In the future, will having IPv6 on your web-server affect it’s ranking in search engines? 

Over recent years there has been much discussion in the networking community on how to encourage the adoption of IPv6. One idea that has been put forward, is the possibility of search engines such as Google, Bing and others adding whether a web-server is IPv6 enabled to the many factors used to determine a page’s ranking.

With the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, this idea has again come to the fore. As a result, Jan Zorz and others have put together a proposal which can be seen at,  http://go6.si/2010/08/suggestion-for-internet-search-engines-proposed-ipv6-impact-on-search-engine-scoring-algorithms/. This proposal recommends the inclusion of IPv6 in the factors used by search engines.

The idea is simple. Just as search engines include a web-site’s availability and other non-content related factors into their ranking calculations, it seems reasonable to include a weighting for an IPv6 enabled web-site. This would give web-sites that have IPv6 and IPv4 connectivity a slight edge in rankings over those that only have IPv4.

For many companies, site ranking is a critical part of their marketing profile. Even a small factor in favour of IPv6, as suggested in this proposal, would be taken seriously as it could make the difference between beating competitors in the ranking and following them in the rankings.

In the IPv6 community, there is significant support for this idea, however it remains to be seen if the search engine providers implement it. Regardless of how soon or if this idea is adopted, any organisation whose marketing profile depends on their web-site’s ranking in search engines will need to look seriously at implementing IPv6, just in case.

This article was written by Erion’s David Holder who can be contacted at david.holder@erion.co.uk.

Erion is pleased to announce the scheduling of a public run of it’s flagship four day IPv6 training course Implementing IPv6 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This IPv6 course will run from 19^th July 2010 to 23^rd July 2010 and will be located in training facilities close to Ljubljana. Ljubljana is easily reached from many European countries using both air and surface transport.

Slovenia has demonstrated an impressive determination to deploy IPv6 which has resulted in it leading other countries in recent measure of IPv6 deployment published by RIPE (known as IPv6 ripeness).

Further details on this IPv6 course can be found on our IPv6 training schedule. Please contact us if you require any additional information about this IPv6 training event or our other IPv6 services.

The 3rd Slovenian IPv6 Summit was held last week in Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the summit, Erion’s David Holder gave a presentation showing how critical IPv6 training is for the successful deployment of IPv6.

Erion has provided IPv6 training for well over a decade and as a result has a wealth of experience in the delivery of IPv6 training. Over this period, Erion has trained many different types of personnel including, senior strategists, research and development engineers, software engineers, global standards experts, network managers, systems administrators and others. Our clients include many well-known companies, such as, 3Com, Atos Orign, Arbor Networks, Cisco, EMC, Frontporch, The International Telecommunications Union, Level 3, Orange and Research in Motion.

Over the previous twelve years of providing IPv6 training Erion has learned a number of key lessons. First and foremost we have learned how essential IPv6 training is even for the most experienced and knowledgeable delegates. Whilst IPv6 has much in common with IPv4, IPv6 is different in a number of critical ways. For some, a lifetime of experience of IPv4, has to be overturned in order to understand IPv6 properly. Training is key to this process. Examples of areas that must be understood properly are IPv6 addressing and IPv6 security.

IPv6 addressing is very different from IPv4 addressing. It is crucial that this is understood fully. In the presentation, Dr Holder showed how many different types of addresses there are in IPv6 and how this impacts on DNS and other services. Understanding which addresses should be used  and which addresses should not be used in DNS is very important in order to avoid name resolution issues causing problems that may give IPv6 a bad reputation. Problems are avoidable but a proper understanding of the issues involved is necessary. This was illustrated by the Case Study of Erion’s work with the Malaysian domain registry organisation in the migration of the .my country code top level domain (.my) to IPv6.

Many think that if they are not using IPv6 then there is no need to be concerned about IPv6 security. This is not the case. As Dr Holder pointed out, many are using IPv6 without being aware of it. This is because most modern operating systems have IPv6 enabled by default and many include transition techniques that provide an IPv6 connection to the IPv6 Internet over IPv4 even when they are behind multiple layers of NAT and firewalls. This means that so called “IPv4-only-networks” must be secured against attacks via IPv6. Therefore all organisations, even those with no IPv6 deployment, must understand and implement IPv6 security measures. In the presentation, Dr Holder showed how Erion provided IPv6 Security training and consultancy to the Malaysian Domain Registry in order for them to successfully past an IPv6 security audit by their national IPv6 auditor.

In conclusion, David Holder also related his personal experience of delegates on Erion’s IPv6 training courses and the benefits the training brought at many levels.

The presentation can be found at IPv6 Training Case Study IPv6 Enabling Malaysias .my Domain.

Further information on Erion’s comprehensive range of world-leading IPv6 training courses can be found at http://www.erion.co.uk/IPv6Training/.

Erion’s David Holder is to speak at this year’s SambaXP conference in Göttingen, Germany. The paper entitled “How to Implement Samba in IPv6 Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 Networks” will provided detailed guidance on migrating heterogeneous networks to IPv6 using Samba. Details of the Samba XP agenda can be found at http://www.sambaxp.org/index.php?id=154.

Erion has been instrumental in the IPv6 enabling of the popular Windows and Unix integration open source package Samba. We were the first to successfully IPv6 enable the Linux CIFS client, Samba 3.2 and Samba4. In addition, we carried out the first IPv6 SMB connections between Samba and Windows Server 2008. Further information on Erion’s work with Samba and IPv6 can be found on our IPv6 blog at http://www.ipv6consultancy.com/ipv6blog/?cat=4.

SambaXP runs from 5th  May to 6th May 2010.