Next Generation IP Addressing is Disaster Waiting to Happen Claims StratoGen
Special to TAG-IT News Agency
LONDON - As the current generation of IP addresses nears exhaustion, ISPs and hosting providers are moving at a glacial pace to offer IPV6 services. The transition to IPV6 is proving costly at a time when budgets are restricted, but time is running out to make the change.
The current generation of IP addresses (IPV4) will run out in 2011, at which point only new IPV6 addresses will be available. With such a huge change to the core of the Internet, only a minority of ISPs have active IPV6 networks while some do not even have plans to deploy them.
Karl Robinson, managing director of StratoGen said The UK government, industry associations and the providers themselves have mostly failed to act in a sufficiently timely manner to ensure a successful switch to IPV6. I fear we will see a panic rush to IPV6 when IPV4 addresses run out, without adequate planning or deployment testing by the providers. The subsequent fallout could put the short term survival of a number of businesses at risk.
IPV6 is largely independent of the current IPV4 addressing scheme, with existing IPV4 devices unable to directly communicate with IPV6 machines.
Current IPV6 usage is well below 1% of total Internet traffic.
David Elliott, technical director of StratoGen said A successful global deployment of IPV6 is looking ever more unlikely. The ISPs and hosting providers are simply not investing the time and resources required to get their systems IPV6 ready. When businesses find they cannot get their office connected, or reach certain sites on the Internet there will be huge frustration.
In addition hardware manufacturers have been reluctant to offer software upgrades for their devices to support IPV6 addressing, preferring to concentrate on new products which offer a payback for their investment in the new technology. Most existing devices could be updated to a dual stack system which provides support for both addressing schemes, but software development costs are proving too costly.
Customer apathy towards IPV6 will quickly reverse when the current generation of IP addresses runs out. As an industry, we are not doing enough to look after organizations that rely on us for their crucial business communications said Robinson.
StratoGen is a managed hosting company providing enterprise VMware hosting, managed server hosting, colocation and connectivity products all backed by a 100% uptime SLA.
The StratoGen network is fully IPV6 ready, tested and deployed. In addition, StratoGen support staff are trained to the highest levels in IPV6 deployment and troubleshooting.
