[Offtopic] Students keep their own net address

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

'Australia leads the way in IPv6 education networks'

Darren Pauli (Computerworld) 27th January, 2010 
<http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/334077/australia_leads_way_ipv6_e
ducation_networks> (snipped)


Australia could be home to one of the largest education networks to 
operate on the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) platform within two 
months. 

Regional Internet Registries have warned that less than 10 per cent of 
addresses remain, and are predicted to run out by 2012.

About 30 schools covering more than 7500 students across the country are 
using IPv6 mail and collaboration managed by StudentNet, a commercial 
spin-off from the Association of Independent Schools of NSW. 

StudentNet director, Kevin Karp, said he anticipates hitting 10,000 
student subscribers which would make the network as large as the Greek 
School Network. 

"[World Wide IPv6 Forum president] Latif Ladid announced last year that 
the network is the second largest behind China and Greece," Karp 
said. "Our subscribers are from the smallest to the biggest independent 
schools across Australia." 

Karp said IPv6 can make it easier to make students more accountable for 
their actions at school by tying actions to static IP addresses: "IT 
doesn't have to cross-reference or crawl through logs as you would in 
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)". 

The graduating year of 2009 and upcoming students can keep their IPv6 
static Internet addresses after leaving school, since the availability of 
addresses is significantly higher than those free on IPv4. 

Subscriber numbers increased by 40 per cent last year and are expected to 
grow by more than 20 per cent by the end of the first quarter of this 
year according to the company.

Students using the company's NextMail IPv6 service access the system via 
6to4 tunnelling, which allows IPv6 packets to be transmitted over an IPv4 
network. Karp said the company has about 100 schools using its 
virtualisation hosting service.

Internet co-founder, Vincent Cerf, has said the growth of the Internet is 
making the switch to IPv6 a priority. He said the Internet had some 1.6 
billion users as of 2009 and will explode as new devices and sensor 
networks become online-enabled, including household temperature systems 
and even outer space technology. 

--

Cheers,
Stephen