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CIRA participates in World IPv6 Day

OTTAWA – June 6, 2012 – Adoption of the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, is growing in Canada, according to information from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and Quebec City-based Viagenie. IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol (IP) address standard that will eventually replace the IPv4 protocol which most Internet services use today.

CIRA has been working with Viagenie to develop a tool called Radarv6 to measure IPv6 adoption trends based on the .CA zone. The tool has been tracking trends in Canada for the past three months, and some key findings include the following:

  • .CA websites reachable by IPv6 have increased by 50 per cent in the last three months.
  • Over 500,000 .CA domains are served by Domain Name System servers reachable by IPv6.
  • Canadian organizations owning IPv6 address space have increased by 10 per cent over the last three months.
  • .CA email servers capable of receiving email over IPv6 have increased by 300 percent over the last three months.

CIRA released this information on a day dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of adopting IPv6, called 2012 World IPv6 Launch (www.worldipv6launch.org/). More information about IPv6 readiness in Canada is available at www.cira.ca/radarv6. CIRA is proud to take this leading role in IPv6 adoption in Canada. While participating organizations are encouraged to permanently enable IPv6 on their products and services as of June 6, 2012, CIRA’s website was permanently made IPv6 ready for World IPv6 Day in June 2011.

More information about IPv6 adoption in Canada will be released later in 2012, when the tool developed by CIRA and Viagenie will be made public.

There are a finite number of addresses, about 4.3 billion, in the IPv4 address-numbering system. As the Internet rapidly grows, the Internet is quickly running out of these addresses, necessitating the new protocol, IPv6.  Without IPv6, the Internet will not be able to incorporate new users, applications and devices. In February 2011, the final blocks of IPv4 addresses were allocated. IPv6 improves security and efficiency and provides exponentially more addresses, approximately 340 undecillion, or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456.

“It is critical for organizations and individuals to prepare for the transition to IPv6 to ensure the continued growth of the Internet and have their products and services available to all Internet users around the world,” said Jacques Latour, CIRA’s Director of Information Technology. “Organizations that adopt IPv6 can offer their stakeholders a larger, more robust Internet experience, and be positioned as a technological leader.”

CIRA encourages individual Internet users to contact their Internet Service Provider (ISP) to see if they are IPv6 ready. CIRA also encourages all Canadian organizations to work with their information technology (IT) teams and suppliers to ensure they are ready for the transition to the new protocol.

For more information about 2012 World IPv6 Launch, please visit the event website at www.worldipv6launch.org/.

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About CIRA
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority is the member-driven organization that manages Canada’s .CA domain name registry, develops and implements policies that support Canada’s Internet community, and represents the .CA registry internationally.

For more information, please contact:

Tanya O’Callaghan
Communications Manager, Canadian Internet Registration Authority
(613) 237-5335 ext. 262
tanya.ocallaghan@cira.ca