Native IPv6 and Private Networks for VPS & Cloud Servers
Two beta features for our VPS and Cloud Servers have moved to general availability today: Native IPv6 connectivity and Private networks. We’re super excited about the full release of these features and what it means for our customers.
Native IPv6
With IPv6, your servers have native, multi-homed IPv6 connectivity. No tunnels, no VPNs, nothing strange—just straight up IPv6.
Every customer gets assigned a full /64 block of IPv6 addresses—that’s over 18 quintillion addresses. With IPv6, there’s no need to do virtual hosting, worry about SSL issues, or anything else—simply give everything it’s own IPv6 address. (No extra charges for all those IPs either!)
Your entire block of addresses is fully portable between multiple servers you have with us. Everything also works with the high availability (HA) support we announced earlier this month.
Of the few servers providers that have IPv6 today, even fewer have IPv6 enabled reverse DNS lookups. We have self-service IPv6 reverse DNS available today and it works just like our existing IPv4 reverse DNS.
Do I need IPv6? What’s wrong with IPv4?
IPv4 is fine except that there aren’t enough addresses. IANA will likely assign the final IPv4 blocks to the regional registries next month (February 2011). The five regional registries are each expected to run out of their addresses this year or next year, depending on the registry.
After all the IPv4 addresses are assigned, they’ll likely have to be obtained on a resale market. IPv4 addresses will be hard to get and will be expensive.
Your best plan of action is to get IPv6 up and running alongside IPv4. This will give you the opportunity to learn all about IPv6, test it with everything, and do it before the situation becomes critical.
And with Zerigo, you can begin that process today.
To get started, login and go to Servers → Networks & IPs → +Add a Network and select IPv6.
Private networks
Private networks allow two or more servers to talk with each other—privately. There are no bandwidth charges for private traffic either.
Private networks are perfect for things like connecting application servers to a database server or a load balancer to application servers.
Zerigo’s private networks are truly private too. Each network is its own vlan. No “private” traffic on shared networks here (as many providers offer).
Have a complex network configuration in mind where you need more than one private network? We can do that too; just contact us.
To add a Private network, go to Servers → Networks & IPs → +Add a Network.
We look forward to your feedback and questions.