Customers assured of worldwide reach over new protocol following £7.5m network investment

Southampton, 3rd May 2011: PEER 1 Hosting, the global online IT hosting provider, today announced the arrival of its IPv6 enabled 10GB backbone network, bringing future-ready network reach to customers ahead of the imminent IPv4 address exhaustion. 

PEER 1 Hosting’s network is one of the first hosting providers supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, ensuring customers’ websites remain visible to all users around the world, irrespective of the networks or hardware they are using.

The IPv6 upgrade is the result of £7.5m investment over the last three years by PEER 1 Hosting, and has included a beta phase, allowing co-location and transit customers to test the backbone through PEER 1’s network of data centres. Offering both IPv4 and IPv6 network capabilities, will allow PEER 1’s hosting and co-location customers to adopt the new protocol at their own pace, by providing a bridge to both worlds as networks transition the evolution towards IPv6 as standard protocol.

“It is only a matter of time before the internet runs out of address space,” says Dominic Monkhouse, EMEA Managing Director at PEER 1 Hosting. “Customers won’t suddenly drop off the edge of the world wide web overnight once IPv4 reaches capacity, but offering IPv6 through our network now ensures they don’t have to worry about business continuity or losing reach and traffic as the world slowly makes the switch.”

PEER 1 Hosting is ahead of the curve in bringing online IPv6 for its customers, whilst industry debate continues to procrastinate over standards and adoption. The PEER 1 backbone will also offer the added network benefits of the IPv6 protocol including increased addressing capacity, more flexible security, the ability to expand infrastructure and accelerate business.

Monkhouse adds: “IPv6 offers much more than connectivity; it brings with it the ability for everything from your fridge to your phone to have its own IP address, giving rise to all manner of applications over the internet. IPv6 is the ultimate solution for consumers, so it makes sense for us to offer customers early access to it through our network sooner rather than later.”