Because of the decreasing availability of IPv4 addresses, Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), and Microsoft have both added native IPv6 connectivity for their respective cloud services to meet modern software requirements.
AWS added IPv6 to S3 storage in August. However, it did not include Web site hosting, BitTorrent access, or transfer acceleration. AWS has extended IPv6 support to its other services last week, including S3 transfer acceleration.
AWS’ CloudFront content delivery system (CDN), at all 60 edge locations, and Web application firewall service (WAF) are included in the support extension. Jeff Barr, AWS Cloud Evangelist, explained how to implement each API in a blog post.
Microsoft, an AWS competitor, also announced support for native IPv6 addresses within its Azure cloud at its Ignite conference last week.
Yousef Khalidi is Microsoft’s corporate vice-president of Azure networking. He wrote in a blog that Microsoft has been using IPv6 for Microsoft services since more than three decades. Azure’s native connectivity is now available for connectivity to both Windows virtual machines and Linux virtual machines.
Microsoft also provided instructions on how to connect IPv6 network ends to the Azure Load Balancer using PowerShell, a template or Azure Resource Manager with the Azure LLI.
Azure’s IPv6 connectivity can be used in most regions. However, it is not available in parts of Australia, China, Germany, China, or the U.S. government Cloud. Here is the current availability.
Since years, Internet service providers and cloud providers have been under increasing pressure to upgrade their networks to IPv6 support. Compliance requirements and the proliferation of new Internet-connected devices are driving demand.
Khalidi stated that the demand for IPv6 is greater than ever with the explosive growth of mobile devices and the influx of billions of Internet of Things devices (IoT), devices into the market.