Google: IPv6 is easy, not expensive

25.03.2009
Google engineers say it was not expensive and required only a small team of developers to enable all of the company's applications to support IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

"We can provide all Google services over IPv6," said Google network engineer Lorenzo Colitti during a held here Tuesday at a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Colitti said a "small, core team" spent 18 months enabling IPv6, from the initial network architecture and software engineering work, through a pilot phase, until Google over IPv6 was made publicly available. Google engineers worked on the as a 20% project -- meaning it was in addition to their regular work -- from July 2007 until January 2009. 

Building a pilot IPv6 network "was not expensive," said Colitti, who recommended rolling out IPv6 in stages. "There's nothing inherently unreliable about IPv6."

Google is already reaping the benefits of IPv6. "It's refreshingly simple" to look at a network with globally addressable devices, Colitti said.

Google's comments at the IETF meeting come days after the Web leader held a in Mountain View, Calif., for IPv6 implementers.