Article by Computerworld staff | Auckland | Tuesday, 24 April, 2012

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/exporters-may-need-to-migrate-to-ipv6-to-keep-trading-taskforce

IPv6 taskforce member and former REANNZ CEO Donald Clark says the majority of countries that New Zealand trades with are looking at compulsory adoption of the next-generation Internet Protocol.

“Currently around 74 percent of New Zealand’s export trade value is with countries whose governments are pursuing some form of mandated adoption to IPv6,” he says of the new generation of internet protocol.

“Companies wanting to do business with these countries will need to be able to talk IPv6. Companies wanting to serve customers in these countries will need to be able to talk IPv6.”

The IPv6 taskforce and InternetNZ are partnering with Computerworld to run an event with a series of “how to” workshops on IPv6 migration in Auckland on May 23. The taskforce recently held a similar event in Wellington for government departments.

“The Auckland event is all about businesses. It is about sharing the fact that IPv6 is not an optional consideration, but that it can be pragmatically introduced and tackled with little additional cost,” says Clark.

Among the speakers at the Auckland event are Beca CIO Robin Johansen and Trade Me head of infrastructure Matt van Deventer who will be sharing their experiences of migrating to IPv6. There will also be workshop streams on security, technical implementation and business processes.

So what does Clark say to those businesses that have stockpiled IPv4 addresses and are delaying the migration to IPv6?

“Sadly, the rest of the world hasn’t – and they will be moving to adopt IPv6. Feel free to run IPv4 on your internal networks for as long as wish, but if you want to remain a part of the internet you will need to also run IPv6.”

For example Akamai, which carries between 20 and 30 percent of the internet’s web traffic, this month began offering its entire customer base IPv6 services.

Doing nothing is not an option. IPv6 traffic is out there and levels are set to grow rapidly this year.

If you are an IT Manager or CIO and have yet to complete your IPv6 implementation, (or an industry stakeholder with questions on likely impacts) then register your interest in this half-day event hosted by the New Zealand IPv6 Taskforce and Computerworld.

Learn from those who are successfully implementing IPv6, network with IT executives facing similar issues, get your questions answered by the experts and ensure you and your team take part in the workshop streams – Security,Technical implementation and Business processes.

Date: Wednesday 23 May 2012
Venue: Rendezvous Hotel, Auckland
Cost: $90 per person + GST; $250 per three people + GST

For more information and to register, visit http://fairfaxevents.co.nz/events.nsf/events/ipv6

Convened by The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force and The Department of Internal Affairs, the conference narrowed a lens on IPv6 services available to New Zealand’s Government sector, including One.Govt, hosting and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service).

Local IPv6 case studies and discussion workshops on IPv6 Security, LAN/addressing and Publishing Websites also featured.

Thank you to all who attended, and to our generous sponsors – Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft (Gold). Fortinet and FX Networks (Silver). Allied Telesis and Knossos (Bronze). NZRS and Brocade / Connector Systems (Refreshments).

Conference presentations are available below in PDF format:

Australian Government keynote – AGIMO

New Zealand Government keynote – DIA

One.Govt Services – Dimension Data & FX Networks

Govt Iaas (Part 1) – Revera
Govt Iaas (Part 2) – Datacom

Hosting Services – Modica

LAN Services – Gen-i

LAN Networks – HP New Zealand

Later this month, on 23 February 2012, dozens of IT professionals from across New Zealand’s public sector will convene in Wellington for the Practical IPv6 for Government conference.

Hosted by The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force and the Department of Internal Affairs this one-day conference, facilitated by Internet New Zealand, will feature a slate of expert speakers including John Hillier from the Australian Government Information Management Office and the DIA’s Brian More.

More information on the conference can be found at www.ipv6.org.nz/events-2 and requests for registration can be made by emailing rsvp@internetnz.net.nz.

The conference is proudly sponsored by global IT giants Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft (Gold). Silver sponsors are Fortinet and FX Networks. Bronze sponsors are Allied Telesis and Knossos. Refreshments are provided courtesy of NZRS and Brocade / Connector Systems.

The conference will be heavily geared towards practical and technical sessions, with presentations given about IPv6 services available to the Government sector including One.Govt, hosting and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service).

In addition, there will be local IPv6 case studies and three discussion workshops targeted at IPv6 Security, LAN/addressing and Publishing Websites.

New Zealand IPv6 Task Force Convenor Murray Milner says 2012 will be a critical year for progressing IPv6 uptake in the Government sector.

“The theme of cost-effective and timely adoption of IPv6 addresses the challenges faced with IPv6 today in ensuring efficient and effective procurement and implementation, and this meeting of minds will provide valuable support in that process.

