Ipswitch Poll Reveals Gap in IPv6 Readiness among Enterprise Networks

Ipswitch Inc.'s Network Management Division, developer of theWhatsUp Gold suite of IT management solutions, announced that itreleased the results of an online survey which asked networkprofessionals how ready their networks are to transition to the newIPv6 protocol.

According to a release, the survey results, which included morethan 600 respondents, were revealed at the Interop 2011 conferencein Las Vegas at the Ipswitch booth (#pod P11) in the Cisco PartnerPavilion (Booth #1127).

The poll, which asked "What percentage of your networkinfrastructure is IPv6 ready?" produced results showing that 88.0percent of business networks were not fully ready for the change,with two thirds (66.1 percent) saying their networks are only 0-20percent ready, despite the fact that the last blocks of IPv4addresses have already been allocated. The full results were:

-0-20 percent - 66.1 percent

-20-40 percent - 9.6 percent

-40-60 percent - 6.5 percent

-60-80 percent - 5.8 percent

-80-100 percent - 12.0 percent

"While IPv6 provides the ability to greatly expand the number ofdevices on the Internet, it also poses migration, compatibility andmanagement challenges for today's IPv4-based networks," said KevinGillis, VP of product management and strategy at Ipswitch Inc.'sNetwork Management Division. "Our poll shows the need for companiesto develop transition strategies in order to increase IPv6 readinessamong enterprise networks and prevent any future disruption tomission-critical systems."

The company noted that IPv6 is a next-generation IP protocoldesigned to replace IPv4, the Internet protocol most commonly usedthroughout the world and the foundation for most Internetcommunications. With the number of available IPv4 addresses quicklyrunning out, transitioning to IPv6 will soon become a requirementfor enterprise networks. IPv6 enables significant expansion of theIP addresses needed to accommodate the continuously growing numberof worldwide Internet users, and provides additional securityfeatures for Internet traffic. Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold IT managementplatform has supported IPv6 for five years in order to helpenterprises ease the transition to the new protocol.

In order to accelerate IPv6 deployment, "World IPv6 Day" will beheld on June 8, when several websites, including Google, Facebookand Yahoo, will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

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