Fujitsu Develops New Technology to Enable Continued Use of IPv4 Services

Tokyo, June 10, 2013

Fujitsu today announced that it has developed SA46T Multiple Service Plane Expansion, which enables the continued use of IPv4 services, even with the deployment of IPv6. This is an important solution to the depletion of IPv4 addresses that is resulting from the increasing prevalence of PCs, servers and other Internet-connected communication devices.

SA46T Multiple Service Plane Expansion is comprised of three basic technologies. The first is SA46T, which is technology for backbone networks⁽¹⁾ that enables IPv4 communications to be transmitted over IPv6 networks. To this Fujitsu has added two newly developed technologies. One is SA46T-PR, which enables IPv4 communications over IPv6 on a stub network⁽²⁾, and the other is SA46T-PT, which interconnects between the SA46T and SA46T-PR domains. SA46T Multiple Service Plane Expansion makes it possible to accommodate some 4.3 billion IPv4 services on an IPv6 network and improves scalability in terms of network size, regardless of physical distance across multiple countries.

Simply by implementing SA46T Multiple Service Plane Expansion on network equipment and making some simple settings, an IPv6 network can continue to support existing IPv4 services without interruption, enabling a smooth transition to IPv6.

A live demonstration of this technology will take place at Interop Tokyo 2013, running June 12-14 at Makuhari Messe, as part of Interop ShowNet, where verification tests of SA46T, SA46T-PR, and SA46T-PT will be conducted. This technology has been nominated for the Best of Show Award.

Currently there is a need for a variety of measures to cope with the depletion of IPv4 address space. In the future, networks are expected to be configured exclusively using IPv6, without a dual stack⁽³⁾. As a result, there is a need to make services configured around IPv4 compatible with IPv6. In practical terms, however, it is not necessarily easy to make these services compatible with IPv6 in a short period of time. As a result, there is a need to enable the continued use of IPv4 services until migration to IPv6.

SA46T Multiple Service Plane Expansion consists of three basic technologies: SA46T and the newly developed SA46T-PR and SA46T-PT. Together, these allow the number of current IPv4 services to be expanded to some 4.3 billion and also improve scalability in terms of network size, regardless of physical distance across multiple countries. SA46T, which operates on backbone networks, and SA46T-PR, which operates on stub networks, both allow IPv4 services to be transmitted over IPv6 networks. SA46T-PT connects the two to each other, so that IPv4 services can continue to run over networks that span areas just by making some simple settings. If, in the future, a network is built that can only accommodate IPv6, the use of SA46T or SA46T-PR, depending on the network's size, enable an appropriate set-up, thereby supporting a smooth transition to the customer's IPv6 network.