[May 10, 2011]

Ipswitch Poll Shows Disturbing Gap in IPv6 Readiness among Enterprise Networks

Ipswitch (News - Alert) Inc.'s Network Management Division, developer of the WhatsUp Gold suite of innovative IT management solutions, today released the results of an online survey which asked network professionals how ready their networks are to transition to the new IPv6 protocol. The survey results, which included more than 600 respondents, were revealed at the Interop (News - Alert) 2011 conference in Las Vegas at the Ipswitch booth (#pod P11) in the Cisco Partner Pavilion (Booth #1127).

The poll, which asked "What percentage of your network infrastructure is IPv6 ready?" produced results showing that 88.0% of business networks were not fully ready for the change, with two thirds (66.1%) saying their networks are only 0-20% ready, despite the fact that the last blocks of IPv4 addresses have already been allocated. The full results were:

• 0-20% - 66.1%
• 20-40% - 9.6%
• 40-60% - 6.5%
• 60-80% - 5.8%
• 80-100% - 12.0%

"While IPv6 provides the ability to greatly expand the number of devices on the Internet, it also poses migration, compatibility and management challenges for today's IPv4-based networks," said Kevin Gillis, vice preident of product management and strategy at Ipswitch Inc.'s Network Management Division. "Our poll shows the need for companies to develop transition strategies in order to increase IPv6 readiness among enterprise networks and prevent any future disruption to mission-critical systems."

IPv6 is a next-generation IP protocol designed to replace IPv4, the Internet protocol most commonly used throughout the world and the foundation for most Internet communications. With the number of available IPv4 addresses quickly running out, transitioning to IPv6 will soon become a requirement for enterprise networks. IPv6 enables significant expansion of the IP addresses needed to accommodate the continuously growing number of worldwide Internet users, and provides additional security features for Internet traffic. Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold IT management platform has supported IPv6 for five years in order to help enterprises ease the transition to the new protocol.

In order to accelerate IPv6 deployment, "World IPv6 Day" will be held on June 8, 2011, when several major websites, including Google (News - Alert), Facebook and Yahoo, will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

Ipswitch encouraged customer participation in the IPv6 poll through its user community website, WUGspace. For more information regarding this survey or for complete results, please visit www.whatsupgold.com.

About the Network Management Division of Ipswitch, Inc.

The Network Management Division of Ipswitch, Inc. is the developer of the WhatsUp Gold suite of innovative IT management software. WhatsUp Gold is deployed on over 100,000 networks worldwide and delivers comprehensive network, system, application and event log monitoring and management solutions for small and medium businesses and enterprises. The award winning solution supports a wide range of IT management tasks including automated discovery, mapping, real-time monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting and reporting.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, Ipswitch, Inc. has offices in Atlanta and Augusta (News - Alert), Georgia and Madison, Wisconsin, as well as its European headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Ipswitch sells its products through distributors, resellers and OEMs worldwide.

To learn more about WhatsUp Gold, please visit: http://www.whatsupgold.com/products/download/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]