The appointment of a co-ordinator – Grant Symons – is intended to catalyse the Task Force’s engagement with industry and key target sectors. Grant is an independent contractor specialising in project and relationship management. He commenced a six month, part time contract on 1 June 2010.

The Task Force continues to investigate issues around training. Development of a more structured training program has begun, with the intention being that training should be relatively low cost and can be done by people who have practical experience.

A New Zealand-specific IPv6 certification programme is also being considered. The current thinking revolves around a 3 tier certification model (gold, silver, bronze), but details are yet to be decided and refined.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that a second IPv6 Hui will be held this year. However, the Task Force will be repeating its IPv6 survey. The survey provides valuable information regarding the state of IPv6 readiness in New Zealand and greatly assists the Task Force in developing and refining its overall action plan.

The Australian IPv6 Summit is being held later this year, and the Task Force will send a representative to present an overall progress report.

The Tech-Sig mail list group continues to be active, with consistently high numbers of posts. Feedback globally is that the Tech-Sig has a favourable signal to noise ratio and is stimulating good discussion.

Finally, the Task Force‘s finances are in healthy shape following receipt of grants funding from InternetNZ.

Federal government agencies in the United States for instance have been required to run IPv6 since mid-2008, and the Korean government is making IPv6 mandatory in the public sector by 2010.

New Zealand organisations must position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities IPv6 offers to innovative users of the Internet and developers of new technology.

Those that will benefit by the implementation of IPv6 include:

• Government, health and education
• Operations, administration and management
• New technology end-users and consumers
• Defence forces and industry
• Banking and security organisations
• Research and education networks
• Transition technology strategists
• Convergence technologies like VoIP and ENUM
• Mobility and sensor network technologists
• Regional and rural interest groups
• Computer and network service providers
• Numbering and addressing organisations.

The Hui tackled head-on the need to develop roadmaps for industry and corporate networks to implement IPv6 in New Zealand.

Key speakers included ‘Father of the Internet’ Vint Cerf, Tokyo University’s Hiroshi Esaki, Tony Hain from Cisco Systems, and Tony Hill and Kevin Karp from IPv6Now.

Video and audio recordings of the Wellington Hui are available at the following link:

http://www.r2.co.nz/20090821

Presentations:

Future Proofing Your Internet (Murray Milner, Chair)

Internet Evolution Towards IPv6 and beyond (Vint Cerf, Google)

IPv6 related activities in Japan (Hiroshi Esaki, Tokyo University)

Ministerial Address (Hon. Nathan Guy)

Tony Hain presentation IPv6 Hui (Tony Hain, Cisco Systems)

IPv6 Readiness Survey Presentation (Richard Wood, InternetNZ)

2009 New Zealand IPv6 Readiness Survey – Summary

Murray Milner – Future Proofing Your Internet (Murray Milner, Chair)

Internet Protocol version 6 – the Australian Story (Tony Hill, IPv6Now)

IPv6 case study summary – Massey University (Glen Eustace, Massey University)

Case study – Massey University (Massey University)

IPv6 case study summary – University of Auckland (Brian Carpenter, University of Auckland)

Case study – University of Auckland (University of Auckland)

Case study Kevin Karp StudentNet (Kevin Karp, IPv6Now)

Case study – FX Networks (Jamie Baddeley & Mike Plant, FX Networks)

Case study – NZRS Implementing IPv6 in the Enterprise (Jay Daley, NZRS; Andrew Ruthven, Catalyst)

Case study Microsoft (Brett Roberts, Microsoft New Zealand)

IPv6 Hui Presentation – The Roadmap (Mark Barlow, Telecom New Zealand)

IPv6 Implementation Lessons – Kevin Karp (Kevin Karp, IPv6Now)

Network Design Considerations for IPv6 – Dean Pemberton (Dean Pemberton, Prophecy Networks)

Tertiary presentation – IPv6 Hui (Andy Linton, Victoria University; Brian Carpenter, University of Auckland)

Encouragingly, more than half of respondents said they were at least adequately informed about IPv6, and 70 percent were aware that all IPv4 addresses would be allocated by 2012.

Many organisations however had no plans to IPv6-enable their customer facing services, and for those that did the transition would mostly begin two years hence.

The survey suggested that the majority of networks support IPv6 or are upgradeable, but for most respondents IPv6 was not a factor in their purchasing decisions.

There was some good news coming from the survey in terms of the support available internally and from contractors, with 43 per cent having access to in-house support and 49 percent to outsourced.

The survey highlights are available at the following link (PowerPoint file):
2009 New Zealand IPv6 Readiness Survey