CHICAGO — Top cable operators, programmers, tech vendors and consumer electronics retailers are expressing great satisfaction and relief after last week’s global test of the Internet’s next-generation protocol, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), went off with surprisingly few hitches.
Speaking here on a special Cable Show forum on IPv6, cable and CE executives said World IPv6 Day caused few user problems during a 24-hour period that spanned June 7 and 8 in North America. They also reported that IPv6 traffic surged on the world’s networks that day and, while still at relatively low levels, has continued to remain well above its previous mark.
"There was a sustained uptick in various types of IPv6 traffic," said John Brzozowski, a chief architect for IPv6 and distinguished engineer at Comcast. “The needle moved.” He noted that Comcast’s native IPv6 traffic grew sixfold during the event and has grown 10-fold since World IPv6 Day.
At the same time, Brzozowski said, Comcast did not see any increase in calls to its customer support line and Web site. "We literally had one e-mail support request," he said. "The joke I used yesterday was it was a waste of 37 hours of not sleeping for me."
Lee Howard, Time Warner Cable’s director of network technology, said the MSO fielded hundreds of customer support calls on World IPv6 Day, unlike Comcast. But he said two-thirds of those calls were just questions about what the protocol was and what the test involved.
"It was not even a blip on the radar screen," Howard said. TWC had 564 addresses tested on the day of the test, but only seven addresses failed to respond properly to IPv6. “We had more wrong numbers than we had problems,” he said.
Sam Gassel, technology fellow for digital media technologies at Turner Broadcasting System, said Turner experienced almost no problems when it activated IPv6 for CNN.com on World IPv6 Day. "The only complaint we got was from somebody who couldn’t access CNN via IPv6 only,” Gassel said. “That’s a good problem to have."
Phil Roberts, technology program manager of The Internet Society, which sponsored World IPv6 Day, said well over 1,000 web sites participated in the event, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, CNN and BBC. Plus, he noted, roughly two-thirds of the 400 sites monitored by the ISOC still have IPv6 running a week after the event. “This is a step along the path,” he said.
But, the speakers stressed, plenty of implementation work remains to be done before the world’s real switchover from IPv4 to IPv6 can occur. Specifically, they said, much more must be done to refine the IPv6 software and systems for content and network providers and embed the protocol into consumer electronics devices.
"What’s available in the market today is ready for a low-volume test," Gassel said. "Is it ready for a high volume? We’ll find out next time."
At the Cable Show, CableLabs is showing off carrier-grade network address translation (NAT), which enables ISPs to let many users share IPv4 addresses for tapping Internet content once there are no longer enough IPv4 addresses to go around. In addition, an exhibit jointly developed by Comcast and Time Warner is showcasing IPv6-compatible consumer electronics devices.
"We still see challenges with certain advanced applications with carrier-grade NAT… but we are very close," said Chris Donnelly, project director of network protocols for CableLabs. "Three months after ARIN [the American Registry for Internet Numbers] runs out [of IPv4 addresses], you’ll see carrier-grade NAT show up in networks." He added that CableLabs will host another IPv6 interoperability event for equipment providers in late Sept.
Alan Breznick is a Toronto-based senior analyst at Heavy Reading, part of the Light Reading Communications Network at UBM TechWeb. He is covering the NCTA Cable Show for Cartt.ca in Chicago this week.
