In 2017, 237 campuses of education and research institutions throughout the national territory became able to traffic data in IPv6. In this way, the traffic volume through this protocol reached rates of 5 Gbps in the academic network. The result was achieved by the RNP IPv6 allocation project, which sets the access networks of academic institutions to encourage compliance with the new protocol.

In the previous year, the project facilitated the IPv6 implementation process in 546 units of 103 institutions in 24 Brazilian states. In this way, the traffic volume in IPv6 was eight times higher in the academic network, in the period between May and November 2016.

The initiative to launch an IPv6 allocation project in the academic community was motivated by the IPv4 address exhaustion, announced by the Brazilian Network Information Centre of Ponto BR (NIC.Br), and by the IPv6 Use Dissemination Plan of the Ministry of Planning, Development and Management (MP), which recommends the adoption of IPv6 by September 2018.

One of the measures adopted by RNP was to change its IPv4 block allocation policy in March 2017. With the decision, only blocks of up to /25 (128 addressable hosts) could be allocated every six months after justification of imminent need. In parallel, RNP encouraged the allocation of blocks in IPv6, one /48 per campus. "New IPv6 blocks can be requested at any time by the user organizations, as they deem necessary", says RNP’s Operations Manager, Janice Ribeiro.

Federal universities and institutes interested in implementing IPv6 should seek the technical representatives of their institutions or the RNP Point of Presence in their state. They can also send an email to registro@rnp.br.

Also refer to the  RNP’s recommendations document for the transition to IPv6.

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