Redcentric rolls out IPv6 on core network

Wednesday 06, June 2012

Redcentric, a leading provider of network based end to end managed services, technology and infrastructure solutions, is joining major service and content providers worldwide to launch IP Version 6 (IPv6) on 6^th June 2012.

Redcentric has been working on enabling IPv6 on its core ISP network over the past 24 months and launches IPv6 to support World IPv6 Launch day. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Cisco and other leading providers will be taking part in this launch which aims to promote the use of the new protocol on a permanent basis.

The following Redcentric services are now IPv6 enabled:

• MPLS.
• Cambridge and Portsmouth metro networks.
• All leased lines (excluding DSL backup).
• Internet access over the two products above.
• DNS.

Redcentric continues to IPv6 enable the rest of its products and business, with the aim to complete the process by April 2013.

IP Version 4 (IPv4) will continue to be run in parallel, ensuring no disruption to customers and allowing for customers to migrate at a timescale convenient to them.

“IPv6 is critical to the future of business,” said Felix Moleele, Network Engineering Manager at Redcentric. “As a leading business-only ISP Redcentric’s involvement in IPv6 Launch day demonstrates our commitment to our customers, allowing them to begin their migration to IPv6.”

What is IPv6?

IP or Internet Protocol is an international communications standard that underpins modern computer networks, the largest of which is the Internet. In IP, network devices communicate by exchanging small data packets with each data packet containing the source (originator of the packet) and destination (packet recipient) IP address. Without an IP address, a device cannot participate.

Since 1981, IP Version 4 (IPv4) has been the publicly used version of the Internet Protocol. Each IP address on IPv4 is 32-bit, resulting in a 2³² (4,294,967,296) address space. The explosion of the Internet in the 1990s has mandated a need for more addresses than is possible with IPv4. The solution is IPv6. Each IP address is 128-bit long, this means an incredibly large address space of 2¹²⁸(340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456).