Utrecht, 19 May 2010 – New network technologies such as DNSSEC and IPv6 are on the move in the Dutch business community. That is the conclusion of network specialist AXIANS following a poll of visitors to the IP Management Day.

More than half the companies polled (52%) have concrete plans within 12 months to implement DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a technology designed to secure an organisation’s DNS traffic. DNSSEC ensures that visitors to websites know for certain that they are not being diverted to a different, often malicious website. Twenty-five percent of the organisations intend to postpone implementation another year; while the rest do not have any plans or have not yet given any thought to the matter.

Many companies are also giving increasingly higher priority to IPv6. The poll shows that 43 percent of respondents plan to utilise the new generation of IP addresses within six months. Another 28 percent intend to start implementation within 12 months. The majority (65%) will utilise IPV6 side by side with the current generation of IP addresses (IPv4) by means of dual-stack technology. This is not surprising since organisations will certainly continue to use IPv4 during the next 10 to 20 years.

Visitors to the event were also asked if they were busy with IF-MAP, a new, open protocol that controls network access via DHCP. Infoblox and Juniper are the driving forces behind this new technology. More than four out of ten visitors are studying this technology or already have long-term implementation plans; nearly 75 percent do not expect to start using IF-MAP for at least another year.

Rob Wennekendonk, Managing Director of AXIANS, is pleased with the findings: ‘It shows that companies are at least thinking about these technologies. And that is important, because we are on the eve of several major breakthroughs. Preparations to make the Internet root zone ready for DNSSEC will start in July, which will bring this technology within arm’s reach of many companies. It will then be much easier to apply DNSSEC automatically. The time is also approaching when we will run out of IPv4 addresses. It is not clear whether this will happen in 2011 or later, but it is clear that companies should prepare for this now. Otherwise, they may miss the proverbial boat’.