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Mammoth Enables IPv6 Support Throughout Network

Mammoth Networks announced this month that IPv6 has been enabled throughout its network core, and IPv6 peering has been established with its upstream bandwidth carriers who also support the same protocol. The niche carrier performed the upgrade to allow its Service Provider client base to take advantage of expanded IP blocks and reap the benefits IPv6 promises to router-intensive services.

Mammoth is supporting the IPv6 protocol on Redback SmartEdge routers installed in locations with high amounts of peering such as Denver, Colorado and Seattle, Washington. This service augments Mammoth's expanding IP footprint, currently multi-homed with Tier I carriers like Global Crossing, Level3, NTT and Qwest.

Mammoth customers purchasing bandwidth will see a trickle of IPv6 traffic coming in from supporting carriers during the course of 2009. The brunt of traffic passing as IPv6 will increase through the use of Linux and Unix operating systems, and dual installation of IPv6 on web servers.

IPv6 will gain importance as video and streaming applications outpace rural fiber capacity. The multicast and routing benefits of IPv6 will ease the strain of an increased demand for bandwidth-intensive applications.

"The Internet is not as prepared for video as it should be," states Brian Worthen, Mammoth's head of Business Development. "During the Presidential inauguration, we saw a 38 percent spike in traffic as online viewers logged in from work. In the near future, backbones will have to be significantly expanded without multicast support."

Worthen explained that when the company turned up a Content Delivery Network peer in December, they immediately saw a full twenty percent of their network draw video from that single CDN. Mammoth's network technicians indicated that video demand in early 2008 was less than fifteen percent of their total network traffic, taking second place to file-sharing.

As the supply of IPv4 addresses quickly wane across the Internet (roughly 4 billion IPs are supported under version 4 of the Internet Protocol), IPv6 support will significantly expand the abilities of Service Providers. IPv6 will provide for hundreds of thousands of IPs for each of the 6.5 billion people alive today.

Mammoth Networks is an aggregator of data services, serving fourteen Western states with their layer 2 DSL network and the lower 48 states with their private-line services. Mammoth enables its Partners by erasing the invisible lines of the telecommunications structure, and leveling the playing field for Network Providers. The privately-held company is based in Gillette, Wyoming.

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