SLT deploys IPv6

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the nation's number one integrated communications service provider announce the successful deployment of IPv6, the world's latest Internet Protocol (IP) version in its Internet Service Provider (ISP) arm, SLTnet. As a dominant player in the internet market, this is part of the company commitment in taking the country to greater heights and broader and bigger dimensions in the ICT arena by bringing home the latest futuristic technologies that are at the cutting-edge.

SLTnet is the first ISP in Sri Lanka to implement IPv6 services. This is a landmark event, which is in line with the company's passion and commitment to cater to the internet users' needs by providing fast access to information at anytime, anywhere and on any device via its Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture.

Currently all ISPs locally as well as globally provide services by address space for the IP version 4 (IPv4). Being the de-facto protocol for almost all the communication needs of today, the IPv4 address space is actually on the verge of being exhausted. The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Asia Pacific forecasts 2011 to be the final day for making the last allocation.

As the internet technology is rapidly advancing in vast strides, SLT has taken this step in advance to provide a much better and streamlined internet experience to its users. IPv6 is a new version of IP protocol on which the Internet is based.

IP version 6 (IPv6) is proclaimed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to be the saviour of the network world and in order to accomplish this objective IPv6 has been in a state of constant evolution since 1995 to bear rich fruit. This was possible due to the "IP Next Generation (IPng)" breakthrough by IETF in the early 1990s.

The IPv6 address constitutes 128 bits whereas IPv4 is only 32 bits. Compared to the 4.4 billion addresses in IPv4, IPv6 has 340 trillion addresses. The optimistic estimate would allow for 3,911,873,538,269,506,102 addresses per square metre of the surface of the planet earth. According to the way it will be allocated and used, the actual usable IPv6 address space can be much less than the absolute number of IP addresses it contains.

For example, each Local Internet Registry (LIR) like SLT will get a "/32" minimum allocation while each end site will get a "/48" minimum allocation. This will provide ample opportunity to cater to the future IP address demand.