Pacnet Enhances its IPv6 Services

Pacnet expanded its Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) services to major cities across the region, improving network performance and enabling businesses to simplify network management while avoiding the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.

IP addresses are unique identifiers assigned to network devices to enable them to communicate on the Internet, and currently conform to the IPv4 standard. According to regional Internet registry APNIC, less than 10 per cent of the 4.5 billion IPv4 addresses remained available as of January 2010, and it anticipates IPv4 addresses will run out in late 2011.

With Internet penetration still low in some of the larger Asia Pacific countries, the need to move to IPv6 is especially important in the Asia Pacific region to ensure that these rapidly growing economies have access to the IP addresses that are crucial to enable them to get online, said Wilfred Kwan, Chief Technology Officer, Pacnet. Moreover, more governments are also mandating that their networks become IPv6 compliant, further driving the demand for IPv6 services.

The IPv6 standard uses 128-bit addresses as compared to current 32-bit IPv4 addresses. This creates a much larger number of unique IP addresses and eliminates the problem of a shortage of web addresses. Another benefitthat IPv6 introduces is improved network performance through additional network routing efficiencies as it negates the need for Network Address Translation (NAT) technology which has largely been deployed to delay the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.

A pioneer in the deployment ofcommercial IPv6-based services since 2003, Pacnets latest IPv6 network upgrade involves the deployment of dual stack equipment which enhances the networks performance when handling both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. This also enables customers the flexibility to migrate to IPv6 while still retaining compatibility with legacy applications that need to remain on IPv4.

Compared to other IPv4 to IPv6 transition technologies such as tunneling and header translation, our dual stack solution will improve network performance as well as allow our customers to benefit from easier network configuration and design as they will have access to more IP addresses, noted Mr Kwan.

Pacnet connectivity services that offer IPv6 dual stack services include IP Transit, as well as Premium Metro Ethernet and Premium Leased Line Internet Access services. These IPv6 services are available now in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the US, with more locations to be added across the next two years.