New Zealand takes first steps to IPv6

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 13 June 2007 10:40

Business IT - Technology

New Zealand has taken its first steps towards implementing IPv6, the new greatly expanded Internet addressing scheme.

NZRS (.nz Registry Services) has upgraded is .nz name servers - ns8.dns.net.nz and ns9.dns.net.nz, located in Wellington and Albany respectively - to support IPv6 addresses. Both are connected to the NZ IPv6 Internet Exchange. NZRS has also introduced an IPv6 capable Whois server accessible at whois.ipv6.srs.net.nz.

NZRS is responsible for operation of the register of domain names and the domain name system (DNS) in the .nz domain name space. The non-profit consortium Open Contributors Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (OCCAID) and US telco Sprint have providing IPv6 tunnels and Citylink provided assistance in connecting the servers the NZ IPv6 Internet Exchange.

To date there has been little progress towards IPv6 in New Zealand. NZRS general manager, Nick Griffin, told iTWire "our shareholder Internet NZ is keen to get some momentum behind IPv6 and in the past 12 months there have been discussions among the network operators, but at present there is a lack of commercial IPv6 transit. We had to use tunnels from or sites to the Ipv6 exchange.

Overseas governments, in particular the US and its Defense forces, are pushing heavily for IPv6 but Griffin said there had been no discussions with Government in New Zealand. "But even if no one is pushing it here at the moment we believe we should have it out there before there is any load so that when there is demand our systems are ready."

He added "Internet NZ are planning a meeting on IPv6 in October and I believe they are trying to encourage more people to get involved and keep the momentum going."

IPv6 planning in Australia is much more advanced, The first planning meeting was held in October 2005  and in June 2006 The Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU), au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association (AEEMA) and BuildersNet Pty Ltd launched a joint project with Federal Government funding to develop new business models for adoption of IPv6 and tools for transition planning.

A goal of the recently launched NICTIA 10 year IT vision statement for Australia was that it be" one of the first nations to gain the benefits from migrating to IPv6."