“I encourage all CIOs, IT Managers and technical staff from central and local Government, as well as vendors, integrators and consultants to register now and attend.”

For more information contact:

Dr Murray Milner
Convenor
New Zealand IPv6 Task Force
027 443 0120
murray.milner@xtra.co.nz

or

Campbell Gardiner
Secretariat
New Zealand IPv6 Task Force
campbell@internetnz.net.nz
021 50 6004

—

About the NZ IPv6 Task Force
The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force is tasked with promoting the adoption of IPv6, assisting with training and education options and implementation planning. The Task Force is aligned with the Global IPv6 Forum, and its work is driven by the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addressing and the associated risk and additional cost that this is expected to impose on New Zealand organisations. More information at www.ipv6.org.nz/about

Media Release – 12 December 2011

The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force is pleased to announce that New Zealand’s public sector is making steady progress towards greater adoption and usage of IPv6 – the next generation Internet protocol.

The finding follows a series of interviews conducted by the Task Force with a swath of SOEs, Crown entities, core government agencies and tertiary / research institutes. A detailed report on IPv6 adoption within the state-sector has been prepared and can be downloaded here.

The key takeaways from the report are:

• Awareness of IPv6 and of IPv4 exhaustion is high in the government and wider state sector.
• 2012 should see more state sector IPv6 adoption. It appears that 2012 will be the watershed year, in which many organisations anticipate making at least some of their public services available natively on IPv6.
• A large number of state sector organisations are specifying IPv6 readiness in hardware they are buying, or in their hosting / ISP services.
• The majority of state sector organisations are working on enabling IPv6 for their external Internet presences.
• There is an emerging policy thrust by central government to encourage IPv6 adoption, backed by ‘common capability’ services purchasing – for instance, the IPv6-enabled one.govt and IaaS services.
• The most common barriers to state-sector IPv6 adoption remain absence of a business driver, lack of ‘internal champions’, and uncertainty of costs and implementation approaches.

CONFERENCE

The Task Force is also pleased to announce that, in collaboration with the Department of Internal Affairs, it will be convening the “Practical IPv6 for Government” conference on 23 February 2012 in Wellington open to central and local government ICT departments and suppliers.

More information on the conference can be found at
www.ipv6.org.nz/practical-ipv6-for-government/

“2012 will be a critical year for progressing IPv6 uptake in the Government sector. This conference will provide valuable support in that process,” says IPv6 Task Force Convenor Milner.

Requests for registration can be made by emailing rsvp@internetnz.net.nz. “The theme of cost-effective and timely adoption of IPv6 addresses the challenges faced with IPv6 today in ensuring efficient and effective procurement and implementation,” says Milner.

The conference programme will be dominated by practical sessions. Following an hour of keynote addresses, presentations will be given about IPv6 services available to the Government sector including One.Govt, hosting and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service).

In the afternoon there will be local IPv6 case studies and three discussion workshops targeted at IPv6 Security, LAN/addressing and Publishing Websites.

Conference sponsors so-far are Microsoft, HP (Gold), Cisco Systems, Fortinet, FX Networks (Silver), Allied Telesis, NZRS and Knossos (Bronze). InternetNZ provides secretariat support for the IPv6 Task Force.

For more information contact:

Dr Murray Milner
Convenor
New Zealand IPv6 Task Force
027 443 0120
murray.milner@xtra.co.nz

or

Campbell Gardiner
Secretariat
New Zealand IPv6 Task Force
campbell@internetnz.net.nz
021 50 6004

—

About the NZ IPv6 Task Force
The New Zealand IPv6 Task Force is tasked with promoting the adoption of IPv6, assisting with training and education options and implementation planning. The Task Force is aligned with the Global IPv6 Forum, and its work is driven by the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addressing and the associated risk and additional cost that this is expected to impose on New Zealand organisations. More information at www.ipv6.org.nz/about

We are inviting those working in ICT in central or local Government or who supply services to such. The formal invitation is here including how to RSVP.

The theme of “Cost-effective and timely adoption of IPv6″ addresses the challenge we all face with IPv6 today. We’ve heard the message, it’s now about procurement and implementation. We all seek to understand best practice approaches and learn from other’s experiences.

The conference follows and is informed by the release of a detailed Task Force report on IPv6 state-sector adoption in New Zealand available at: http://www.ipv6.org.nz/ipv6-state-sector-adoption/

The conference programme will be dominated by pragmatic sessions. Following an hour of keynote addresses, presentations will be given about IPv6 services available to the Government sector including One.Govt, hosting and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). In the afternoon there will be local IPv6 case studies and three discussion workshops targeted at IPv6 Security, LAN/addressing and Websites/WAN.

