IPv4 Addresses Dry Up; Brocade Customers Years Ahead with Proven IPv6-Ready Solutions

Spurred by an estimated 22 billion networked devices in use by 2020, government mandates and rapid cloud adoption driving Internet transformation, Brocade® (Nasdaq: BRCD) and its customers observed World IPv6 Day with Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and others. Brocade has spent the last decade deriving and sharing best practices by rolling out IPv6-ready cloud-optimized networking solutions to deliver a pragmatic migration path to IPv6. These solutions have been widely adopted by many forward-thinking customers, including Hurricane Electric, Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) and Brocade’s own publically facing website.

While it is widely known that IPv6 expands the pool of addresses available to satisfy an exponentially growing number of Internet connected devices, IPv6 offers other inherent benefits that enable organizations to simplify network management, increase innovation through enhanced collaboration, improve interoperability and mobility, and strengthen security capabilities. These improvements, along with trillions of new IP addresses now available, will help organizations evolve their network infrastructures to more agile models including cloud computing.

For example, Hurricane Electric, operators of the world's largest IPv6 Internet backbone and provider of dedicated servers, direct Internet connections, and Web hosting services, has been preparing for years with the help of Brocade for the migration to IPv6 and sees the transition as the most critical component in expanding its business.

“IPv6 should be the single most important thing on network operators' minds today. If they are relying on the global Internet, then they need to understand why IPv6 is critical,” said Martin Levy, director of IPv6 strategy, Hurricane Electric. “With an infrastructure of our magnitude, we absolutely require a simple, yet powerful and scalable routing infrastructure to support massive routing table space, IPv6, 10 GbE and a base to support for 100 GbE in the future. We rely on Brocade to provide us the right balance of performance, future IPv6 routing table scalability and total cost of ownership to ensure a solid network investment.”

Brocade has engineered its own website, Brocade.com, to be fully IPv6 enabled, making it one of the first networking vendors to achieve IPv6 web presence with its own proven suite of IPv6 networking solutions. This is a significant milestone and serves as a best practice that is shared with customers. With more than a decade of research and development in IPv6 networking solutions, Brocade has a proven history in delivering non-disruptive solutions through its comprehensive set of Ethernet switches, routers and application delivery controllers (ADC) to completely transition or simultaneously support both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols.

“For more than a decade Brocade has been advancing its switching and routing platforms to help lead the charge in IPv6 preparedness,” said Dave Stevens, chief technology officer and vice president, corporate development for Brocade. “Brocade has a full suite of products and technologies shipping today that are fully IPv6 capable and our customers are using them to seamlessly migrate their production networks to IPv6. As a leading example, the Brocade.com website has been IPv6 enabled for more than a year – making us one of the first networking vendors to field a native IPv6-compliant Internet presence.”

Federal Government Mandates Loom

In addition, strict federal mandates are also driving the adoption of IPv6-ready networking technologies. The Department of Defense (DoD) and other worldwide governmental agencies have made public statements not only endorsing IPv6, but mandating that equipment be IPv6 ready. More recently, the White House directive requiring all U.S. government agencies to upgrade their public-facing websites and services to support IPv6 by September 2012 has forced IPv6 to be top of mind for organizations inside and outside the Federal Government.

The Brocade ServerIron ADX ADC were purpose-built to meet federal government, service provider and enterprise customers’ IPv6 needs and act as a seamless gateway between existing IPv4 networks and new ones built on IPv6. In addition, Brocade offers a comprehensive family of routers and Ethernet switches to deliver a set of dual-protocol networking solutions with embedded support for the high-speed switching and routing IPv4 and IPv6 traffic on the same platform. This set of tested and proven technologies have put Brocade ahead of many networking vendors well before World IPv6 Day.

According to Dale Geesey, chief operating officer, Auspex Technologies, a systems integrator that recommends networking infrastructure selection for the US Federal government, “IPv4 traffic will co-exist with IPv6 in a dual protocol world for some time, but then I anticipate that IPv4 traffic will drop quickly. It’s important for federal agencies to future-proof their networking technology and partnering with a leading vendor, like Brocade, will help ensure that they receive the solutions that are best for their needs now, and in the near future.”

IPv6 Offers More Customer Benefits than Addresses Alone

IPv6 offers organizations more than an expanded pool of IP addresses. Future applications and services within the cloud will require broader use and support of Internet-enabled resources. Whether it is automatically spooling additional servers or improved network security and simplified mobility – IPv6 is designed to meet that demand. Ultimately, IPv6 will help organizations improve current business operations as well as allow organizations to venture into new business practices to help create the foundation for the cloud, including:
  • Improved Security for the Cloud- Security is cited as one of the critical concerns organizations have for fully embracing cloud computing. With IPv4, security was optional to the user and not mandated. However, support for IPsec security framework is an IPv6 mandatory requirement. This requirement provides a standards-based solution for network security needs and promotes interoperability between different IPv6 implementations. The end result is a more threat resilient network that is relieved of inherent security holes in IPv4.
  • Integrated Interoperability and Mobility - IMS Research1 estimated that 5 billion devices were already connected to the Internet. By 2020 they believe this figure will be 22 billion. This massive increase in Internet enabled devices is primarily due to mobility devices, such as Smartphones, mobile tablets and laptops. Knowing that mobility will be not a nice-to-have but a requirement going forward, IPv6 provides interoperability and mobility capabilities which are already widely embedded in network devices.
  • Platform for Innovation and Collaboration – Often times, innovation is stifled by the constraints people are subject to, whether it is technology, political or financial. With IPv6, given its number of addresses, scalability and flexibility, potential for triggering innovation and assisting collaboration is unrestrained. In this new arena, creativity will be the larger limitation rather than IPv4 technology hurdles.
“The explosion of Internet connected devices is driving up the need for more and more IP addresses,” said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president, global enterprise and consumer research, Yankee Group. “Because of this, the migration to IPv6 is more a matter of when rather than if. However, most organizations often overlook the added benefits of IPv6 that revolve around better security and manageability. Brocade's migration based approach allows organizations to immediately start realizing the benefits of IPv6 without putting the operations of the network at risk.”

Additional Information

IPv6 Education and Innovation Day http://www.brocade.com/ipv6

Video

Why IPv6 Today? Martin Levy, director IPv6 strategy for Hurricane Electric, discusses importance of IPv6 in modern networks. Watch it here.

Media Contacts:

David Gibson
inter.asia communications
m. + (6) 012 612 1425
david@inter-asia.biz

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