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[Greg Wood <>]

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Greg Wood
Internet2

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ABILENE INTERNET2 BACKBONE NETWORK DEPLOYS NEXT GENERATION INTERNET PROTOCOL

Native IPv6 Service Offered to Thousands of US Research and Education
Institutions

Ann Arbor, Michigan—August 5, 2002—Internet2 today announced that the
nationwide Abilene backbone network now offers native next generation
Internet Protocol (IPv6) service. This deployment makes high-performance
IPv6 service available to over 200 Internet2 member institutions and
thousands of other research and education institutions across the United
States that have access to Abilene.

The deployment in Abilene also marks the first large scale deployment in
the United States of native IPv6 on Cisco System's 12000 series routers.
Abilene's native IPv6 service complements existing IPv6 deployment in
other research and education networks around the world, such as ESnet in
the United States, Renater in France, and SURFnet in the Netherlands.

"The Cisco 12000 Series Internet Router plays a prominent role in
next-generation IPv6 networks. Abilene is a great example of continued
success and innovation around this technology," said Tony Bates, vice
president and general manager, High End Routing Group. "As pioneers of
IPv6 technology, Cisco helped to shape the definition and development of
IPv6 and today leads the industry with IPv6 protocol and platform
breadth allowing the Internet2 Abilene network to provide cutting-edge
IPv6 services"

"Deploying native IPv6 continues Abilene's evolution as a leading-edge
network environment that supports the development of new applications,"
   said Steve Corbató, director of backbone network initiatives for
Internet2. "We believe the deployment of IPv6 could be critical to
sustaining the scalable growth and innovation that has distinguished the
Internet's development over the past 30 years."

IPv6 is the next version of the Internet protocol, updating the data
packaging and routing standard. The current version is IPv4; IPv5 was
experimental and was never widely deployed. IPv6 offers several
improvements over IPv4. Most importantly, with 128-bit long Internet
addresses instead of the 32-bit addresses of IPv4, IPv6 vastly increases
the number of addresses available which, along with other improvements,
paves the way for a large range of new applications.

For more information about IPv6 activities in the Internet2 community, see:
http://ipv6.internet2.edu/

About Abilene
Abilene, developed in partnership with Qwest Communications, Cisco
Systems, Juniper Networks, Nortel Networks and Indiana University, is an
Internet2 backbone network providing nationwide high-performance
networking capabilities for over 200 universities and research
facilities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
For more information on Abilene please see:
http://www.internet2.edu/abilene/

About Internet2(R)
Led by over 190 U.S. universities, working with industry and government,
Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and
technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the
creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships
among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's
Internet in its infancy. For more information about Internet2, see:
http://www.internet2.edu/

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