Today a Question and Awser session with the makers of the Fritz!Box modem/router AVM. We are talking to Eric van Uden who is an Sales Manager at AVM.

Please tell us a little about AVM

Founded in 1986 in Berlin, AVM is one of the top two manufacturers of ADSL devices in Europe. With over 50 percent of the market share, it is the leading manufacturer in Germany, Europe’s largest market. AVM has 460 employees and generated a turnover of € 220 million in the 2008 fiscal year. The Berlin-based communications specialist has received numerous awards for its innovative FRITZ!Box product range, developed and produced in Germany. FRITZ!Box enables fast, user-friendly DSL access, easy networking, inexpensive Internet telephony and versatile multimedia applications

When and how did IPv6 began to be a part of AVM

First internal discussions in 2007, first German public beta at CEBIT2009

What is the current status of IPv6 at AVM?

After several public beta versions in the last eight months and regarding the feedback that we got from the public testers and several ISP test labs we consider the status of the IPv6 support in FRITZ!Box to be quite mature. We are ready to offer an IPv6-ready CPE to ISPs that want to roll-out IPv6.

In what way do you expect to see IPv6 growth in the next couple of years for AVM?

As we see more and more growth for IPv6 in Europe, we expect that IPv6 support in CPEs will be soon a mandatory requirement for most of our customers. There are more and more ISPs orienting on IPv6 and some of them already started with their IPv6 role-out. I think we will see by the end of 2010 a lot more IPv6 ISPs. In the Netherlands you can see that more and more important webservers have an IPv6 address, like weeronline,geenstijl, Telegraaf, KNMI etc.

Are there any things you would like to say about IPv6 in general?

Everybody in the industry should -at the latest now- begin to plan the migration to IPv6. Those who have already started will be in a better position than those who are still hesitant. IPv4 address exhaustion is not a myth but a simple fact that cannot be ignored.

Eric thanks for your time and effort for this Q&A. We hope to see more IPv6 enabled hardware from AVM in the future!

Well you might want to check out the FRITZ!Box solutions from AVM. They currently have 2 modem/routers available for ADSL2+ and VDSL. The WLAN 7270 and 7570 VDSL

There are public beta firmwares available for IPv6 support for the models mentioned above. Those firmware’s can be found on the FRITZ!Box IPv6 Lab website.

With the new firmware the FRITZ!Box can be used right away on provider lines that support IPv6, supporting native IPv6 over PPP. What is more, 6to4 technology has been implemented to allow the use of IPv6 on conventional IPv4 lines.

Features at a glance

* Allows IPv6 to be used in the home network and the Internet
* IPv6CP support for native IPv6 connections over PPP on special lines
* 6to4 support for connecting IPv6 over conventional IPv4 Internet connections
* IPv6 – SixXS Tunnel Broker support ( http://www.sixxs.net)
* Dual-stack concept for simultaneous use of IPv4 and IPv6

Please do take notice of their warning on the IPv6 Lab site:

Important note
This lab firmware is a beta version. We tested the software in standard environments before making it available to the public, but it may still result in malfunctions. AVM will not be liable for any damages that arise from the use of the lab version.

As you can see the IPv6 support is extensive and will most likely provide you with the kind of IPv6 connectivity you need.

The download link for the beta firmware is on the IPv6 lab website and can be found for the 2 currently supported models the 7270 (ADSL2+) and the 7570 (VDSL)

More information and specifications can be found on the FRITZ!Box website:

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/index.html

We will try to get a hands-on review in the near future and provide you with additional information. Ofcourse if AVM has new information available we will keep you informed!