Lucent, Global Crossing Move Ahead On IPv6

Lucent Technologies said Tuesday it has been chosen by Europe’s TeliaSonera to prepare the European communications service provider for large-scale migration to the next Internet Protocol generation in 2006.

Also this week, Global Crossing reported that it has deployed IPv6 natively across its global IP network.

The pieces of IPv6 are gradually coming together as the next IP generation promises to deliver improvements over IPv4 that range from nearly unlimited IP addresses and beefed up mobile services to improved performance and security. (The new IP version skips a fifth iteration and is jumping directly to IPv6.)

“We started working on the migration solution 18 months ago,” said a spokesman for Lucent, who added that the TeliaSonera rollout may be the first to take place in Europe. He added that Lucent is working to develop the technology with other customers.

The Lucent multi-year migration solution is centered on software and services to be provided by Lucent Worldwide Services. The features include security planning, IP configuration automation process design, IP acquisition and allocation guidance as well as DNS and IPv6 knowledge transfer.Lucent’s next generation IP address and network management solution is called VitalQIP, which has been developed to simplify the management of both DNS and DHCP services. The move to IPv6 is expected to take at least a few years. The U.S. government has been pushing the technology forward and has mandated its deployment in federal agency core networks by 2008.

Lucent said its Worldwide Services unit will act as project consultants during TeliaSonera’s migration to IPv6. “Lucent Technologies is also helping TeliaSonera integrate IP and DNS management with its existing business process,” Lucent stated.

TeliaSonera is a pan-European mobile and fixed line service provider. Headquartered in Sweden, TeliaSonera said it plans to inaugurate IPv6 in Sweden first, before it brings the solution to its other subsidiaries.

As for Global Crossing, the firm said this week that IPv6 is a standard service component in its global Internet Access Services. Global Crossing said its Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) solution will be fully IPv6-enabled by the end of 2005.

Global Crossing has been signing up customers to use its IPv6 features and the firm pointed to Ireland’s HEAnet national research center as a successful user of Global Crossing’s IPv6-enabled global backbone. In an endorsement of Global Crossing’s services, HEAnet senior network engineer Dave Wilson said in a statement: “As more new applications come on stream, the constraints of legacy IPv4 are becoming increasingly onerous and both security and business suffer as a result.”0