IPv6 adoption is moving ahead rapidly, with companies like Cisco pushing the protocol and more developers learning to work with it. This week, Comcast and Time Warner Cable said they'll extend IPv6 to more customers this year, and probably all by 2013. Last year, many companies reported an "iPv6 brain drain" as content providers pushed distributors to incorporate the protocol into their products and services. Speaking in Denver, Comcast's chief IPv6 architect, John Brzozowski, said the company is "happily on our way to nationwide IPv6 deployment," and expects fully half its network to be using the protocol by the end of the second quarter. Full deployment should be completed next year. Meanwhile, Time Warner's Director of Network Technology Lee Howard said 100,000 customers will be on iPV6 networks by early June. Like Brzozowski, he expects his company's deployments to continue into 2013. Cox Communications is being more cautious, focusing on delivering iPv6 networks to optical-service business customers, and plans to have three trial markets in play by December. Says the industry site Light Reading Cable:

All three companies have decided to go native dual stack, essentially deploying IPv4 and IPv6 side-by-side throughout their network. This is considered the most graceful solution to deploying IPv6 while continuing to support IPv4, but is often also the most expensive, which has led some carriers to consider transition strategies such as tunneling and Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation.

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