Next Generation Internet live at FX Networks

Next Generation Internet live at FX Networks

For immediate release

4 June 2009.

FX Networks announced today that its high performance national Internet backbone is natively running Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in parallel with IPv4 and is available for customers to use.

For more than the last two decades, the Internet has used the addressing protocol known as IPv4 to enable communications between Internet connected devices. The number of IPv4 addresses was initially thought to be more than sufficient for the Internet, but its massive growth has resulted in far greater utilisation of the addresses available, and it is now forecast that the IPv4 address pool will be exhausted around 2010. IPv6 has been adopted to enable the continued growth of the Internet, and this new protocol offers a vast increase in the potential numbers of devices and services that can be connected to the Internet.

Jamie Baddeley, GM Sales, FX Networks says that although the IPv4 address space will continue to run for at least another two decades, there are new parts of the Internet, particularly in rapidly developing areas such as China that will run on IPv6 only. He says that this is potentially an issue for New Zealand companies that have communications with Asian business partners. Because of this FX Networks has deployed support for IPv6 sooner rather than later, to ensure that NZ export focused businesses in particular are able to remain connected to all their trading partners on the Net.

FX claims that it is the first national NZ Internet Service Provider to make this service openly available as a standard 'native' service across its network and its international connections. FX do not intend to charge customers any additional fees for IPv6 connectivity, stating that it is simply their mission to ensure their customers have access to the entire Internet in a way that is fast, affordable, reliable, simple and transparent.

A national IPv6 Steering Group, supported by InternetNZ, is organising a 'Hui' http://www.ipv6.org.nz/hui.html in August, which will highlight the need for all organizations using the Internet and IP networking as part of their business operations to start planning towards IPv6 adoption in parallel with IPv4, just as FX networks has done. Dr Murray Milner, convenor of the steering group says "..It is great to see leadership coming from the service provider community in the adoption of IPv6 and we hope that the upcoming Hui will help many other organizations to start their journey towards a similar outcome..."

ENDS.

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