IPv6 Forum, a worldwide consortium of vendors, internet service vendors, national research and Education Networks and international ISPs, has unveiled the new "IPv6 SIP Ready Logo Program," which marries the SIP and IPv6.

 

Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) or "SIP" was developed by IETF MMUSIC Working Group in an initiative to create a more robust standard compared to the H.323, which is a current widely used standard for voice sessions. It was supposed to satisfy the needs of the rising internet services such as video conferencing, unified messaging, and voice chatting and many more.

 

Meanwhile, Internet Protocol Version 6 or "IPv6" is the next-generation Internet protocol standard that was designed to help businesses build large networks. It is claimed that the IPv6 offers the potential to build a much more powerful Internet, with vastly larger scale compared to the current situation. Addresses in IPv4 have only 32 bits, allowing for only about 4 billion addresses, but in IPv6 it is 128-bit that will result in some 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses.

 

By marrying the abilities of both IPv6 and SIP, the IPv6 Forum has developed the IPv6 Ready Logo Program which is a conformance and interoperability testing program intended to increase user confidence by demonstrating that IPv6 is available now and is ready to be used. The program will be helpful in checking protocol implementation and authenticate interoperability of IPv6 products, enable access to free self-testing tools and deploy IPv6 Ready Logo testing laboratories across the globe dedicated to provide testing assistance or services.

 

Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum & Emeritus Trustee Internet Society has asserted that it's high time to move to end-2-end. IPv6 and SIP are natively designed for it and the best way around something is to go through it.

 

Yanick Pouffary, IPv6 Forum (Ready & Enabled) Logo programs chairperson and IPv6 Forum Fellow & NAv6TF Technology Director, said the partnership between the IPv6 Ready Logo and the SIP Forum (News - Alert) is a testimony of the importance to have an industry-wide measure of IPv6 capabilities and interoperability.

 

'By testing these two intertwined technologies, the SIPv6 Logo is a great move forward," said said Erica Johnson, IPv6 Ready Logo Regional Officer, IPv6 Forum Fellow. "Given the importance of testing in verifying interoperability, this will be a great building block toward seamless coexistence.'