Comcast Gearing Up for IPv6

Comcast has announced the availability of IPv6 transit for wholesale customers. It demonstrated its end-to-end network readiness for the latest version last week at a meeting of the North American Network Operators Group.

Comcast says the pool of available IPv4 addresses is running out, so v6 is becoming increasingly necessary. The cable giant has upgraded its backbone routers to support IPv6 and is now capable of passing both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.

Comcast is now tasked with bringing v6 over its DOCSIS 3.0 network and into the home. The company wants technology that will bridge the gap between those devices and Web sites that support IPv6 and those that don’t. For example, some home gateways only understand v4. Windows XP only support a little bit of v6, according to Comcast. Since it would be a challenge to get v6 operational on the average person’s Windows XP computer today, the company will need to weave network address translation into the backbone network between the v4 and v6 technologies.