By Steve Simlo, IPv6 Product Manager, Cisco

Network Operating Systems Technology Group

We've been actively promoting the adoption of IPv6 at various venues -back in January at Cisco Live London, and a few weeks ago at the V6 World Congress, which focused on the adoption of IPv6 in mobile networks.

Our next big venue is Cisco Live in Orlando, Florida June 23-27, 2013 and I want to take the opportunity to reflect on how IPv6 is becoming an increasingly important component of the event agenda, infrastructure and look forward to some of our future ideas for Orlando.

I have personally participated in Cisco Live for over 15 years as a speaker but this was my first time as a member of the IPv6 Team. For those of you who do now know I am the Product Manager for IPv6 in Cisco's Core Technology team that we call Network Operating Systems Technology Group.

My observations on what I saw and heard in London were as follows:

There was a huge buzz around IPv6; both inside breakout sessions and across the show itself:

• Cisco delivered over 20 individual breakout sessions to around 1500 audience members directly focused on IPv6 technologies covering topics such as Security, Enterprise Deployments, Troubleshooting, LISP and NAT.
• Cisco's own Engineers from our internal IT organization shared their experiences with our own deployments.
• Hands on Lab's covered topics like Security, Routing and Data Centre, LISP deployments.
• I was personally delighted to be included as a part of the IPv6 Deployment Panel where a room of over 150 heard direct experiences from numerous Industry Leaders such as Sander Steffann from RIPE, Frederic Loui from RENATER and Wilhelm Boeddinghaus from STRATO. The audience heard many of the arguments for deploying IPv6 and gained the insights from people with actual deployment experiences.

The direct feedback received from you all told us that you were very interested in these topics and very satisfied with the quality of the information that you gained at the event. We will be striving to do an even better job in Orlando.

The event itself served as a showcase for IPv6 technologies in other respects:

• We demonstrated IPv6 in use for a variety of real world deployments such as LISP and NAT64 (both of which were showcased on the Exhibition floor of the "World of Solutions"
• The show network was enabled with full dual stack in support of the many and ever increasing number of wireless devices that you are all carrying with IPv6 capabilities. Around 65% of the devices that we saw on the network in London came with dual stack capabilities. There are more details on our own experiences with this network on Andrew's blog.
• The show website was enabled with full dual stack from the start of the show.

We're looking forward to seeing you at Cisco Live Orlando and hope to create even more excitement around IPv6 and we have the following new ideas that we look forward to offering you:

• We look to increase the span of our demonstrations in the World of Solutions and hope to be able to showcase how to show numerous IPv6  transition technologies in action in World of Solutions again in Orlando
• Internet of Everything is increasingly driving interest in IPv6. We will be using this linkage in Orlando to highlight the ways in which IPv6 is helping with the development of this pervasive technology revolution.
• IPv6 content for Orlando will be managed as a full "Virtual Track" by me and my colleague Eric Vyncke. This means that in addition to the sessions directly focused on IPv6 we will make every effort to drive our speakers to insert IPv6 examples in their content alongside their IPv4 examples and to discuss how their respective technologies operate in a dual stack environment
• We plan to identify the IPv6 specialists among the speaker community with specific ribbons that will allow you to more easily identify the Cisco specialists who are supporting IPv6 in Orlando

We hope London was a useful learning experience for you, and we look forward to making Orlando an even better one. If there are ideas you have for us in terms of ways in which we can improve on the Cisco Live / IPv6 experience then I would be delighted to hear from you.