Category: Broadband

Comcast Residential IPv6 Deployment Pilot

Comcast, long active in the IPv6 arena have announced that they will be doing a native residential IPv6 deployment in Pleasanton, CA, on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area, which will be a dual-stacked, native v4/v6 deployment with no NAT.

This is a much needed move to try and break the deadlock that seems to have been holding back wide scale v6 deployment in mass market broadband providers. Apart from isolated islands of activity such as XS4ALL‘s pioneering work in the Netherlands, v6 deployment has largely been available only as an option from providers focused on the tech savvy user (such as A&A in the UK).

Sure, it’s a limited trial, and initially aimed at single devices only (i.e. one device connected directly to the cable modem), but it’s a start, and there’s plans to expand this as experience is gained.

Read these good blog articles from Comcast’s John Brzozowski and Jason Livingood about the deployment and it’s aims.

Broadband to your Barn

…or, “a different kind of social networking”

There’s been some good reporting recently on the B4RN (Broadband For the Rural North) initiative, which aims to deploy a fibre broadband infrastructure to over 1300 properties in a rural area of my native Lancashire, which would otherwise almost certainly fall into the 10% of fast broadband have-nots by 2017.

If the build was left to a commercial entity which needed to pay dividends to it’s investors, it would be very difficult for the plan to pass the litmus test, because of the high overheads involved in a large company, and the need to make profit.

So, how does B4RN differ from initiatives such as Yorkshire’s Digital Region, or Connecting Devon and Somerset?

Well, for one thing, it’s a smaller project. The second one is that it seems to be less reliant on public funding.

Continue reading “Broadband to your Barn”