North American IPv6 Summit

by Craig Miller

The North American IPv6 Summit was held in Sunnyvale last week. It is always a pleasure to be in a large room with people who get it. There is no convincing that we need to give up our comfortable Linus-blanket of IPv4 for something new and different. No, everyone in the room is a convert, and many are outspoken advocates.

The conference was organized by the regional IPv6 Task Forces: California IPv6 Task Force, Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force, Texas IPv6 Task Force, and Mexico IPv6 Task Force.

Speakers, shakers and movers

Some of the speakers were:

• Tony Scott, the former CIO of the Unitied States of America
• John Curran, the President and CEO of ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers)
• Kevin Jones, Chair for IPv6 transition at NASA
• John Brzozowski, Chief Architect, IPv6 and Fellow,  at Comcast

Major Points

So if everyone is a convert, there's nothing to talk about, right? Actually there are quite a few things. Some of the key points made at this year's conference were:

• Dual-stack is only half way. We need to start moving to IPv6-only networks. There were presentations on how Cisco, Microsoft, and Comcast are doing just that.
• IPv6 impacts on Cloud Computing, and IoT. A case study of BC Hydro operating 2 million smart meters (IoT) all on IPv6.
• Content is being delivered over IPv6, thanks to CDN (Content Delivery Networks), like Akamai and Cloudfare, fronting IPv4-only legacy sites.
• Microsoft adds SLAAC capability to Windows 10, Creator Update (11 April 2017). Now it is possible to have Windows and Android on the same SLAAC (Stateless Address Auto Config) IPv6-only network!

Missed it? Here's the presentations

Thanks to all the volunteers of the regional task forces, and Linked-in for hosting the conference. The presentations are posted online, in case you didn't make it down to Sunnyvale last week. Hope to see you there next time.