The draft programme is here. It will continue to be updated closer to the event.

2012 will be a critical year for progressing IPv6 uptake in the Government sector. This conference will provide excellent support in that process.

Please register now as per the formal invitation as there will be a maximum attendance possible.

IPv6 state-sector adoption – Phase 1 Report

The two delivered a presentation focused on recent IPv6 adoption activity in New Zealand. Results from the Task Force’s CIO and supply-side surveys also  featured, as did a progress report on engagement with New Zealand central and local Government.

A copy of the Task Force’s presentation is available here.

The Summit also featured presentations from New Zealand-based fibre provider FX Networks and Internet Service Provider DTS. These can be viewed below:

Eight Hundred and Sixty Eight Days Afterwards – Jamie Baddeley, FX Networks

Catalyst for IPv6 Adaptation – Tim Price, DTS

In between immersing himself in APNIC’s inner-policy workings, he chaired a session of the ‘IPv6 Transition Plenary’, discussing with content providers what they observed on World IPv6 Day.

Dean also presented at the Asia Pacific IPv6 Task Force Meeting, offering up a primer on the state of IPv6 within New Zealand. His trip report contains some useful observations, and is available below.

Technical Convenor – APNIC32 Trip Report

New Zealand’s Research and Education Advanced Network (REANNZ) was one of this country’s earliest adopters of IPv6, having implemented the protocol on its national backbone, dubbed KAREN, in 2006. By the following year the organisation had gone a step further, deploying internally on its office network, DNS,  and video-conferencing system.

The Crown-owned company’s internal transition to IPv6 went off without a hitch. Network Operations Specialist David Brownlie says, for some staff, the address schema took a little getting used to, but turning it on involved a mere four lines of code!

REANNZ is well and truly living IPv6. This way of life even extends to its in-house skills – not only are its network personnel fully-schooled in IPv6, the organisation recently hired a Computer Science graduate who is au-fait with IPv6, having been exposed to the protocol in every year of his course.

Brownlie notes that there can be a degree of tension between IT decision-makers who were brought up in the IPv4 world and those such as REANNZ’s new graduate living in an all-fibre IPv6 world. But, as time goes by, more network professionals, vendors and application developers are becoming familiar with the new protocol. It is then, he says, that adoption will really start ramping up.

More generally, IPv6 is not, nor has it ever been, an option. “Emerging economies in Asia are committing to widespread IPv6 adoption. Given the importance of trade links with the East, New Zealand organisations must follow suit,” says Brownlie.

REANNZ holds a significant amount of IPv6 address space, with two blocks of /32 – one for New Zealand’s research and tertiary education community and one for schools. Address space is provided free to members on sign-up.

The company has about 150 members. Only a dozen of these have deployed IPv6 in any meaningful way – the leaders tend to be large universities and Crown Research Institutes dealing with business partners in Asia.

While REANNZ doesn’t officially provide IPv6 advice as a member service, it assists where possible, and extols the virtues of IPv6 at every turn. But ultimately, says Brownlie, decisions need to be made internally by each member about what is best for their own organisation.

“It is important to align technology objectives with company objectives. In our experience, those of our members who have been early IPv6 adopters have been those with clear thinking about what they’re in the world to do.”

Much of the teeth-gnashing around IPv6 adoption comes down to persuasiveness of business case and cost. “It can be difficult to get big projects signed off unless there is large return on investment. And, what IPv6 adoption amounts to is a substitution of one functioning protocol with another. IPv4 already works, so, for many organisations, it is easy to mask the problem.”

Expense is another hurdle. Some REANNZ members have baulked when seeing the cost involved in wholesale IPv6 adoption. There is large value attached to firewalls, for instance. Many aren’t IPv6-ready and there is significant money involved in switching them out.

Brownlie suggests IPv6-enabling external applications initially and encourages organisations to experiment with the protocol. “At the moment, given the low level of IPv6 uptake, it’s a unique opportunity to multi-home with IPv4 and IPv6 and find out which applications will support IPv6 and which won’t.”

Make no mistake, the IPv4 protocol is nearly 50 years old and is starting to creak. “It’s an anomaly of the technology world that IPv4 has been used for so long. The entire ICT industry is geared towards adopting new technologies, yet we’ve coped for decades with the ancient way of addressing,” he says.

For more information about REANNZ’s IPv6 activity, including practical technical advice, visit: www.wiki.karen.net.nz/index.php/IPv6