As organized by the Internet Society (ISOC), June 8th is “World IPv6 day”, the global-scale test flight of IPv6. Many major organizations (like Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai,and Limelight Networks) will enable IPv6 on their main websites for a 24 hour period. This will provide a clear idea of web and home device readiness for IPv6.

However, a more pressing question is what the network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers are doing to test network devices for IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence. Supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints and traffic puts tremendous stress on service providers’ underlying network systems, which can potentially introduce latency, degrade network responsiveness, and compromise service-level agreements. At the end of the day, this negatively impacts customer experience – something all service providers need to avoid during this period of adjustment.

Service providers and NEMs need large-scale testing capabilities to ensure their networks, products, and services are IPv6-ready. Whether service providers choose to enable IPv4/IPv6 coexistence using translation, tunneling (both dual-stack lite and IPv6 rapid deployment), or dual stack methods, it is important to measure the functionality and performance of those mechanisms on network equipment prior to deployment.

Network design and configuration requires protocol and traffic stress-testing to identify the scalability limits of each device. It is equally important to validate interoperability of the different network devices, especially given the compatibility risks between IPv4 and IPv6 devices. Pre-deployment testing is the key to successfully creating, transitioning, and maintaining an IPv6 network.

Ixia offers powerful testing tools that emulate IPv4 and IPv6 network endpoints and services to test network equipment in the context of translation, tunneling, and dual stack deployments. The company’s real-world, pre-deployment testing is essential to avoid risk to service reliability, scalability, and quality. Comparative metrics between network equipment also enables service providers to maximize their investment in new and upgraded infrastructure, and best optimize network configurations.

The path to complete global IPv6 connectivity will be lengthy and full of challenges. Test equipment is playing a critical role in validating network readiness for IPv4/IPv6 co-existence, and ensuring a smooth transition path for service providers and end users alike.

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Website: Ixia IPv6 solutions