As a result of this and requests from our customers coupled with the ominous depletion of IPv4 address space, I am pleased to announce that we will be offering IPv6 connectivity for our customers.  Given that IPv6 is the future of the Internet, it is perfectly logical that it is something of particular interest to us.  

This is, of course, not an overnight affair, and will take some time to be able to fully offer the service for all customers, and at the moment we expect to pass through several stages of testing before general deployment.   In any case, we hope to have IPv6 fully available for our customers before the end of the year.



What is the current deployment status?


We have already deployed IPv6 across the core of our network, and a few hosting servers that our technical teams are using for alpha testing.  In general, so far, the tests are working quite well, but there is still a lot of work to do. 

The next stage, will be a beta testing stage involving a small number of our hosting customers.  We will nevertheless want to keep the number limited, and we will expect those customers participating in the beta test to assist us by providing feedback on the service in terms of performance, security, connectivity, and also any suggestions that you may have.  We expect this beta phase to be implemented before the end of September 2009.

Finally, we hope to have full general deployment and availability of IPv6 for all our hosting customers, as well as DNS services by the end of the year.  Other Gandi services (blogs, mail, and our own web presence) are likely to follow suit in early 2010.



I would like to participate in the beta test! How do I sign up?


When we are ready to propose the beta test, we will open a link on our website to allow those hosting customers interested in participating in the beta test to apply.  Numbers will be limited though, as this is only a beta test stage, and we will be working closely with the customers participating in this trial throughout the testing phase so as to provide the best possible service to all of our customers.  Therefore, we obviously cannot accommodate everyone at this stage!  We will provide further updates through our blog and our website as we progress.




What about glue records for IPv6?


Our DNS system already supports IPv6 AAAA glue records for DNS servers, and you can create these via the management interface for your domain just as you would for an IPv4 glue record.  The only limitation at this time is that it currently must be a unique glue record.  In other words, you cannot create a glue record for a DNS server whose name already exists and has an IPv4 glue record associated with it.  This also assumes that the IPv6 DNS server is external to Gandi, and that the DNS zone is managed on your own server and not through our system (in other words, the domain is registered with us, but using your own DNS servers). This limitation will be removed in due course, however.


What does this mean for those who don't use IPv6?


There will be no change for existing users at all.  The deployment of IPv6 capability is supplemental and transparent to the existing services, so you will not be impacted at all.  You will, of course, have the ability to include IPv6 capability at any time you wish after the general deployment later in the year.



What exactly is IPv6 and why is it important?


IPv6, or "Internet Protocol, version 6" is the next-generation internet protocol to replace the current IP version 4.  Most of the internet today uses IPv4 which was created over twenty years ago.  Unfortunately, with the growth of the internet, the 32-bit addressing handled by IPv4 has inherent limitations to the number of unique IP addresses available, and there is now a shortage of availabiity meaning that it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain new allocations to meet the needs of further expansion.

IPv6, with it's 128-bit addressing, resolves this problem while at the same time adding significant improvements to network infrastructures in terms of routing and network autoconfiguration.  It is expected that IPv6 will ultimately replace IPv4 entirely, with a period of coexistance during the transition period which will last several years.



Out of curiosity, what does an IPv6 address look like?


It is a 128-bit hexadecimal address with octet-pairs separated by a colon (":") and often includes a prefix-length identifier to represent the equivalent of a netmask.  An example of such an address is:  2001:4b98:1:3e:17:3ca:8:44/120.   There can be short-cuts in the address if there are octet-pairs which are all zero.  Example:  2001:4b98:1::fa:121/48.

It's an acquired taste, but believe me, it's actually quite logical once you get used to it! :)

 

As usual, feel free to comment on this news on the gandibar!