A recent survey on IPv6 training and studies at universities and vendors has demonstrated that IPv6 training and courses are way too embryonic to have any critical impact. It is estimated that some 20 million engineers are working on the current Internet worldwide at ISPs, corporate and all other public and private organizations and they will need quality training on IPv6.

More at the IPv6 Forum.

IPv6 Enabling CIFS/SMB Applications

Today IPv6 is no longer the protocol of the future, it is being extensively deployed in production networks. The central pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted in 2010 to 2011. As a result, Governments and organisations world-wide have been mandating its use for a number of years. As a CIFS/SMB developer, the time has come where you can no longer ignore IPv6.

IPv6 is the default protocol in all major operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. CIFS and Active Directory have had support for IPv6 for a number of years.

This paper will address the key issues facing CIFS/SMB developers when migrating their applications to IPv6. It will provide a review of the status of IPv6 in Samba and Windows and describe how CIFS/SMB applications should be migrated to IPv6. This presentation will also include a brief IPv6 API and porting tutorial presenting the key things that developers need to know about IPv6 and the IPv6 socket API in order to effectively use IPv6 in their applications.

Dr David Holder is closely involved in the migration of Samba to IPv6. He has worked with IPv6 for well over a decade and is a regular speaker at global IPv6 conferences.

In the meantime Baltimore Gas and Electricity (BGE) signed a contract for the provision of IPv6 based smart readers to equip their 1.2 million customers using a 'secure, end-to-end IPv6 platform for BGE to deliver on operational benefits today while also ensuring tomorrow's energy challenges can be met with a scalable and open platform'.

The same day , September 1st, we see Cisco and Itron sign a strategic agreement to 'develop a standards-based, highly secure technology for full IPv6 implementation of field area communications to support smart metering, intelligent distribution automation and interfaces to the customer premise '.

One day later, september 2nd, Cisco announces the purchase of Archrock, a pioneer of IPv6 implementation for sensor network and smart grids , cofounder of IPSO , the alliance promoting IP for small objects, and strong proponent of the IETF 6lowpan recommendation which defines the use of IPv6 for low powered objects.

There is definitely an IPv6 smell in the air these late summer days. 

Written by Yves Poppe, Director, Business Development IP Strategy