ISP Aquiss Finally Completes Full Rollout of IPv6 Addresses
UK ISP Aquiss has been offering both IPv4 and IPv6 internet addresses alongside their fixed line broadband packages since 2015, although until recently some of their other services had not yet been able to benefit. The good news is that their entire network estate and products can now opt to use v6 addresses.
Internet protocol (IP) addresses are a seamless technology that helps to connect your computer/devices with the online world (like an internet ID number for your connection). At present most people still connect via the old IPv4 addressing standard but those have now been depleted (here), as such many providers have been steadily moving to introduce IPv6 addresses.
In Aquiss’s case various legacy systems, VoIP platforms, web hosting and non-customer facing internal platforms still needed to be updated in order to support IPv6. However, as of February 2020, Aquiss has concluded their rollout programme and enabled IPv6 to their web hosting platforms, allow customers to serve their websites both via IPv4 and IPv6.
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Steve Dodd, CTO of Aquiss, said:
“We started our IPv6 rollout programme back in 2013, enabling our network to support IPv6 and in turn future-proofing our customers’ broadband connections and demonstrating at the same time Aquiss’s commitment to giving customers the best broadband experience.
We encountered a number of challenges along the way, with a number of legacy systems unable to support IPv6 and software vendors who they themselves were behind in their development and support of IPv6. We finalised our rollout by introducing IPv6 to our web hosting platforms; allowing thousands of websites to be served via both IPv6 and IPv4 in dual stack.”
Meanwhile the provider’s MD, Martin Pitt, has that he intends to “accelerate” the adoption of IPv6 among their broadband base during 2020 by “encouraging customers to enable support where possible.” Such work may be difficult since Aquiss does not bundle its own routers with their broadband packages.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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So Aquiss have finally caught up with some of their competition.
Why is this even news?
I’m guessing you never actually read the news piece.
I don’t see public facing IPv6 with Zen, Sky, BT, Plusnet. Maybe the competition would like to catch us up.
You can get IPv6 on Sky, BT and Zen’s broadband packages.
@Mark,
I’m aware of that and we have had IPv6 on our broadband starting in 2013, however, my point being that they still have public parts of their network which are IPv4. Try pinging Zen, Sky and BT websites, they are still IPv4.
I have to agree with David. BT and other’s have been offering this for a while now via dual stack (ipv4-ipv6). While the news that Aquiss is offering this is good. I’m still waiting for native ipv6. When mass adaption for ipv6 begins in the near future hopefully you could beat the competition Martin for being the first provider to offer it.
@Mark
Yeah, but unless something has recently changed, Zen won’t give you IPv6 on a leased line (one reason we declined buying one from them for a project about a year ago)
Good a viable alternative for AAISP now when I need more usage 😉
IPv6 is pretty widespread these days, the biggest dinosaur is TalkTalk. Sky managed over 90% rollout in 2016. Even EE mobile have had IPv6 for years.
Virgin Media still doesn’t offer IPv6.
Customers have been asking about this on the VM Help forum thread “IPv6 support on Virgin media” thread for almost TEN YEARS. Still no progress, VM obviously don’t want to rush things!
It’s not quite rolled out to the ‘entire network estate’… No IPv6 for smtp.aquiss.net plesk.aquiss.net ebilling.aquiss.net 🙂