"Comcast plans to enter into broadband IPv6 technical trials later this year and into 2010," TBarry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast tells Internet News. "Planning for general deployment is underway." Despite the endless reports about how the United States was a gluttonous consumer of iPv4 addresses that would run out in 2011 or 2012, news on this front has been relatively quiet the last year given the sour economy. One Comcast insider in Michigan tells Broadband Reports the company is already testing some closed network routes of IPv6.

This week found Uncle Sam once again insisting that the migration to IPv6 was a priority as the government released its latest roadmap (pdf) to get us all safely to IPv6 -- sometime. The 4.3 billion current IP addresses will be running out sooner than later, and despite our disproportionate consumption of said addresses, we've been among the slower countries to do something about it. As many of you know IPv6 delivers nearly as many 128-bit IP addresses as there are stars in the sky.

• No IPv6 For UK Broadband Users [aaisp.blogspot.com]
• Delaware court stays iPCS-Sprint suit over WiMax [businessweek.com]
• Tackle broadband 'duopoly', UK regulator Ofcom urged [computerweekly.com]
• Portland Seizes MetroFi Muni Wi-Fi Gear [xchangemag.com]
• Quantum cryptography now a reality [theinquirer.net]
• TiVo Collects $104 Million From EchoStar [multichannel.com]
• Time Warner Cable Brings Web Video to TV in Hawaii [cable360.net]
• Porn, abuse, depravity - and how they plan to stop it [theregister.co.uk]

Arbor Networks tracked 15 exabytes worth of Internet traffic from June 2007 through June 2008, and found that the amount of inter-domain IPv6 traffic measured over the entire year was just 0.0026 percent of overall IPv4 traffic. In other words, we're not migrating to the new spec quickly enough before we run out of IPv4 addresses -- something that's expected to happen in 2011. "I don't think anyone thinks that there is a migration happening," said Scott Iekel-Johnson, lead study author and principal software engineer for Arbor. "There doesn't seem to be a pickup in usage across any significant portion" of the regions tracked by the study, he notes.

• Ericsson and Lenovo Doing Mobile Broadband [DigitalTrends.com]
• UK regulator says if Brits want faster network, they will have to pay to build it [UK Broadband User Group]
• Greek government aims to make country a broadband hub by linking Europe and Middle East through new underwater cables [Nasdaq.com]
• A New Slant on VoIPo3G [SeekingAlpha.com]
• IP Version 6 switches on [ComputerWeekly.com]
• BitTorrent admin's police bail extended (again) as police gather more evidence [The Register]
• Congress To Hold Antitrust Hearing On Microsoft's Yahoo Bid [InformtionWeek.com]
• ActiveX Under Seige: Facebook, MySpace Image Uploaders Vulnerable [eWeek]

* For those interested, DSLReports.com now hosts some blogs for your reading pleasure. Please be sure to check out the "About DSLReports.com" Site Blog by DSLR owner Justin; keep up with MS related news in DSLR resident Microsoft MVP MSeng's blog "Microsoft Watch"; read about various interesting computer related tidbits in "The Burnfolder" blog from DSLR moderator rjackson, and you can also catch industry news and commentary in the "Broadband Bytes" blog. The blogs can be found by opening the "News" tab on your DSLR control panel and clicking on the blog you are interested in.

Harrisonburg, VA has made headlines for its work towards becoming the first city with a citywide IPv6 network but what does it mean to be a trailblazer in this area? It means, in part, that there are no examples to work from so when problems come up with realizing the new system, it’s up to Harrisonburg to figure them out. But they seem to be rising to the challenge; when they needed to figure out how to incorporate both existing and new IP standards into the network, they simply made the new software themselves. If it goes well, this could put Harrisonburg on the map as one of the most forward-thinking Internet cities in the U.S.

The city of Harrisonburg, Virginia, will be the first to have a citywide IPv6 broadband network, according to infoWorld. Harrisonburg has partnered with James Madison University and Virginia ISP Visual Link in order to create a testbed for IPv6 services and applications. The network will be a privately funded, open access Wi-Fi/fiber model and is being deployed in stages across the city's 17-square-mile footprint. Experts have been concerned that the U.S. is lagging when it comes to IPv6 implementation.

In the "largest such survey ever conducted," 86% of a group of more than 1,000 experts on IPv6 say they worry that the head start of other nations will hurt the United States, reports Fortune. The survey was conducted by network equipment maker Juniper Networks in October and found that by 2008, 44% of IT spending would be for products that were ready for IPv6. That should equate to some $62 billion in purchases that year.

