Global IPv6 Service Launch Event
On 15 and 16 January 2004 the Global IPv6 Service Launch Event took place in Brussels, at the Residence Palace. The event, which was organised by the European Commission’s Information Society Directorate General in coordination with two EC-funded projects, 6NET and Euro6IX, was held to promote and highlight the progress achieved in the development of IPv6, and to celebrate the launch of the world’s first Global IPv6 Service.
The Global IPv6 Service has been made possible by the collaboration between GÉANT and other research networks around the globe that have successfully deployed IPv6 services across their backbone networks. The official launch of the Global IPv6 Service on 15 January highlighted the availability of this next-generation Internet protocol across a global networking infrastructure to a truly international research community.
Launch Event
GÉANT played a key role in the two-day event, which attracted senior European Commission officials and leading experts from the fields of research and business from around the world. The event was designed not only to launch the global IPv6 service but also to demonstrate the benefits of implementing the new Internet protocol, and to highlight different applications which currently make use of it.
National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research and GÉANT Demonstration
GÉANT staged its own demonstration which highlighted remote instrumentation using digital video streaming over IPv6. In collaboration with the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the research networks of Internet2 and BELNET, high-resolution digital video images from an intermediate-voltage electron microscope (EM) and a high speed laser scanning multi-photon light microscope (LM) were streamed from UCSD across GÉANT and the collaborating research networks.
These two applications streamed live data, enabling viewers at the event to monitor and manipulate the instruments in real time. Both live data streams depicted biological samples at two different scales of magnification. This demonstration illustrated the work of researchers at NCMIR, who are developing the Telescience Project, which merges technologies for remote instrumentation. Using IPv6 in applications of this kind makes possible remote access to key scientific instruments, thereby facilitating remote microscopy for researchers globally.
Launch Ceremony
The official ceremony to launch the Global IPv6 Service, organised by GÉANT on behalf of the European Commission, was held at the end of the first day and was attended by Erkki Liikanen, Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society. Commissioner Likkanen’s introductory speech served to open the ceremony and can be viewed via the link alongside. A number of short speeches by representatives from 8 of the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) taking part in this global initiative were also made.
Participants from the USA, Canada, Latin America, Japan, Korea, China, Russia and Europe were able to share their experiences of deploying IPv6 across their respective national networks, and were then presented with a gift as a token of appreciation for their efforts in helping to establish the first global IPv6 service. The ceremony was then brought to a close by the official inauguration of the global IPv6 service with a toast to the operational worldwide IPv6 connectivity service by Commissioner Liikanen.
The following NREN representatives participated in the ceremony:
John Boland, HEAnet, Ireland (compere/co-ordinator)Doug van Houweling, Internet2, USA
Bill St Arnaud, CANARIE, Canada
Sandra Jaque, CLARA, Latin America
Prof Shoichiro Asano, NII, Japan
Dr. Ki-Shik Park, ETRI, Republic of Korea
Prof Jianping Wu, CERNET, China
Prof Yuri Izvhanov, INFORMIKA, Russian Federation
Dany Vandromme, GÉANT, Europe
