GÉANT IPv6 Test Programme: GTPv6

Welcome to the home of the GTPv6 project.

The GÉANT project is the successor to QUANTUM, the project under which the European TEN-155 network was established. Where TEN-155 offered connectivity between National Research Networks of speeds up to 155Mbps, and in some instances 622Mbps, GÉANT will deliver multi-gigabit capacity. The network will also be extended into Eastern Europe.

As part of the GÉANT project, a Test Programme has been established to evaluate and deploy new network technologies on the core network. This programme is being defined and operated by the TF-NGN (Task Force - Next Generation Networks), just as TF-TANT did for the test programme within QUANTUM. The TF-NGN activity is a joint venture of DANTE and TERENA.

One of the pilot areas is IPv6. Under TF-TANT, the IPv6 pilot and test work was done within QTPv6. The QTPv6 work involved studying four areas of interest, namely applications, DNS, interoperability and multihoming, and the deployment of a test network that, where possible, ran native IPv6 connections. The network featured a core Telebit TBC2000 router, to which participants connected via either IPv6 over 512Kbit ATM PVCs or IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels.

As part of the new GÉANT work programme, new work items have been agreed for study under GTPv6, and a new IPv6 pilot network deployment is being proposed. This new deployment will be much closer to a production-like network.