Bob Cringley chimes in on the migration to IPv6 over at PBS, and explores how the shift will positively impact security and traffic management. He then explores how this country's adoption of the standard will likely be a mess, and suggests we look to China's deployment of IPv6 as a successful roadmap. If this topic is unfamiliar to you, check out our IPv6 FAQ and our IPv6 Forum. Also of interest is this recent Q&A with IPv6 Forum founder Latif Ladid via Computer World.

When Google hired TCP/IP co-creator Vint Cerf and began gobbling up dark fiber, speculation ran rampant that the company was getting into the ISP business. Ultimately the company only decided to offer Wi-Fi in a few locations, and the less sexy reality seemed to be they were simply beefing up their network architecture in preparation for bandwidth-sucking apps like G-Drive. Eweek today continues the speculation, suggesting that Google is cooking up IPv6 applications and services. Also note: the Googleplex.

"Let me reiterate how pathetic we are in the U.S.," notes Alex Lightman, chief executive and president for IPv6 Summit, in a piece on IPv6 at Techweb. "In the U.S., we have between 1,000 to 2,000 IPv6 users, whereas Japan has between 200,000 and 500,000." The piece offers up a pretty good projected timeline for American IPv6 deployment: federal agencies must have upgrade plans ready by February, with compliance by 2008. "I predict the U.S. government won't use or accept IPv4 packets after 2017," says Lightman.

A writer to Dave Farber's IP Mailing list points out that Earthlink Labs has come up with a way for users to tinker with IPv6, the addressing scheme that will replace IPv4. According to their website, they've released custom firmware for the Linksys WRT54G, allowing it to "a) acquire a publicly routeable /64 IPv6 prefix, b) provide IPv6 addresses from that prefix to hosts on the home network, and c) route IPv6 home network traffic to the greater IPv6 Internet." Earthlink R&D has also created a support forum for those eager to tinker with the firmware.

The shift from IPv4 to IPv6 could cost the United States as much as $75 billion, reports Internet News. The deployment cost, if you recall, is one of the reasons there's a camp of individuals who think IPv4 is good enough (that, and they claim NAT works "well enough"). If this topic is unfamiliar to you, check out our IPv6 FAQ and our IPv6 Forum. Also of interest is this recent Q&A with IPv6 Forum founder Latif Ladid via Computer World.

Last week we mentioned how some didn't think there was any rush to migrate to IPv6 because it's expensive, and NAT works "well enough". IPv6 Forum founder Latif Ladid writes a piece for Computer World (via Slashdot) that gives a little background on IPv6, and touches on the fight between IPv4 and NAT, and IPv6.

There's apparently such a thing as "IPv4 loyalists", note Slashdot and Computerworld, who aren't keen to advance to the next step in Internet architecture, IPv6 (see our IPv6 FAQ and our IPv6 Forum). Amongst their two strongest arguments are the fact ISPs can't afford it, and that NAT works. "Everything over http works just fine right now," claims Geoff Huston, a scientist for the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. "NAT could be the perfect success. It was never planned, but it is everywhere and it works," he says.

Global Crossing today announced that they've deployed IPv6 natively across their network, and that their global MPLS-based IP VPN infrastructure will be fully IPv6-enabled by the end of 2005. As we've mentioned, all government agencies have been given until November 15 to assign an official to coordinate the move to IPv6 - and conduct inventories of all networking hardware. For more on IPv6, check out our IPv6 FAQ and our IPv6 Forum.

The Office of Management and Budget last week released a memo (pdf) that gives agencies until November 15 to assign an official to coordinate the move to IPv6 and conduct inventories of all networking hardware, reports Washington Technology. Have no idea what IPv6 is? Check out our IPv6 FAQ and our IPv6 Forum.

Despite defense department migration and large test-beds like the Moonv6 project, interest in the migration from IPv4 to IPv6 seems luke-warm among American industry and government leadership, according to a recent survey by Juniper Networks. The Washington Post takes a look at this week's IPv6 summit in Reston, where 500 "technologists" are trying to find out why.

Internet News reports that MCI is giving supercomputer company Cray their very own IPv6 network so they can test next-generation networking for their next generation hardware. The major push for IPv6 migration continues to come from the Asia-Pac region, which has frequently complained Europe and the U.S. are dragging their feet on the migration. Don't have a clue what IPv6 is? Visit our IPv6 forum and read our IPv6 FAQ.

The first backbone of China's IPv6 based CERNET2 is going live, reports China Daily. "CERNET2 is the biggest next-generation Internet (using IPv6) network in operation in the world and connects 25 universities in 20 cities," claims the article. "The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second."

Xinhua News and China Daily report that China has launched CERNET2, which is believed to be the world's largest current IPv6 network. The network connects twenty-five Universities in twenty different cities, connecting the universities at speeds between one and ten gigabits per second.