It won’t be long until the days of IPv4 addresses are over. In February, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) delivered the last remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses. With the exponential growth of the Internet, the end of IPv4 addresses was expected. Recent data from the Latin American and Carribean Internet Addresses Registry — or LACNIC, the agency that regulates IP distribution across Latin America — show that remaining address will be available only until the 2014 World Cup, at the latest.
“It’s a need for all communications companies, because I guess until June next year there won’t be any more IPv4 address available. The new protocol was defined 10 years ago, but there has never been need to implement it,” Claudio Merulla, head for network transportation and IP at TIM Brazil, told RCR Wireless News.
That scenario obligates all players to move on and adapt their infrastructure to support IPv6 — although they will have to support both protocols for a while. That’s what TIM is doing in Brazil. Even before deploying IPv6 in its home country of Italy, the mobile operator company invested U.S. $740,000 to update part of its networks in Brazil.
In TIM’s case, migrating to IPv6 was scheduled to be done by the end of this year, but the carrier postponed the project to attend to a client’s request. State-owned Brazilian telecom “Telebrás asked us a range of IPv6 addresses, so we had to anticipate our project. Telebrás contracted us to provide and manage their IP address,” Merulla said, adding that TIM became one of the first carriers to provide the service.
What facilitated TIM’s deployment was the fact that for a while carriers were buying IPv6-ready equipments, so when it came to implementation, they had more work to do on software than hardware. Cisco is TIM’s main vendor for this project, in conjunction with consulting firm PromonLogicalis, which aims to increase the number of projects focused on IPv6 implementation.
“TIM lacked IP addresses, so they started IPv6 project prior focusing on attending corporate users,” said Lucas Pinz, manager at PromonLogicalis. “So what we did was the logical adequacy for IPv6, not only borders but also core. Now TIM traffics IPv6 over MPLS, their current network, because it was a much easier way to deploy.
“Our main benefit is timing to market, because all carriers will have to do this deployment sooner or later. So, being one of the first to offer IPv6, TIM is able to connect more clients and offer them larger number of IP address, allowing them to connect many more equipments in their network,” Pinz said.
The next step, he said, is preparing TIM’s infrastructure to attend to end users.
Big wave to come
The largest amount of investments, however, might not happen now or come from deployment by telecoms operators. Carriers are improving their infrastructure, but much their equipment was recently purchased IPv6-ready.
The greatest change will happen when the need touches user terminals, because carriers will have to buy IPv6-ready routers, appliances, devices and programs. “The big issue is not related to carriers, because they have their infrastructure ready to deploy, but with domestic users terminals,” Pinz said. Until everyone has IPv6 terminals and programs, carriers, as well as content providers, will have to support both IPv6 and 4.
In addition, different companies are also looking forward to adapting to IPv6, the benefits of which include adding more equipment to the network and increasing capacity to deploy machine-to-machine. “Corporations need to suit connections with carriers and from that point migrate internals systems, an IT project that does not have to be deployed at one time,” Pinz said.
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