Hurricane Electric Advises Data Center Managers to Begin Moving to IPv6
Professional services division now offering assistance to data center operators

Fremont, California - August 18, 2011 - Hurricane Electric, the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and colocation provider, today announced that it is extending its IPv6 Professional Services offerings to include data center deployments, and is recommending a swift transition to avoid unnecessary costs and gain a competitive advantage.

With a successful World IPv6 Day on June 8th and the prediction that the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) will allocate its last IPv4 addresses this before the end of this year, Hurricane Electric is suggesting simple steps for data center managers to ease the transition and reap the benefits inherent in IPv6.

Owen Delong, IPv6 evangelist at Hurricane Electric and director of professional services, recommends transitioning to a dual-stack environment by implementing the following steps:

  • Add IPv6 Capabilities to provisioning and monitoring systems
  • Upgrade critical infrastructure (hardware and software) to support dual IPv4/IPv6 stacks
  • Plan data center addressing and deployment
  • Enable IPv6 on your core and backbone
  • Establish IPv6 peering and transit sessions
  • Add IPv6 capabilities to external facing services, including email, web and DNS

“From improved network topologies to built in IPSec, IPv6 can bring immediate benefits to the data center. By investing in good staff training, the average data center operator should have few problems deploying IPv6 and avoid costs later on down the road,” said Owen Delong. “For those data center managers looking for some guidance and assistance, Hurricane Electric’s professional services division is available to assist.”

Despite the effort required to transition to IPv6, IPv6 has tremendous long-term benefits. According to a US Commerce Department study, ongoing benefits to the global economy of $10 billion/year will result from IPv6 adoption.

Recently, Owen Delong, conducted the first IPv6 certification course in Mexico and was appointed to the IPv6 Advisory Board for Infoblox, a leading developer of network infrastructure automation and control solutions. In addition, this month Owen taught an IPv6 seminar to secondary and post secondary school communities in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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 1,200 associated IPv6 backbones.

Hurricane Electric’s global Internet backbone is one of the few that is IPv6-native at each and every customer connection and at each and every location it operates at. First deployed on Hurricane Electric’s Internet backbone in 2001, IPv6 is offered as a core service and every customer is provided IPv6 connectivity. In addition to operating the world’s largest IPv6 network, Hurricane Electric connects to more than 1,100 associated IPv6 networks.

To educate CIOs, network administrators and data center operators, Hurricane Electric has invested in a number of tools including free IPv6 certification, DNS services and tunnel broker services. In addition, those looking to keep abreast of daily developments can tune into Hurricane Electric’s YouTube channel.

About Hurricane Electric
Hurricane Electric operates its own global IPv4 and IPv6 network and is considered the largest IPv6 backbone in the world as measured by number of networks connected. Within its global network, Hurricane Electric has 45 major exchange points with connectivity to more than 1,800 different networks.  Employing a resilient fiber-optic topology, Hurricane Electric has no less than four redundant paths crossing North America, two separate paths between the U.S. and Europe, and rings in Europe and Asia. In addition to its vast global network, Hurricane Electric owns and operates two data centers in Fremont, California - including Fremont2, its newest 200,000 square-foot facility. Hurricane Electric offers IPv4 and IPv6 transit solutions over the same connection at speeds exceeding 10 Gbps.  Additional information can be found at http://he.net.

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