An online survey, carried out by Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management Division, asked network professionals of various comapnies how ready their networks were to transition to the new IPv6 protocol. There was more than 600 respondents and the results were revealed at the Intertop 2011 conference in Las Vegas.

IPv6 is a next-generation IP protocol designed to replace IPv4. The number of available IPv4 addresses are running out and thus transition to IPv6 will soon become a requirement for enterprise networks. IPv6 enables expansion of IP addresses needed to accommodate the continuously growing number internet users and also provides security features for internet traffic.

Results showed that 88.0 % of business networks were not fully ready for the change, of which 66.1% of them saying that their networks were prepared not more than 20%, though the last blocks of IPv4 addresses have already been allocated.

Below is the full result of the survey:

• 0-20% – 66.1%
• 20-40% – 9.6%
• 40-60% – 6.5%
• 60-80% – 5.8%
• 80-100% – 12.0%

According to Kevin Gillis, vice president of product management and strategy at Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management Division, though IPv6 provides better facilities, it also poses more challenges for IPv4 based networks. Thus the companies need to develop strategies to increase IPv6 readiness among enterprise networks and prevent any future disruption to mission-critical systems.

‘World IPv6 Day’ will be held on June 8, 2011, to accelerate IPv6 deployment. On this occasion several major websites like, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

Source: ContinuityCentral