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pbxnsip IP PBX phone system for Windows, Linux and Mac is one of the first IP PBX systems to fully support IPV6
The Internet is continuously growing. So are its problems. While North America has a large portion of the available address space, many other countries do not have enough addressable IP addresses. The invention of network address translation did not do any favor to the introduction of voice into the Internet. Those who already experienced one-way audio will know what it means to have routing problems. And once all 2.5 billion cell phones join the Internet it will finally become obvious that IPv4 has come to an end. The Internet world will soon have to move to the next generation of the Internet protocol: IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6).
But along with the large address range come a few other improvements. IPv6 was made in a time when engineers knew it would also carry voice. The protocol knows that there is a stream of packets, and routers can make sure that the packets will always take the same route. An extreme makeover of the famous PPP protocol is able to take the huge packet overhead out of the RTP stream and compress it to a level that codec compression makes sense.
But along with the large address range come a few other improvements. IPv6 was made in a time when engineers knew it would also carry voice. The protocol knows that there is a stream of packets, and routers can make sure that the packets will always take the same route. An extreme makeover of the famous PPP protocol is able to take the huge packet overhead out of the RTP stream and compress it to a level that codec compression makes sense.
Other changes address the setup of the computer in today's networks. The computer device of tomorrow will have not only one IP address, it will have many. Addresses will come from virtualization; they will also come from link-local addresses; and maybe some old-fashioned system administrators will also use DHCPv6 to provision IP addresses in their LAN. Ah, and to be backward-compatible, the host will also carry an IPv4 address. Just in case that there might still someone be using this protocol.
Last but not least, if your network service provider is moving to IPv6 it is quite likely that this also means an upgrade of the quality of service infrastructure. That means carrying your voice over IPv6-enabled lines will be at least as reliable as it was to carry your traffic through T1 or ISDN lines.
Major software vendors are already supporting IPv6. Microsoft's latest operating system Vista fully supports IPv6 and most of the Linux versions come with a proper IPv6 support. So does BSD and Solaris. All important networking software products are able to support IPv6 today!
The support of IPv6 is core component of the PBX product since version 2.1.3. It supports both IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel, running on several IP addresses and several ports for SIP and also for the other protocols like HTTP, DNS, TFTP or SNMP. It detects when IPv6 is set up on the system and automatically routes the requests to the right destination. Devices may register using IPv4 or IPv6; the PBX will translate traffic between the IPv4 and the IPv6 world and even send RTP streams between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This makes it much easier to upgrade the network even when some devices do not support IPv6 yet.
Introducing IPv6 in SIP is a chicken-hen problem. Vendors for network components and the vendors for end devices need to interoperate. pbxnsip welcomes technology partners to integrate their products and solutions with the PBX and make sure that users can safely migrate to IPv6-based networks.
The introduction of IPv6 is just a matter of time for every organization. Therefore, when buying new network components it is important to be sure that the network upgrade to IPv6 is not an issue.
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