Hurricane Electric Expands IPv6 Network to More Equinix Data Centers in Europe and Asia

Hurricane Electric, which operates a global IPv4 and IPv6 network and claims that its IPv6 network is the world’s largest, has added more Equinix data centers in Europe and Asia to its network.

With recently established Points of Presence at Equinix facilities in Munich, Frankfurt and Hong Kong, Hurricane Electric’s network now spans 17 of the Redwood City, California-based colocation provider’s facilities.

As more and more devices get connected to the Internet and the pool of IPv4 addresses rapidly dwindles, IPv6 services are a crucial capability to have for a service provider. IPv6 adoption is quicker in some countries than in others.

Adoption in Germany is second-highest in Europe, following Belgium, according to a website Google has put together to track IPv6 adoption. Germany is on par with the U.S. Adoption rate in Asian countries is extremely low at this point.

In April, American Registry for Internet Numbers, said it was down to 16 million IPv4 addresses. ARIN and other regional Internet registries, including ones on Europe and Asia, have been operating in austerity mode, evaluating with extra scrutiny every request for a new block of IPv4 addresses they receive.

Hurricane Electric competes with Equinix to some extent – it operates two colocation data centers on Equinix’s home turf in Silicon Valley – but it has had PoPs in the provider’s data centers since 2002.

Mike Leber, Hurricane Electric president, said the Internet was on the “true cusp” of widespread IPv6 migration, and expansion of the company’s network into more Equinix data centers was its way of preparing. “We are live in 22 countries now, many through Equinix, and look forward to realizing our goal of being present in 100 countries by continuing to proliferate our offerings through strategic colocations,” he said in a statement.