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  4. Deployment of new Internet Protocol successful for ACCRE’s connection to the Energy Sciences Network

Deployment of new Internet Protocol successful for ACCRE’s connection to the Energy Sciences Network

accreIn April 2017, Vanderbilt IT added Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) configuration on the VUIT research router. The ACCRE (Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education) team has a requirement from the United States Department of Energy's Energy Sciences Network (EsNet) team to bring up IPv6 connectivity between Vanderbilt and EsNet. This positions VUIT well to support additional IPv6 needs in the future.

IPv6 is the latest version of Internet Protocol, which is the principal communications protocol used to address network endpoints and route traffic in private networks and across the internet. The two main benefits of IPv6 are 1) a functionally infinite number of addresses available and 2) the optimization of network routing.

The deployment of IPv6 on the research router for ACCRE is to support Large Hadron Collider research in conjunction with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. CERN has exhausted IPv4 addresses, and the organization is migrating servers that ACCRE communicates with to IPv6.