With IPv6 on tap, end is in sight for IPv4 in Latin
America
The greatest change will happen when the need touches user
terminals, because carriers will have to buy IPv6-ready routers,
appliances, devices and programs
Roberta Prescott
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.
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Americas
“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.