Juniper IPv6 development lags behind Cisco

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Network equipment vendor Juniper recently said it doesn't plan to provide IPv6 web content until at least 2012, putting it roughly two years behind its biggest competitor Cisco, Network World reports.

While Cisco claims it has already started testing IPv6 on a dedicated website, Juniper is working toward supporting the next-generation internet protocol standard for its main page, according to Network World. A company executive said it will focus on the "multi-decade-long" transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

"We could have our website accessible by IPv6 the same way that Cisco and others are doing it," said Dave Ward, Juniper Fellow and chief technology officer of its Infrastructure Products Group. "We could have an intermediary gateway that receives IPv6 queries and translates them to IPv4. That's an extremely fast way to get it done, but it's also not in the spirit of trying to enable IPv6 on the web."

According to Network World, the IP addresses under the current standard, IPv4, are quickly running out. To solve this, website operators are switching to IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses and can support a significantly more devices.