PROCESSORS

Challenge Part of IPv6 Working Group Broader Outreach Program to Promote New Protocol Adoption: The Internet2 IPv6 Working Group today announced it will begin a broad outreach program to help promote the adoption of the IPv6 protocol among the research and education community and beyond. As a first step, the working group has created an IPv6 accessibility challenge for attendees of the ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs meeting hosted this week by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, July 20-24. IPv6 is the next version of the Internet Protocol, the data packaging and routing standard on which the Internet is based. IPv6 offers several improvements over IPv4. Most importantly, IPv6 vastly increases the number of addresses available from about 4 billion to approximately 340 trillion trillion trillion. According to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which manages the distribution of Internet number resources (IPv4 and IPv6 address space and Autonomous System Numbers) in Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States, only 19% of IPv4 address space remains available and is depleting quickly. “Given the rapid growth of the Internet, ensuring an abundance of Internet addresses is critical. The proliferation of connected devices means that in the near future many addresses will be required for each individual person who uses the Internet. The techniques currently employed to deal with the shortage of IPv4 addresses are reaching their limits, and many of these techniques - such as network address translation - puts the growth of the Internet in serious jeopardy,” said Dale Finkelson, senior network engineer for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-chair of the Internet2 IPv6 Working Group. The challenge asks workshop attendees to set up their personal computers to operate using only IPv6. Users will then attempt to connect to the meeting’s wireless network to access a registration website at jointtechs.es.net/IPv6-Reg/ only accessible via IPv6. If successful in reaching the site, attendees will then use the web interface to register to win a grand prize of an Apple iPod Touch 32G to be raffled off at the meeting´s July 22 evening reception. All attendees who are successful in reaching the IPv6-only site will receive a gift for their participation. The website will also be used to gather documentation on the level of IPv6 compliance for each user’s computer system, DNS server and campus network to enhance the working group’s knowledge on current deployment and adoption rates. Finkelson added, “The Internet2 IPv6 Working Group believes it is important that the research and education community show leadership in the adoption of IPv6 and in the development of resources to facilitate that deployment. We are utilizing our various meeting venues to help encourage IPv6 testing, compliance and accessibility and hope to expand our efforts in the coming months to help prepare our community for the IPv6 future.” Similar experiments have taken place successfully at recent networking events, such as the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) and American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) meetings, but this is the first such experiment targeted specifically at the U.S. academic networking community. A special session will be held on Monday, July 21 to assist attendees in setting up their systems who would like to participate in the challenge. Further details can be found at its Web site.