Yelena Voronina: 20 years is only the beginning

MSK-IX General Director Yelena Voronina and ITC General Director Alexei Platonov kicked off the event. In their opening address, they marked the important anniversary for MSK-IX, noting that the company's success hinges on its robust academic background and collaboration with partners. Yelena Voronina went on to remind the audience that the transition to IPv6 is expected to take 20-25 years: "That said, 20 years is not too long, at least for MSK-IX this period went by very quickly, so we will hardly notice the transition to the new protocol."

Sergei Kiselev, MSK-IX Development Project Head, said that MSK-IX currently ranks fourth in the global ranking of traffic exchange points and leads the pack in the number of unique connected networks. MSK-IX exchange points cover all the Federal Districts of Russia. The company serves over 500 customers, and its total traffic has almost reached 1.5 Tb/s. Today, all company networks fully support IPv6 and use this protocol for customer connections and traffic exchange.

Maxim Burtikov from RIPE NCC talked about IPv6 deployment. Most companies supporting IPv6 are located in Russia's major cities, while regional penetration is much lower, he pointed out. Nevertheless, over 75 percent of local internet registries (LIR) have already received IPv6 address blocks and are gradually adjusting their infrastructure. Burtikov went on to say that there are no clear leaders in terms of IPv6 deployment: all countries are on a similar level with the only distinction being how they work with the existing networks. Having major technology companies engage with the regions is expected to accelerate the protocol's deployment, he said.

Russian IPv6 Day is an annual event that brings together experts in software development and network infrastructure involved in IPv6 deployment. This year, over 100 people attended the event.