Today we have a Q&A with Joost Tholhuijsen. Joost is the owner of Tholhuijsen Consultancy and an active member of the Dutch IPv6-Taskforce.

Please tell us a little about Tholhuijsen Consultancy

Tholhuijsen Consultancy assists medium and large organisations in network
migrations. We help international companies in selecting their WAN vendor
and solution, we lead IP renumbering projects and advise in broader IT
infrastructure issues.

When and how did IPv6 began to be a part of Tholhuijsen Consultancy?

Tholhuijsen Consultancy started to orientate on IPv6 in 1999, and in 2002
met with Vint Cerf on the subject. In 2009 IPv6 was adopted as one of the
main activities of Tholhuijsen Consultancy. For Syntens, an initiative of
the Dutch Minisitry of Economic Affairs we developed and IPv6 Workshop for
decision makers in small and medium Enterprises.

What is the current status of IPv6 at Tholhuijsen Consultancy?

Tholhuijsen Consultancy has its infrastructure running native IPv6 and
tunneled IPv6. To properly test the market situation one of the networks is
even native IPv6 only. And But Tholhuijsen Consultancy does see IPv6 not
only as part of it’s infrastructure, but more as part of its core business.
Training, creating practical awareness, creating information material and
advising and assisting in IPv6 integration are our day to day work. Via
www.ipv6specialisten.nl Tholhuijsen Consultancy strives to make practical
and skilled IPv6 specialists active in the market.

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

Tholhuijsen Consultancy is a member of the Dutch IPv6 Task Force, which
foundation was commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2005. The
general purpose of the Task Force is to promote the adoption of IPv6. The
Task Force however has limited means to fullfill its role. Internationally
and nationally outside the official IPv6 promotional bodies number of
initiatives arise. Some important web-sites like Google and YouTube see it
as their responsibility to promote IPv6, and have made their sites IPv6
reachable. Others like Ebay’s Marktplaats strive to do so on a short term.
We expect that initiatives like these help in breaking the infamous
chicken-egg situation that some see as the main barrier for IPv6. Awareness
of the coming IPv4 shortage is rising, but even in the top 20 of best
visited web-sites in February 2010 it was still not at 100 per cent.

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

ICT infrastructures are run by people with broad responsibilities.
Stakeholders are users, management and last but not least controllers.
Implementing IPv6 is not trivial for all of these parties. The speed in
which IPv6 is adopted for this reason does not follow the aspirations of
IETF, IANA, ISOC etc. at the pace of these parties. Given that fact that
IPv6 is necessary, mature and promising, the point of no-return for IPv6 has
been passed some time ago, and organisations ignoring IPv6 might ignore
their role in the mid-term future.

Thank you for your time and your answers Joost and we hope to hear more of your work in the future.

In this Q&A session were talking to Robin Elfrink, Robin is a Network Engineer at the Dutch ISP Introweb. And he will tell us about Introweb and their intrest in IPv6.

Please tell us a little about Introweb

Introweb was founded in 1995 as a subsidiary of electronics and security company. We provide connectivity (DSL and fiber), hosting and services as a package, specializing in high-availability and continuity. Introweb has about 35 employees. The way Introweb works has already resulted in a ISO27001 certification.

When and how did IPv6 began to be a part of Introweb?

We got our IPv6 prefix just before 2004, and have since been working to gain experience with it.

What is the current status of IPv6 at Introweb?

About three years ago we started to implement IPv6 in our backbone to
any equipment that supports it. Barring a single switch, our entire
network infrastructure is now IPv6-aware. When buying new equipment we
require IPv6 capabilities.

To promote the use of IPv6 by our clients, we offer a native IPv6 ADSL
connection for the symbolic amount of EUR (IPv) 6,- per month.

http://www.introweb.net/producten/categorien/internet_toegang/economy_adsl/ipv6_adsl.shtml

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

We see that more companies are experimenting with IPv6. We encourage
that, but it is difficult to quantify expectations. We are certainly ready.

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

There will be a moment in the not too distant future that parts of the
internet will be accessible only over IPv6. When that happens you’d
better be ready.

Thanks Robin for your time to anwser our questions! Keep up the good work!

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!

Another Question and Answer. This time with the Foundation who regulates and manages the registry of the .nl CCTLD SIDN.

Were talking with Marco Davids, Senior IT Specialist – SIDN ICT Operations & Support.

Please tell us a little about SIDN

SIDN is responsible for the functional stability and development of the
.nl Internet domain. As well as registering and allocating .nl domain
names. The organisation enables Internet users all over the world to
make use of these labels at any given moment.

SIDN’s rapidly growing domain name register now contains more than 3.4
million .nl domain names. In consequence, SIDN is a key player in the
global Internet community. The organisation’s services are provided to
the public through a network of two thousand independent commercial
Internet service providers, the so called registrars.

Today we are talking to Wido Potters who works for BIT as manager Support & Sales. BIT is active as an hosting and access provider in the Netherlands.

Please tell us a little about BIT.

The company started in 1996 as Business Internet Trends and as so many
internet start-ups from a founder’s bedroom. Since then a lot has
changed at BIT, but two of the basic characteristics have remained unchanged.

First of all is the company technology-driven. All innovations at BIT
have a solid technological base and all products and services are
derived from this technological base. Unlike so many other internet
companies there is no place for market-driven hypes; how unfortunate was
the start-up’s name .

Secondly the company only offers business-to-business services. These
type of customers have different needs than private consumers. BIT has
decided to develop their products and services only for this type of
high demanding customers.

Since the start BIT has grown to a company with around 30 employees
nowadays. More and more we offer besides our internet-services,
infrastructure-services with our two data-centers and IP-network.
Custom-made solutions is the strong point of this independent ISP.