FSCC begins utilization of IPv6 across networking

Fort Scott Community College has rolled out a new network service across their six major campuses. All student and public lab machines now have full IPv6 connectivity to other IPv6 resources around the world.

FSCC's DNS and Web servers now use the protocol as well, and anyone at an IPv6 institution around the world who visits www.fortscott.edu will be served up the pages using IPv6. This milestone puts FSCC ahead of all Kansas universities and even most Internet2 universities across the country in terms of IPv6 adoption.

Internet Protocol version 6 is the newest iteration of the Internet protocol for packet-switched networks. Although IPv4 is still the predominant protocol connecting nearly all Internet connected PC's, the Internet Engineering Task Force has designated IPv6 as the successor to version 4 for general use on the Internet.

FSCC Director of Information Systems Casey Russell said IPv6 is gaining ground in research and government installations, as well as in education settings such as FSCC.

"Adoption overseas, particularly in Asia is growing quickly," she said. "Adoption in U.S. corporate settings, however, is still very slow."

This is not Russell's first IPv6 implementation. Before returning to FSCC in the summer of 2005, Russell worked as a Network Engineer for the Kansas Research and Education Network in Lawrence and among other things, spoke to university and community college I.T. personnel about IPv6. His daily duties at KanREN required work with advanced and research protocols like IPv6 and IPv4 Multicast.

Russell said a close relationship with KanREN makes the implementation possible.

"FSCC is able to provide an IPv6 network that extends beyond our own network borders because of the Internet2 connectivity provided by KanREN. Because the switching and routing hardware at FSCC supported IPv6 already, FSCC's I.T. staff was able to implement IPv6 with only a minimum amount of time and at no cost to the institution," he said.

It was with the help of the FSCC I.T. Department and the knowledge of their staff that this transition occurred. KanREN is a recognized Internet2 leader in IPv6 adoption and was the first state research and education network to fully incorporate IPv6 into its existing network infrastructure.

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games were a landmark event in terms of IPv6 deployment. For the first time, a major multinational event relied on IPv6 for all of its network operations. It is believed that the Olympics provided the largest showcase of IPv6 technology since the inception of the network.