World’s largest IPv6 Internet backbone announces support of world IPv6 launch

FREMONT, USA: Hurricane Electric, the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and leading colocation provider, announced its support of the world IPv6 Launch, which is sponsored by the Internet Society and will occur on June 6, 2012.

During the World IPv6 Launch, IPv6 will be permanently enabled by some of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and web content providers. Seven ISPs will ensure that by the time of the launch, at least 1 percent of their users will use IPv6 to connect to IPv6 enabled websites. In addition, the websites Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo! will permanently enable IPv6 connectivity.

Hurricane Electric’s global IPv6 backbone provides IPv6 transit to many of the websites and vendors participating in the launch and will be supporting much of the increased IPv6 traffic flow for the launch.

Over the last several months, Hurricane Electric has solidified its position as an IPv6 leader by connecting to some of the largest Internet exchanges in the world. Hurricane Electric maintains over 7,000 concurrent Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) sessions and connects to more than 2,000 networks at fifty exchange points in Europe, Asia and North America.

“Since the 2001 launch of our global IPv6 network, every day has been IPv6 Day at Hurricane Electric,” said Martin Levy, director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. “The opportunity to be at the forefront of this historic transition across the globe and ensure that the Internet thrives in the years to come is exciting. With the significant support of Hurricane Electric’s IPv6 backbone, World IPv6 Launch Day will succeed.”

An IPv6 leader for over a decade, Hurricane Electric first deployed IPv6 on its global backbone in 2001. Hurricane Electric’s global Internet backbone is one of the few that is IPv6-native and does not rely on internal tunnels for IPv6 connectivity. IPv6 is offered as a core service and every customer is provided IPv6 connectivity, as well as classic IPv4 connectivity. Hurricane Electric connects to more than 1,600 associated IPv6 backbones.