ISC and IPv6 - a long, strong history

The long talked about...much feared...never gonna happen day is finally here. IPv6 is now a requirement not an option if you want to be part of the Internet.

ISC stands ready to help just as we've always been with software solutions for essential Internet infrastructure needs.

ISC has been involved with IPv6 since our BIND 8 days. One of the factors in creating BIND 8, rather than continuing BIND 4, was to include support for IPv6 as a demonstration of capabilities. Since then, ISC has been pioneering IPv6 deployments in all of our products.

Products & Services from ISC with Native Support for IPv6
BIND 9 has provided full support for IPv6 resource records ("AAAA") since they were defined, and provides full support for operation over IPv6 transport, alone or on a dual-stack host. BIND 9.8 also includes DNS64, a feature used with an IPv6/IPv4 translator (NAT64) to enable client-server communication between an IPv6-only client and an IPv4-only server without any changes to either one.

Our DHCPv6 implementation is one of the few. We've worked actively on the DHCPv6 standard in the IETF, and our DHCPv6 is a key part of ISC AFTR, our implementation of the DS-lite protocol (see below). For operators who need DHCP to manage IP addresses in their networks, including the new needs and capabilities driven by IPv6, ISC DHCPv6 is right here.

ISC AFTR is a full implementation of the DS-lite ("Dual-Stack lite") protocol, which is designed to support full interconnection between IPv4 clients and servers across an IPv6 infrastructure, using packet encapsulation and NAT. It's designed to be scalable and reliable across carrier-grade networks, allowing for incremental migration of clients and servers to IPv6 in situations where dual-stack deployment may not be operationally feasible.

ISC operates F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, one of the 13 DNS root servers, and the first to deploy this critical service across the globe using anycast technology.  We also were one of the first root servers to deploy IPv6 in production, and have worked with Internet exchanges worldwide to add IPv6 to their peering platform where we have a F-Root node.

ISC's managed secondary DNS offering (SNS@ISC) is built at the core to serve DNS over both IPv4 and IPv6 using anycast techniques with leading global backbone networks.  In addition, SNS@ISC fully supports all of the latest enhancements to the DNS including DNSSEC.  Customers of SNS@ISC operate their own primary name servers where they manage their DNS zone data, and then SNS@ISC transfers this zone data to one or more of our globally anycast name server clusters.  End users will see extremely high availability and short response times when they look up domain names whose DNS zones are served by SNS@ISC.