert), Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo!.

Seven of the ISPs that committed to this move said they will ensure at least 1 percent of their users will use IPv6 to connect to IPv6 enabled Web sites during that period.

Hurricane Electric was among the first to test and migrate to IPv6. The company deployed IPv6 on its global backbone in 2001. During the past several months, Hurricane Electric has established its leadership in the IPv6 arena by connecting to some of the largest Internet exchanges in the world.

Currently the IPv6 leader maintains over 7,000 concurrent Border Gateway (News - Alert) Protocol (BGP) sessions and connects to more than 2,000 networks at fifty exchange points in Europe, Asia and North America, according to official reports.

Hurricane Electric connects to more than 1,600 associated IPv6 backbones. The network does not depend on internal tunnels for IPv6 connectivity. The company has enabled IPv6 connectivity to every customer. Classic IPv4 connectivity is also available.

“Since the 2001 launch of our global IPv6 network, every day has been IPv6 Day at Hurricane Electric,” said Martin Levy (News - Alert), director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. “The opportunity to be at the forefront of this historic transition across the globe and ensure that the Internet thrives in the years to come is exciting. With the significant support of Hurricane Electric's IPv6 backbone, World IPv6 Launch Day will succeed.”

During the World IPv6 Launch Hurricane Electric's global IPv6 backbone will serve as an IPv6 transit to many of the Web sites and vendors participating in the launch. The company has also committed to support much of the increased IPv6 traffic flow for the launch.