(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Hurricane Electric (www.he.net), a colocation provider and Internet backbone carrier, announced on Monday that it is the first network in the world to connect to more than 600 IPv6 networks, having doubled the reach of its IPv6 network in less than a year.
HE has been among the leading voices calling for network operators and hosting providers to equip their networks, and their front offices, to deal with the increasing adoption of the IPv6 protocol, particularly as the depletion of IPv4 address space becomes a more pressing and immediate concern.
Martin Levy, Hurricane Electric’s director of IPv6 strategy (whose position at HE is itself an endorsement of the company’s commitment to IPv6) discussed many of the issues surrounding IPv6 adoption, particularly as it pertains to the web hosting industry, in an excellent interview appearing in the July 2009 issue of WHIR magazine.
While the majority of today’s Internet traffic is made up of IPv4 transmissions, says HE, in its Monday press release, its 32-bit address space is expected to run out sometime in 2011, at which point the transition to IPv6 (which has an address space many orders of magnitude larger) will become a necessity for anyone handling Internet traffic.
“This rapid growth uniquely positions Hurricane Electric’s network to be able to provide the best native IPv6 connectivity to our business partners in strategic locations all over the world,” says Levy, quoted in the press release.
Along with the expansion of its own network, Hurricane Electric says it has expanded its IPv6 certification and training program, which helps system administrators and network engineers to become expert in IPv6.
“We realized a few years ago that if we wanted to be able to provide production ready native service to our business customers that depend on the Internet, we needed to start deploying IPv6 early,” said Mike Leber, the company’s president, also quoted in the announcement. “Because of this foresight, we are now in a position to give our customers the service they need, to ensure they stay in business on the Internet as we all go through this transition.”
Hurricane Electric says it began deploying IPv6 on its backbone in 2001, and now connects with roughly twice as many IPv6 backbones as its nearest rivals. The embracing of the newer protocol has become one of the company’s core services over the years. It says it is one of the few global Internet backbones that is IPv6 native, and does not rely on internal tunnels for IPv6 connectivity.
Earlier this month, the company reported that it had expanded one of its colocation facilities in Fremont, California.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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